Now and Not Yet

We are currently in Holy Week, the seven days leading up to Easter.

It begins with Palm Sunday, which commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

On Thursday, we remember the last supper and Jesus’s tormented prayers in the garden of Gethsemane, as he begged his Father to “let the cup pass” from him.

On Friday, we remember the crucifixion.

Saturday is the “holy vigil”: remembering that Jesus was dead – actually dead – and in the tomb.

And then, Sunday.

Resurrection.

Yet, somehow, in this week of sacred contemplation and preparation, I found myself discouraged.

The importance of Easter cannot be overstated. One of my favorite preachers, Dr. Chris Green, once put it this way: “What happened on Easter, the world is never going to recover from.” Christians believe that Easter – even more so than Christmas – is the turning point of history: the first sign of death’s eventual defeat, and the first “breaking through” into real time of the coming New Creation, when all of life will be renewed and Love will reign supreme.

That’s big stuff, guys.

But, this week, all I could see was how little we seem to grasp this hugeness. We are still living in that borderland between Now and Not Yet (yes, this is the idea from whence I formed the title of my upcoming poetry book; stay tuned!), and active, healthy waiting has never been one of humankind’s strengths.

Am I living as if Easter were true? Is anyone? Are we heralding the New Creation in all we do and say? It is difficult to grasp such weighty hope when pain, not love, seems to hold sway where’er I turn my gaze.

The New Creation still seems quite firmly Not Yet, and the Now is looking increasingly bleak.

So, I wrote this sonnet.

It dwells primarily on the turmoil of Now, but the couplet does turn to the Not Yet. You see, I remembered while writing that it is not my job to “grasp” anything; I am grasped, and held, in a grip stronger than any other force.

I am held in Love, and so are you.

Take heart.

Holy Week 2018

Now once again we gather in the garden
Our lips still warm with wine and broken bread
We see the blood-sweat beading on your head
And feel our fearful hearts begin to harden
Now once again we gather ’round the hill
To see the symbol of man’s desperate hate
Our frantic minds won’t let us stop and wait
Still searching for more fiendish ways to kill
Now once again we gather by the tomb
But at its emptiness, a feigned surprise
Is all that filters through our spirit-eyes
Turned inward on our self-preserving gloom
Oh, Wonder! – set a guard upon my tongue
Till Love alone can from my heart be wrung