Darkening skies

The steps seem to get more labored and each word takes on its own resonance. In the context of this most dreadful week when the Passion is so fully before us I really wonder how Jesus could have said these words. Did he know? Was his heart breaking?

There is a problem with hearing these words too often - we hear them as a rather dry reading in Church on a Sunday morning - but try reading them as a passionate statement - read them with tears in eyes and pain in hearts. Hmmm......this Holy Week thing demands a lot.

This is why it is a week - and not a day and it is true that if you allow the truth of the story to drip into you day by day this week - if you allow for the chasm around the death, if you allow for the silence, then, just when you think you must surely break into pieces from sorrow then God will hold you and keep you and raise you in an unexpected way.

This is just the truth - that having been to the foot of the cross via a road of who we really are - that Easter comes with a single word - our names whispered on our Lord's lips in the garden. It is that intimate and that real - but before that point the "sacrifice of God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart O God thou wilt not despise" (Ps 51:17)

Jesus is here to save the world, he will dismantle and rebuild but he will touch each of us as well and wonderfully. We must die this week - a death which we choose but which we do not necessarily control - and we will rise. All the time, in our post-resurrection age, we walk in the light but this light is strong enough to allow our darkness.

I went to Cedar Point in Ohio with my family last summer. One evening my oldest daughter and I went back into the park with a mission - I was going to conquer my fear. All day I had been eyeing up my adversary - Raptor - a suspended hypercoaster. I will not lie - I was terrified - the video they shoot said it all - I am glad she didn''t have any money. But just when I thought I couldn't take any more I realized actually the ride was OK and I enjoyed the last bit.

Holy Week has some hypercoaster moments - but look at Jesus today - who is this man - God incarnate - who is offering himsef?