For Wilshire Baptist Church
“Looks like I need to brush the powdered sugar off my shoulders.”
That’s what I told LeAnn on Palm Sunday morning as I got ready to dress up for church for the first time in more than a year. I pulled my blue blazer down from the upper rod in the closet and found that the shoulders were covered with a fine white dust that looked like powdered sugar. The same was true across the top fold of my dress pants. Neither garment had been touched in more than a year.
It sort of makes sense to be brushing the dust off on Palm Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week. There’s a lot that we haven’t done with regard to our regular church practices that maybe has gotten dusty during the pandemic. Our church has done a wonderful job of keeping us connected and engaged with Zoom Bible study classes, online worship, weekly devotionals and some special gatherings in the parking lot, but we’ve been missing communal, in-person singing, praying, listening and fellowship. More important, I believe some of my personal church-going disciplines have become dusty, most notably my focus and attention. Watching church on a screen, I’ve given in to the temptation to look out the window, look at my phone, get up and pour another cup of coffee and do other things I’d never do in church, like work on a jigsaw puzzle. And even though we had a full-fledged Palm Sunday service together this week, it still was in the parking lot, six feet apart and all wearing masks. What’s more, there was traffic on the street, papers blowing off tables and other distractions that don’t occur in the sanctuary.
It’s also fitting during this Holy Week that we should be brushing off the “powdered sugar” that we tend to sprinkle on much of our theology and spiritual life. You know what I’m talking about: the sweet, sunny sense that all will be glorious “when we all get to heaven.” It will be, of course, but Holy Week is different; it’s the time when the hard truths of what we believe are laid bare. There’s no sugarcoating what happened on the cross. It was barbaric and horrific and that must be acknowledged in order to understand the depth of Jesus’ sacrifice and why “when we all get to heaven” is even possible.
There’s also no sugarcoating the life we are called to as a result of that sacrifice — one that is selfless, outward-serving, and accepting, honoring, loving and respecting others. These are things that sound good in sermons and seem natural in theory but are not so easy in practice. It is much harder to die to one’s self and live for others – or “die to live” as has been our theme at Wilshire during this Lent – than we often admit. We all live with a “me” that is our biggest obstacle to being a loving and inclusive “we.”
So perhaps more so this year than in recent history, Holy Week is a time of shaking off the dust of our complacency and getting ready for the new life that Easter heralds and that the end of the pandemic will allow once more.
Speaking of complacency, I’ll be donning a coat and tie again for Easter Sunday but I’m going to add something I overlooked on Palm Sunday: sunscreen. After an hour of outside worship and another hour of Wilshire Winds rehearsal, I got a terrific sunburn on my face and forehead. I didn’t think about preparing for that at all, and with the Winds playing in all three outdoor services for Easter, I don’t want to get burned again.
It’s just another thing to be mindful of during a Holy Week when we’re still not fully back inside the church. But it’s not the hardest thing and definitely not the main thing to consider as we strive to be the church and not just be inside the church.