None of the churches I have ever served have done much with the seven last words Jesus speaks from the cross. It wasn’t a focus in that most holiest of weeks before resurrection comes again.
It hasn’t been a place I’ve paused a reflected much before but this video by the amazing Jan Richardson caught my eye again this year.
It made me wonder about all of the words that have gone unsaid and the words that we so wish we had said to our children and loved ones before it was too late. Thoughts and prayers that haven’t risen to become the policy and change we actually need. Words of love and blessing that could have been said but were never said.
There are so many reasons. We overthink things. We doubt our words have any power and sometimes we just aren’t brave enough to say the hard thing that really does need to be said. So instead, we might say the wrong words. We hurt those we love.
We cause harm even when we don’t think our words matter. Oh, but they do. Words matter.
Words like forgiveness and thirst.
Words that ask for help and wonder why this has to be the way it is.
Words that search for connection when everything feels shattered.
More often than not, I crave silence. I want to escape all of the chatter and noise to find my center in God but as Holy Week approaches again, I am thinking about that words are important for me to voice. I’ve tried putting these words into prayer but every attempt I make turns to these lyrics and so I enter in Holy Week in song.
However you enter Holy Week this year, may you enter with wonder and bright hope. May the good news of resurrection become real for you again, dear one, and may your full voice proclaim its power again and again.
I tried to find my own words after the shooting in Nashville but nothing that I could muster compared to the power of this dangerous prayer.
Their music gave me comfort during the pandemic and I love that the Many is offering this space to pray through the stations of the cross this year. It will guide my Holy Week this year.
Though this essay is five years old, Donna Schaper has got me thinking about the metaphor of life and death in Easter. There is so much that I want to ponder in this short essay.
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