Holy Week is marked by many practices that enable us to remember and have our lives shaped by its events, from fasting to foot washing and from the Stations of the Cross to meditation on Christ’s final words. As we come to the events of Easter this year, we want to invite you into a simple and profound practice that can reorient us to the story of Scripture and to the one whom that story proclaims.
Many of you will be aware that the Church’s celebration of Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover festival–Jesus’s last supper with his disciples was such a meal. Some of you may have marked Holy Week with a version of the Passover Seder, the feast that, with ritual food and wine, remembers Israel’s exodus out of Egypt. It’s a memorable way to remember God’s faithfulness—a community, gathered around the table, listening, sharing, having bodies nourished and hearts re-formed. And at the centre of the meal is the reading aloud of Scripture.
This year, we invite you to gather with others over a meal together to hear the whole story of Jesus’s passion: his road to Jerusalem and to his self-giving death. If you have a Seder meal already planned, that’s wonderful; otherwise, consider gathering folk for this simpler Scripture meal. Unlike the Seder, this is not a ritual meal. The emphasis, rather, is to linger together in an extended, unabridged passage of Scripture (rather than getting through in a series of small bites). As we linger in Scripture, we are freed up from the habit of pocketing God’s word for our present need; instead, through this immersion, we find our present life and concerns set within the larger, more adequate frame of Scripture. With that in mind, here is our suggested practice.
