Holy Week

EDITORIAL

It’s what binds us together, not what separates us, that’s important

Something really nice—and to no small degree, amazing—is happening during the noon hour this week in the Peace Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall. It’s not unique. The Holy Week Services sponsored by the Rockdale Ministerial Alliance, come around every year in the week prior to Easter. But that doesn’t make them any less important. We’re hearing a lot about tribalism these days. That’s a term given by the talking heads on the 24/7 news networks, and to a certain extent by—everyone genuflect in reverence and awe now—social media, about the state of American society. The theory is, more or less, that we’ve all become so polarized in our daily lives, and especially in our politics, that many of us don’t really have anything to say to, or to do with, our fellow Americans. We’ve devolved into our own tribes. We have our own circle of acquaintances, our own publications, our own news networks, our own support systems and our own, well, isolated, lives. That’s the theory, anyway. You can make a case for it but you can also make a case for another way of looking at the world, especially the week before Easter. Rockdale’s Holy Week services, and countless others elsewhere, take a facet of life which might be ripe ground for the “tribalism” label—Christian denominations—and turn them into just the opposite. Christians from a dozen or so congregations are gathering at noon through Good Friday to focus not on what separates them, but what binds them together with spiritual superglue. The miracle of Easter. Clergy from different denominations are daily speakers, different congregations provide scripture reading, music and a light lunch. There are all kinds of valid theological points to be made about such gatherings. But the one overriding point is this. It just feels good. Feels good to see so many with slightly different, but still important, opinions on their preferred way to worship coming together. Each will go back to their own congregations on Sunday, resume their own traditions, customs and see familiar faces. That’s as it should be. They may be on many trails but all going toward the same path. Holy Week is about that path. It’s a path on which there aren’t any tribes. It’s the path to the cross. And beyond. Thanks Rockdale Ministerial Alliance. Happy Easter. Alleluia.—M.B.