Mid-Week Message - Holy Week Edition!
- revkatetworivers
- Apr 16
- 6 min read
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be always with you! Today is the Wednesday of Holy Week (and if you are interested in a bit of trivia, you can look up "Spy Wednesday"), so my mind is on all things Holy Week and Easter at the moment. More specifically, this morning I was thinking about one of my cats and Easter. Du-Gwyn (her name is Welsh for "black-and-white") adopted me last July, and before that she had lived her first six months of life on the streets of Saint John, and her next 6 months of life in the shelter learning how to be a cat who hangs out with humans. I don't know what happened in those first 6 months she spent living on the streets, but I can guess. She will very occasionally have a limp, even though she is a young cat, telling me that there may be some old injuries. She is VERY food-motivated - I call her my "counter shark" as she will steal anything she can get her paws on (and she has trained me not to leave anything edible or edible-adjacent where she can get at it) telling me that she likely had some hungry days. And when she first came to live with me, she didn't know how to play and any of my attempts to play were treated by her as violent hunting episodes. In the 9 months since she adopted me, it has been beautiful to see her adapt to the life of a spoiled house cat. Right from day 1, she has had no desire to go anywhere near an open door. She is learning that food is going to appear in her bowl twice a day, and this morning I even thawed some things for my lunch and she didn't go anywhere near the counter. And she is learning to play. Bottle caps and bookmarks and plastic springs are no longer safe around her; and when I dangle a thing-on-a-string toy for her, she will still leap and pounce to catch it, but she now releases it so that the game can continue rather than carry it off to a safe corner to "eat" it. So how does this connect to Easter? I think of Jesus's first disciples on that first Easter. They would have been carrying the wounds of the traumatic events of the preceding days. They had just witnessed an intense week of their leader and friend arguing with the religious leaders in the temple. They had seen him arrested by armed guards while he was trying to pray in the garden at night. Their own lives had been threatened when they were recognized as one of his followers. And then they saw their dear friend nailed to a cross and watched him die a slow and painful death. When his body was laid in the tomb - the body of the one that they thought was their Messiah, the one who was going to lead them to freedom and fullness of life - their whole world must have felt like it was over. Everything that they had trusted in was now ended. And so, to their trauma-ravaged hearts, the empty tomb couldn't have been unadulterated joy. They likely viewed it with mistrust, with skepticism, with fear, even with the grief of another loss. Now we don't even have a body to care for, or a place to lay our flowers. I rather suspect that the fullness of joy of the resurrection didn't happen right away, didn't happen on that first day. I rather suspect that it took time and repeated appearances of Jesus for them to heal from their trauma and to be able to embrace the new life that had been set before them. They would never be able to go back to the way that things were before Good Friday, but over time they could learn that the new way in front of them was even better. And so I look at DuGwyn, and how she was carrying whatever traumas she had experienced in her first year of life when she came to live with me. And I look at how 9 months of safety and food and play-time has helped her to learn that she is safe and loved. And I think that I am witnessing Easter resurrection every day.  If you want to see more pictures of resurrection, check out the Two Rivers Pastoral Charge Facebook page on Sunday afternoon. Yesterday, at our Asking the Big Questions gathering, one of the activities was to take pictures of resurrection, and then people were invited to share them, if they were comfortable, to be posted on Facebook. There will also be an opportunity for you to add your own resurrection pictures in the comments! Moving on to announcements for this week:
After Easter, I will be on vacation for a week (April 21-27, inclusive), which means:
Thank You Corner: This week's thank-you goes out to Linda McCullough from Westfield. Not for any one thing, but if you have spent any time around the church, you know that Linda is always around, doing what needs to be done. Taking minutes for Session. Loading the dishwasher after the after-church socials. Organizing the UCW (alongside Paula) to make sandwiches for funeral luncheons. Giving a lift to people who don't drive. At I write this, she is down in the basement helping to set up the St. Giles room for our Maundy Thursday dinner/service. Thank you Linda! And for a closing thought this week, and to come back to our opening theme, let me share this year's Easter message from Moderator the Rt. Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne. You can watch it by clicking here. (And one final reminder and encouragement, since there won't be a mid-week message next week - the Canadian federal election is coming up on Monday May 28, with advance polls happening this weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. As always, I will never tell you who to vote for, but encourage you to think of voting as a way of "living your faith out loud." Which echoes the statement of the United Church of Canada, which you can read by clicking here!) As you move through this week, from the resounding Hosannas of Palm Sunday, through the remembrance and re-membering of Maundy Thursday, through the pain and grief of Good Friday, through the Emptiness of Holy Saturday, and on to the hopefulness of the empty tomb of Easter, may God bless you, those you love, and those you pray for. Kate. Rev. Kate Jones Two Rivers Pastoral Charge (506) 757-2201 (office) (506) 343-1307 (mobile) www.tworiverspastoralcharge.com Pronouns: she/her/hers "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?" Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "You must love your neighbour as you love yourself." (Matthew 22:36-39)
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