Going Around In Circles
With the cyclical nature of the church’s liturgical year, we come around to the same stories of our faith over and over again. There’s something beautiful about the stories of our faith being so constant—so reliable. The hymnist Katherine Hankey certainly thought so when she wrote:
“I love to tell the story
‘twill be my theme in glory
To tell the old, old story
Of Jesus and his love”
However, I sometimes wonder if the going-around-in-circles disenchants us from just how powerful and incredible this Story really is. Does the spinning make the Story lack luster? After going around and around so many times, do we sometimes lose our focus?
Think about the people lining the streets that first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, celebrating Jesus’ arrival for the very first time not knowing what lies ahead at the end of the week. It might be easy to throw themselves into the festivities of the procession: cut some palm branches off a tree to wave. Throw their outer clothes down on the path. Raise the kids up on shoulders so they can see who’s passing by and cheer. But what makes celebrating Palm Sunday so emotionally confusing for the rest of us is we know what’s coming. We’ve heard the old, old story before. The ending has been spoiled and it changes how we see the beginning.
A rabbi and professor at Duke Divinity School named Rabbi Sager used to tell of his experience going to the movies back in the day when the theater would show the same movie back-to-back. Rabbi Sager would arrive late to the movie theater after the film had already started. So, having missed the start of the movie, he just started watching in the middle. He would watch the middle of the movie to the end, then stay to see the part he missed at the beginning of the second showing. As Rabbi Sager put it, this allowed him to see the beginning of the movie in a new light… in a way others who hadn’t yet seen the film could not.
The stories that start in the supposed middle are equally as true as the ones that start at the beginning. Because the Story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is a timeless Story in a timely moment. The way Rabbi Sager saw the movie is the same way we now see Holy Week every year. We saw the conclusion of the Story last year, and now we’re back at the beginning of the next viewing. But who’s to say knowing how the middle of the week and the end of the week go can’t make us appreciate the beginning more?
“And we’ve heard this story all our lives
Still we feel the pain of the crucified
And the end still comes as a surprise”
Every August growing up, my family spent a day at the Iowa State Fair. We’d wander through the livestock barns, get pork chops and a lemonade for lunch, take a walk up and down the aisles of the Varied Industries Building, and end our day in the Midway with a couple rides—sometimes the bumper cars, sometimes Ye Old Mill, but always the double Ferris wheel.
The double Ferris wheel is quite literally a new spin on an old classic, and what makes the double Ferris wheel unique is its unpredictability. Just when you’re comfortable going around and around the lower wheel, you’re thrown for a loop, so to speak. In addition to each wheel spinning independently, the entire ride starts to spin, sending you flying over the top. The experience puts butterflies in your stomach and a smile on your face at the surprise of it all.
Circling back around to Holy Week each year can be like that for us if we stay engaged. Each time around, there are new thrills to discover. We can still be caught by surprise at the beauty and wonder of resurrection, even in the ordinary moments and things we encounter every day. As Natalie Sleeth writes in her springtime “Hymn of Promise”:
“In the bulb there is a flower
In the seed an apple tree
In cocoons a hidden promise
Butterflies will soon be free
In the cold and snow of winter
There’s a spring that waits to be
Unrevealed until its season
Something God alone can see.”
The final verse of Sleeth’s hymn acknowledges the cyclical nature of life: “In our end is our beginning…” And nowhere is that truer than in the empty tomb. It turns out “the end” was never an ending at all. It was just the beginning of forever.
