What does a pastor-mom crave most during Holy Week? QUIET! After 3 days of rain my children are especially loud today -- exuberant and happy, but loud. Add to that the constant twitter of my mental to-do list for the week, and some monastic silence sounds good about now. I can't get that, but I'll settle for a morning at the seminary library.
I'm preaching on Luke's Gospel for Easter. I think I'm going to have to include the story of the road to Emmaus too, because our lectionary doesn't include it otherwise, and you really need to get most of chapter 24 It's one of those texts that is rich but also overworn, so I'm struggling a bit to find a place that grabs me.
Fellow preachers, there's good food for thought at Dylan's lectionary blog for Easter Year B. That's Mark's Gospel, but some of the same historical and theological points apply, and I love her analogy about the role of dramatic irony and horror movies.
I'm also reading Miroslav Volf's latest book on Memory (thanks, Erik!). The End of Memory is about his own experience of interrogation and abuse in Yugoslavia and a theological reflection on what it means to remember rightly. It dovetails nicely with something from Rowan Williams' book on Resurrection I read this morning, namely that the Eucharist means that we have to find Christ in the victims-- OUR victims. It's too easy in our culture to "identify" with the abused without rightly remembering that all too often we are the victimizers. Christ resurrected means the victim is the judge. . . and yet that judge is forgiving and merciful.
I'm praying I will have the courage to know who the victims of my life -- and my "lifestyle"-- are.
