A Word from Mitch, COVID-19 Update
Last year as the world shut down, the St. Martin's staff went into a frenzy. We filmed liturgies with iPhones and iPads and generally did our best to provide some sort of Easter and Holy Week experience. This year is markedly different. As a society, we are both starting to emerge from this pandemic while also learning how to live with it. In the case of the church, this means offering both in-person worship opportunities and virtual. Starting tomorrow and going through Friday, we will begin filming elements of the Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter virtual services. In this way, it is almost as if Holy Week is -- because of COVID -- two weeks long.
I am doing my best to view the violence first in Atlanta and now in Boulder through the lens of the Holy Week readings. Specifically, The Passion, the washing of feet, the crowd shouting "Crucify him!" and Jesus offering forgiveness. Humankind's ability and capacity for violence have not changed since Jesus's time on earth with us. The ability to hate someone different from us, to incite a crowd to shout "Crucify him!" or to do unspeakable harm is an ugly part of what it means to be human. As Christians, we are called on to be better than this. We are called on to actively work to end violence. We are called on to spread love, and we are mandated by God in the form of Jesus Christ to humble ourselves, placing the needs of others as equal to our own. I cannot begin to make sense of the violence we have witnessed these past few days. I am saddened by it.
In the Passion Story, I was struck this week by the Centurion. He went along with the crucifixion. Who knows, he may have even been one of the soldiers who cast lots for Jesus's clothes. He helped with the crucifixion. In other words, he was an active participant in the violence. Then, when Jesus breathes his last and the earth shakes, he has a moment of clarity and remorse as he exclaims, "Truly this man was the Son of God." Sadly, he came to this realization a breath too late.
Please join me this week in praying for an end to gun violence. Please join me in praying for an end to racial violence. Please actively work to spread the message of the cross. Please join me in praying for forgiveness for times when we have been like the Centurion, going along with something that can cause harm and not realizing it until it is too late.
In Christ,
Mitch