The relative quiet of the first week of Easter is a fine time to reflect on the experience of Holy Week. For those who are involved in bringing these grand and beautiful liturgies to life, there is far more time in the following week to rest and dwell in the fullness and wholeness of what we experienced together in observing the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, the long-form climax of our church year.
I keep coming back, in my thoughts, to the potency of presence. Alongside all of the depth and the exaltation, the joy and the sorrow, the both delicate and full-bodied music, there was a tangible weight to these services provided by all of those who were able to join us.
I likely don’t need to remind you how last year’s Holy Week, set in the early stage of the pandemic, was truly a shock. Denied the ability to worship in the same building at the same time, the staff and clergy engaged in the involved and careful process of observing our Holy Week liturgies ahead of time and then pre-recording and editing video of them to be released online at the proper time. These services took place in the austere setting of a Saint Thomas with empty pews. We were able to worship together, indeed, thanks to the team and the tools at hand. But, my goodness, how disjointed was that experience, in both time and space! One of my coping mechanisms was literally pretending you were in the pews. And if I didn’t focus too much “out there,” it actually worked quite well!
Now I don’t want to suggest that this year’s Holy Week was in any way “normal.” Many limitations still persist, especially in terms of seating. And many of you, heartbreakingly, could not be with us, whether for health reasons or not being able to reserve a place, when you most certainly would have if you could.
But the presence of those who could be with us during this Holy Week remains deeply moving and memorable. And I must note that this presence is decidedly not limited to those who were in the building. Of the less than one hundred who joined us in the flesh for each service, I have to add the several hundreds (more than one thousand in the case of Easter morning) who were with us participating online, making their spiritual communion. And, in contrast to last year, all this is happening live, thanks to the communications team and the network of twelve live streaming cameras that we have set up since last Holy Week.
Knowing that people are watching and participating in real time adds a completely new layer of experience to worship. It is comforting, I must say. Daunting, too. We talk about the “cloud of witnesses” in the church, about how the holy dead still watch us and participate with us in prayer and support throughout our earthly lives. Now we can add another “cloud of witnesses” to the congregation, that of the holy living people who are with us through the power of technology, united in prayer and fellowship. Our fellow worshippers are not only watching through a window, so to speak, they are with us. I’m finding that “cloud”, although invisible during a service, quite substantial. Perhaps you will as well?
The full observance of this year’s Holy Week makes it ever more clear to me that this pandemic has wounded us in ways that we are still discovering and offering up to God for healing. But it also has opened up our parish, as we have risen to the challenge, to larger spheres of possibility and community. One expression of this is our video livestream, but that is only one part of how God is preparing us for what is next for this parish. I look forward to finding out together what that “light at the end of the tunnel” has in store for us!
“All things have become light, never again to set, and the setting has believed in the rising. This is the new creation.”
St. Clement: Address to the Greeks.
