To: all in the Diocese of London
At the heart of the turbulent events of Holy Week and Easter, there are moments of extraordinary and unexpected stillness.
Jesus’s arrest in the garden is a scene of chaos, charged with threat – and Peter responds with violence. But Jesus defuses the tension, saying: ‘I am he. If you are looking for me, let these men go.’ Then he reaches out to heal Malchus’s ear. In a moment of terror his attention to another individual de-escalates and calms the situation in a remarkable way.
At the Praetorium, again surrounded by soldiers, Jesus is faced by Pilate, who is deeply agitated by the trouble that has landed at his door. As artists throughout history have recognised, again Jesus is the still centre of the scene. Under interrogation, his words are spare but calm, culminating in the simple yet profound question: ‘What is truth?’
On the cross, in the midst of his own prolonged agony, Jesus offers reassurance into the fraught exchange between the men on either side of him. ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’.
Then comes the stillness of the tomb. To Jesus’s friends this must surely have spoken of endings, disappointment, confusion and despair. Yet from where we stand in history, we know that the stillness is abundant with possibility and reverberates with hope.
Finally, there is the quiet of a garden in early morning. Mary, in profound and disorienting shock, pours out her anguish at her unspeakable loss – now made unbearably worse by the disappearance of the body she had come to prepare for burial. But in that moment, in the expectant silence of the early morning, the world tilts. Presence fills emptiness. There is an electrifying connection. Wonder floods the well of grief.
The chaos and turbulence of the world often threaten to overwhelm us. It only takes a glance at global events – in Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East, and now the USA – to make us feel deeply de-stabilised.
As we immerse ourselves in the story of Holy Week and Easter, may we rest in those distilled moments of silence, stillness, space and wonder. And in them may we find hope.
The Rt Revd & Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE
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