What now?

Holy week is a little odd for me sometimes. For the first time in any times that I can remember I was simply a congregation member of the church for the entire duration. No worship to prepare, no Easter eggs to hide; my only role was to sit back and watch. I attended a Maundy Thursday service in Burbank and a Good Friday service in Glendora and then celebrated Easter back in Burbank. And somewhere in all this the background music to this Play in 4 (or so) parts has been a soundtrack of Bethany Dillon’s new CD (more on this in a later post).

Thursday was spent catching up on errands that needed to get done, but the afternoon and evening was spent celebrating a friend’s B’day and then going out to Burbank and hearing Schubert’s Mass sung by the choir. While they had been doing them for Choral anthems for the past few weeks the added string quartet was … new. I think I slowly let myself go and allowed the music to tell the story. It was all in Latin and while the translation was given in the bulletins it wasn’t needed. The soul of the music carried everything that needed to be said. Voice and string told the story with notes that danced and played and at times cried. It was a beautifully told story, yet no words were needed.

Friday was another relaxing day of doing … well … nothing productive. But the end of the day found me fighting traffic eastward, and what is normally a 20-minute drive takes 20 minutes plus an extra hour. We got to Good Friday late and had a restful evening in consideration of the dark night.

I spent both these nights with a pair of good friends and we talked about the whole weekend as a whole. And while my only thought on Friday night was ‘It has all gone horribly wrong.’ Without looking ahead of what was to come I could not see past that moment and putting myself in the place of the disciples. Scattered, fearful, hanging by a noose, crying at a personal betrayal … all of these emotions sort of sorting themselves out with no real answer to the question of ‘What now?’

Saturday I found myself out playing Frisbee and remembering which muscles I used when I played (if only for the soreness). That afternoon was a nap followed by finishing some reading for a paper that is due soon. I was at a friend’s house and we spent the post-dinner in conversation and then playing guitar/singing and working through songs, and while I didn’t realize it at the time, we were doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing. Praising God in song, in fellowship, and by simply gathering together, till midnight (aka way past my bedtime).

This morning (Sunday) I returned to Burbank to worship with a 4-part brass section. I should probably preface this story with the information that my Dad (a pastor) is very pro-baby in his services. That if a baby cries out during his sermon he takes it for an ‘Amen’ and then he continues right on. So when the brass section finished the first hymn (Christ the Lord is Risen Today) in … a very triumphant processional type of feeling, from about the middle of the church a young boy simply cried out in joy “Yeaaa!” And in that moment he was the one who understood everything that Easter meant.

It isn’t strings, horns, Thursdays, Schubert, Fridays, or why everything seems to have gone horribly wrong. It is about Sunday, when we find out the answer to the question of ‘What now?’

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“YEAAA!”