Holy Week During a Pandemic, and the "Not Good Things"

Most of us have never experienced anything like this coronavirus pandemic. We may not be sick, or even feel the threat of becoming ill. Still, we've been thrown (catapulted, really) into a time of new terminology and social action, all in order to protect ourselves and those with whom we may come into contact.

Online church services have become a desperately-needed outlet for community, especially as so many are isolated at home. I'm not sure I would call this a revival, but this pandemic is certainly allowing us an introspective look at our human need for both spiritual and community connectedness. And that's a good thing.

We like to find those "good things," those silver-linings, during this pandemic. Hope, in whatever form it comes, gives us an ability to endure. And yet, as we enter into Holy Week, perhaps we also need to sit with the "not good things." Like suffering ... illness ... and death. For Christians, there is always a balance to be found between the cross and the empty tomb. We have to live with death while also remembering its defeat. And now, as many states approach their COVID-19 peak, we mustn't rush too quickly past the thought, and news, of death.

In this Holy Week, and in this peak time of our national coronavirus pandemic, let us simply sit and endure the horrifying news that confronts us on the television and Internet. Because it's the same horrifying news that we often want to brush past even in approaching our Lord and Savior. To make my point, observe any annual Good Friday service attendance, compared with Easter Sunday attendance. Across states, across denominations ... we just don't like to sit with death. This Holy Week, may we sit with the "not good things" and not bypass them, for it's there that Jesus hangs and dies. It's there that, somehow, salvation waits.