God is in the details, someone said.
Sometimes it’s the small details that are most arresting. A new book called “All the Flowers in Shanghai” tells the story of Feng, a woman who has been stripped of all of her possessions by the Cultural Revolution in China, and who takes up residence in a small factory town as a seamstress. Producing plain uniforms for the Communist party, she will not allow her spirit to be drained of its creativity. The author writes, “There were only small transgressions, in all the endless repetition, but sometimes we embroidered special patterns for people, their initials, or even small flowers, concealed inside cuffs and hems.” The author observes, “Unexpected details make stories and life more interesting.”
We are blessed at St. John’s in countless ways, and one of them is in the gift of an ornate, gorgeous worship space, rich in details with intricate wood carvings on almost every surface, and exquisite stained glass. The altar itself is adorned with brocade hangings, silver cruets, chalices, fine linen and candlesticks. Cushions are needlepoint, in deep, rich colors. Flowers lend their bright presence every Sunday except Palm Sunday. Your eye cannot travel far without encountering ornate details and lush beauty.
Near the end of the service on Maundy Thursday, the instruction in the bulletin is this: “The Altar is stripped of hangings and ornaments as the people watch.”
Thursday night, all day Friday, and Saturday before the Vigil, we come to church to experience absence, to be without. Many of the beautiful details that nurture us each week are gone: the hangings, the silver, the cushions, the candlesticks – virtually everything that can be moved out is moved out. The lights are extinguished. The organ is silenced. Even the crosses are covered in black, the familiar image removed from our sight. And what we hold on to for two days is only the promise that it is not the end.
On the many Holy Weeks in our own lives, when we are suffering and feel most alone, we know that living on a promise while being without much else is difficult indeed. Holy Week sacramentalizes those times – it marks them as holy parts of human experience — which is why it is so important we don’t just skip mindlessly over everything between Palm Sunday and Easter. Life simply isn’t like that – a parade and then a party.
Do we believe it all? Believe that it happened? Believe that this story is about God’s love for each of us? Where do we find ourselves in this incredible story?
I answer this question for myself with an observation by the writer Barbara Brown Taylor, who says that if we focus only on one detail of Holy Week – the Cross of Jesus – we miss some of the point. She reminds us to pull back the camera, include more details in the scene, and remember that Jesus was not crucified alone at Golgatha that day. On one side was the thief who believed in him and asks Jesus to bring him to paradise with him. On the other cross is the thief who derides Jesus and mocks him.
And in the middle of the tableau is Jesus, arms outstretched, embracing all extremes of humanity and all the complexities of the human heart. Taylor observes, “One cross makes a crucifix. Three crosses make a church.”
See you there – in church.
Barbara
