Today, we enter into the holiest week of the Christian year, when our Lenten journey with Jesus comes to its end. However, we know that this end is also a beginning, a doorway into Easter and the joy of the resurrection and the new life in Christ.

It is a week that is full of highs and lows, mysteries both glorious and sorrowful.   

Story, song and symbol are the best ways, I think, of entering into mysteries. It is only through palms and branches, bread and wine, a towel and wash basin, a cross and an empty tomb that we may have any hope of beginning to grasp the meaning and understand the deep desolation and joyful consolation that are part of the rhythm of Holy Week.

And so, in the words of the hymn written by the late Herbert O’Driscoll, “Come and Journey with a Saviour.”

Come and journey – journey alongside your siblings-in-Christ this Holy Week. Come and be gripped by the drama, touched by the beauty, wrestle with the paradoxes, and watch and pray with a Saviour.

Through the story, symbol, sign and song, music, metaphor, poetry and prayer, may we catch a glimpse of and experience the love of God in Christ Jesus – our crucified king - for us and for the world.

Thanks be to God!

CG+