We continue through Holy Week and in our daily liturgies and prayers recall some of the events in the last week of Jesus’ life on earth. As the action slows down towards the end of the week we are invited to consider what it was like for Jesus’ closest friends, his mother and the wider group of ‘disciples’.

For his closest friends – Jesus was acting very oddly and saying odd things about dying, and about his body being like the bread of their shared meal. The men in the group would all betray him – that is deny that they even knew him by running away in their fear. Judas didn’t live long enough to hear Jesus’ prayer for God’s forgiveness for all who ‘didn’t know what they were doing’. Jesus’ friends felt let down. Jesus felt let down. They were all headed towards a calamity they could only imagine. And it just wasn’t meant to be like that.

We don’t need to look very far in order to see other calamities in our world which just shouldn’t be as they are. And like in that first Holy Week it feels as if there is very little we can actually do to make things any better. We are flying the Ukrainian flag at our Cathedral. We have a specific Prayer Station for the people of Ukraine and we pray for them at all daily and Sunday services. And aside from donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee there is nothing that we can do which will directly relieve the suffering in that land.

However, it is from the people of Ukraine that WE gain great hope. They are people full of faith, faith in God, faith in the inherent goodness of humanity, faith in the strength of their communities, and yes, faith in their national identity. All of these certainties are being tested, just as they were tested for all who we remember in our Holy Week readings, music and prayers. What did it mean, and what does it mean, to be a disciple of Jesus? What did it mean, and what does it mean, to claim that the power of God is made manifest in weakness and vulnerability? And what did it mean, and what does it mean, for death to be transformed through the love of Jesus? Easter will happen, but before that comes Good Friday. As we continue through this Holy Week may we seek to encounter the vulnerability of Jesus as he prepared to die for the world and may we be renewed to celebrate the defeat and transformation of death. And may that give to us and to all people great hope.

Dean Dianna