Body First, Mind Second

FROM THE RECTOR

Some truths are hard to grasp until we have experienced them. We can usually read a recipe and tell whether it will be good, but only by preparing the dish and tasting it can we know for sure. Someone can tell us of their emotional encounter with Picasso’s Old Guitarist, and we can even see a photograph of the painting in a book, but, until we come around the corner at the Art Institute of Chicago and see it for ourselves, we cannot know the effect it will have on us.

In many popular instantiations, the Christian faith has become primarily an operation of the mind, which only draws the rest of us—heart, body, and soul—into a relationship with God as a secondary part of the process. Think of how much emphasis is placed on sitting and listening when people go to church.  

As Episcopalians, we, too, are guilty of this when we allow our need to make sense of scripture or doctrine to become a narrow gateway through which our hearts must pass before we will give ourselves completely to God. I confess that I am more comfortable with intellectual encounters than emotional ones, and I recognize the need in my own faith journey to embrace more readily the messy, heart-forward moments that God provides.

I think that is why I love Holy Week and, in particular, the Paschal Triduum so much. These three holy days, which begin tonight at the Maundy Thursday service, are the cornerstone of our faith. They are, without equivocation, the very reason that Christianity exists at all, yet they are the manifestation of a truth that cannot be understood without being experienced.

The journey we make through the drama of the Last Supper, the horror of the crucifixion, the agony of the silent tomb, and the glory of the resurrection is one we make as much with our bodies as with our minds. Tonight, we not only hear Jesus tell us that the mark of a true disciple is a life of love and humble service, but we embody that commandment by washing one another’s feet. On Good Friday, we hear the story of Jesus’ passion and death, but the silence we inhabit is as formative as the words that are read. The time we spend in the dark outside the tomb during the service on Holy Saturday and the transformation of that darkness into light, which we celebrate at the Easter Vigil, are not concepts to be explained but a divine reality to be experienced and shared.

Of course, beneath every moment of the Paschal Triduum is a belief—a doctrine—that the church holds, teaches, and pursues with its whole life, but these three days are a reminder that we receive them primarily through our own lived experience of the magnitude of God’s love. We believe that God’s love has no limits and that there is no brokenness, no sin, no evil, and no death that God cannot or has not already overcome. We cling to that truth in a world where the goodness of God can seem difficult to find, and we give our lives over to it not by sitting and listening but by living and dying and rising again to new life.

These days are holy not because they commemorate a moment locked away in the past but because, through them, we encounter again the mystery of our own redemption. As I promise every year, if you join the church on this holy journey and participate in all the services from Maundy Thursday through Easter Day, you will be transformed—a transformation that comes through our experience of them.

You probably know the story already. You may know it so well that there are no surprises left for you to discover in the hearing or reading of the biblical text. But I believe with all my heart that God has the power to surprise even the most seasoned Christian because the power of these next few days is something that we can encounter anew every year. When we show up and participate in this journey, our bodies bring our hearts and then our minds back to God.

I hope you will join us.

Yours faithfully,

Evan D. Garner