The Lesson of Loss in Holy Week

Last week, while reading the most recent issue of The Christian Century, I read a short article by Richard Lischer, who teaches preaching at Duke Divinity School.  Drawing on the imagery of preparing a body for burial, he considers the practice of stripping the sanctuary on Maundy Thursday, removing all of the decorations and fine coverings, leaving everything bare.  Through this ritual, we prepare to face the reality of Christ's death, similar to the way that Christ himself was stripped -- of clothing, of followers, of dignity -- before his crucifixion.

What grabbed me most in the article, though, was Lischer's recognition that Holy Week is about the art of losing, but that lesson is carefully avoided by some Christians, especially in this culture.  He writes:

My South African friend Peter Storey once remarked that "America is the only country where more Christians go to church on Mother's Day than Good Friday."  It is a sobering thought... Those who skip Thursday and Friday but show up on Easter Sunday are missing the essential truth of the Passion.  Thus they also bypass the profound grief that attends Jesus' death.  But there's more to it than that.  They have also missed one of Jesus' most important lessons before dying.  During Holy Week Jesus teaches the art of losing.

I think this is a sobering critique of the ways that Americans have diminished this central part of the Gospel.  It's not just the all too common group of "C & E" Christians, but also those who avoid church services on one of the holiest of days.  For them, the story is roughly "Jesus is here" -- born to Mary or entering Jerusalem amid adoring crowds on Palm Sunday -- and now "Jesus is here again" on Easter.  What occurs in between those two appearances of Jesus is vitally important, though.

More than this, Jesus' behavior during the hardest times of his life offers Christians a practical example of how to face the losses in our own lives with faithful love.  As Lischer writes:

What Jesus offers this Holy Week is not an escape from loss but a better way of losing. In each Passion account, and especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus suffers humiliation and defeat but does not relinquish his identity as the Son of God.  His final cry is addressed to his Father.  His divinity is confirmed not by coming down from the cross but by his gestures of love while impaled upon it.  From the cross he provides for his mother and forgives his tormentors.  From the cross he draws a world of lost souls to himself.  As it turns out, what remains in each of us is not the bravado of mastery but the vulnerability of love.

As he concludes the article, Lischer compares Christ's reaction to loss and grief with our most common response: instead of pulling within, Jesus reaches out.  Instead of becoming totally absorbed in the pain and horrible nature of his suffering, to the point that he loses the ability to think of anyone else except himself, he rarely thinks of his own comfort and instead reaches out repeatedly to others, even during the crucifixion.

This, I think, is one of the valuable lessons we gain if we pay proper attention, through our worship calendar, to this holiest of weeks.  By following in Christ's footsteps during His Passion, we can learn not only to be more grateful for his death to sin on our behalf, but how we can more lovingly and graciously -- that is, faithfully -- face the challenges and disappointments of our own lives.