Lectionary Readings & additional Gospel reading
In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Several decades ago, the cable network TNT used the slogan “We know drama” as a way of assuring audiences that their programming would be exciting, entertaining, and emotional. Well, in Holy Week the Church can borrow that phrase and say, “We know drama.”
Holy Week is when followers of Jesus immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus’ Passion – his betrayal, arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and Resurrection. It is a week full of both dialogue and silence, both action and contemplation, both agony and joy. In Holy Week, the emotions are all dialed up to 11. And it really is emotions that drive Holy Week. That’s the difference between Holy Week and reading theology – the emotional aspect. It’s not that in Holy Week we spend our time talking about how salvation works or laying the philosophical and metaphysical groundwork for Easter. Not at all. In Holy Week, we tell a story; a story that is charged with emotion. In a sense, nothing in Holy Week needs to be explained, only experienced, which is why we offer so many opportunities to worship this week.
Beginning with this sermon and going through the Easter Vigil on Saturday evening, I will preach eight sermons, all focusing on a different emotional aspect of Holy Week with the hope that through our full participation in this week, we will come and see that God is with us in whatever we are going through.
Emotions are one of the things that make us human – our psychological and physical responses to the world around us are interpreted through what we call a “feeling.” And, when we think about them, our emotions are quite hard to actually describe. The only reason why we can talk about sadness, excitement, anxiety, or frustration is that we’ve all felt those things. If you grew up watching Star Trek, you might remember the characters Spock or Data – neither of whom could feel emotions. And, try as they might, they just couldn’t understand emotions from a rational perspective. Emotions are a gift from God that allow us to not just go through life, but to experience the fullness of it, if we dare to feel them.
This is what our Middle and High School Youth Group and I have been exploring this year – emotions. We’re using a book called “All the Feels,” and we’ve talked about how emotions are like the waves of the ocean. They can be exhilarating and take us far, but they can also be drowning and dangerous. The researcher and author Brené Brown has said that without language to talk about our emotions, our ability to make sense of our lives is severely limited. She notes that because emotions can often be overwhelming, we try to numb the hard feelings – disappointment, sadness, inadequacy. But emotions are a package deal. We can’t selectively numb anger without also lessening joy. As difficult as emotions can be, being open and vulnerable to what we are feeling is how we live courageously, connected, and whole-heartedly. That’s the language of her TED Talks. In terms of the Gospel, being open to the full gamut of our emotions is how we come to embrace the height, breadth, and depth of God’s love for us in Jesus.
So many of us struggle doing this though. Emotions can take us to places that we’d rather not go. It’s why so many are addicted to substances or activities – they “take the edge off,” as many might say. I’ve often referred to cell phones as “adult pacifiers,” because that’s exactly how they function. And, a lot of people have been brought up with the idea of having a stiff upper lip and stuffing our emotions down. As George Constanza’s father learns in an episode of Seinfeld, “serenity now, insanity later.”
One of the things about the dismantling racism workshops that Racial Equity Rowan hosts that I find really helpful is an exercise that the facilitators lead on the topic of Internalized Racial Oppression and Superiority. Both those in the minority and dominant groups adapt to the reality of racism that infects our culture. Some of the maladaptations that stem from white and Western normativity are distancing, in which we resist being open and vulnerable to others; the right to comfort, in which we assume that we have a right to avoid unpleasant or hard things; and the valuing of reason over emotions, in which we put stock in the “cold, hard truth” while dismissing emotions as being a sign of fragility. I know that I recognize all those things in myself. I wonder how these adaptations are manifest in your experience?
The African-American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman wrote, “Christianity has often been sterile and of little avail to those with their backs against the wall.” See, our inability to embrace our tough emotions has taken us away from the very strength of our faith. After all, we refer to this week as the “Passion” of Jesus, but for too long the Church has taken emotion out of our faith and made it purely intellectual. This Holy Week, we pray to God to open us to full range of emotions that undergird the Passion of Jesus.
Additionally, this is a pastoral encouragement to take seriously your emotional health. The pandemic was hard on us all, myself included. I started therapy about three years ago and it has been so incredibly helpful to face and focus on my emotions. The truth of the matter is that either we work on our emotions, or they will work on us. In addition to therapy, the practice of the Daily Examen in which we review our day through the lens of prayer can be quite holy and helpful. If I can support you in seeking emotional wellness, please let me know.
The Womanist theologian Elaine Brown Crawford wrote a book about the “Holler,” which is a sort of primal scream that touches on despair and agony, but also opens the way of hope. She says, “The Holler comes from a place of pain, abuse, violence and separation. It is a soul-piercing shrill of the African ancestors that demands the recognition and appreciation of their humanity… it is a cry to God to ‘come see about me.’”
It is precisely this sort of emotional state that I want to begin this weeklong reflection on emotions with – ambivalence. Brown Crawford notes that it is only by naming the pain does the hope of relief come. And there is, without question, a tension in these conflicting emotions. Whether it’s conflict in our families, our politics, or our emotions – we don’t like conflict and are trained to avoid it at all costs. But tension is where growth comes from, and no emotion is ever 100% pure. Apprehension always accompanies anticipation; fear and joy often share the same space; anger and sadness are felt together. This is what the emotion of ambivalence is about – it is to feel conflicting things at the same time. Holy Week is full of ambivalence, which amplifies the discomfort and confusion of the week.
James Cone, a black theologian from the 20th century, notes that this sense of tension is why the Blues have been so important in black culture. He says that “the Blues lifted African Americans out of their troubles by allowing them to experience both loss and love as a liberating catharsis… The dialectic of sorrow and joy, despair and hope, is central in the black experience.” As we move through Holy Week, we strive to hold onto the “both” and the “and.” And this how good drama works – it holds a creative tension between conflicting motivations and emotions before resolving them in the finale.
This tension is what we find throughout the readings this morning – the ambivalence between anxiety and anticipation. In the category of anxiety, we have Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming conflict, “Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.” The Psalm is about the feeling that terror surrounds us. Philippians speaks of things going even to the point of death. In Luke, we heard Jesus’ weeping over the city of Jerusalem, knowing what is likely to happen there. And in the Passion Gospel which will be read later, we hear the crowd shouting “Crucify,” in their anxious fervor to avoid any conflicts with Rome. Anxiety is normal and what we feel when there is uncertainty. Whatever you are anxious about, let God hold that anxiety with you.
And, at the same time, there is also an air of anticipation on Palm Sunday. We see this in the triumphal entry of Jesus as the crowds laud him as the king who comes in the name of the Lord. There is anticipation as Jesus cleanses the Temple and all are anticipating the coming of God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. Indeed, we hope and trust that God is up to something more wonderful than we can ask for or imagine, and so we anticipate what God is doing in our lives to make every week holy.
It is in this tension between anxiety and anticipation that the drama of Holy Week rests. In all our lives, we experience the emotion of ambivalence as we have multiple feelings that are true at the same time. We experience the balm of God’s grace not by numbing our feelings or reducing one emotion in favor of another, but rather in opening ourselves to the fullness of our humanity. So, you might write down the emotions you feel this week as you come to church and use that a place to begin your prayerful conversations with God. Our task in Holy Week is not to resolve these tensions, rather it is to remain open to the feelings that the Spirit evokes in us, letting Jesus’ love hold this tension as it makes all things well.
