STAY TOGETHER
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
April 05, 2020
Every year on Palm Sunday we hear proclaimed the story of
the Passion and the death of Jesus. And every year there is something new to be
heard and noticed in that long and tragic tale. This year what I have noticed
is something that was always there in plain sight, but which hadn’t much caught
my attention before. It could be called “The Story of the Amazing Disappearing
Apostles”. Over the course of Jesus’s last week on earth – and especially over
the course of his last day, they all vanish from the drama, one by one by one,
for various reasons – betrayal, slumber, denial, fear, confusion…
Other people emerge to surround him; Roman authorities and
soldiers, faithful women, and people whose names were never heard before or
anytime afterward like Simon of Cyrene or Joseph of Arimathea. And the nameless,
faceless crowds – some steeped in anger and others in tears and still others in
silent bewilderment.
But the Apostles, the Twelve, were all gone away by the time
it ended – these men who had been specifically chosen and called by name and in
person by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry – just “poof”. These disciples
who had been identified to become the leaders of this new movement and who’d
been invited to be the proclaimers of God’s reign on earth. Gone. And they
would remain conspicuously absent until late in the day on Easter Sunday. And emerge
from their hiding places only cautiously and even skeptically. They hadn’t
realized what this commitment would require of them.
That’s what people do when they feel overwhelmed and
disoriented by the upending of their hopes and expectations in life: they go
missing, off the grid. They pull the blankets over their heads and pray for a
new and different ending that for the moment seems unimaginable.
Does any of this sound familiar to you this week? Perhaps we
have never had the opportunity to enter in to the deepest and truest
disorientation of Holy Week that we have before us right now. It’s not
something to be welcomed or rejoiced over, but it is real. And Jesus remains
here with us, whether we walk away or whether we stay. In this week, and in
this moment of upheaval, don’t go missing and please take note of those who
seem to have done so, and reach out to them, as Jesus did.
We are still here together to proclaim faith beyond our
ability to fully explain – to tell and to sing of what we know. God is here. God is here. There’s no neat and tidy
leap from today to Easter Sunday. The cross and the tomb have to come first. And
it shall all be well, as long as we don’t try to do it alone; as long as we don’t
disappear, or allow others to do so.
Sometime, either during this live stream gather or
afterward, scroll down on your screen to the very bottom of the page. You will see
there a map of the world that is filled with red dots, some of which are
pulsating. That’s not a virus. Those are people – our own brothers and sisters
who are all with us at this moment (where the dots are pulsing) or who have
been with us in the past three weeks (where they are not pulsing). We are not
physically together, but we have not vanished. We stay here, and we pray here.
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