We are amid Holy Week beginning with Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, a celebration of the first eucharist on Holy Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the joy of Easter, the Day of Resurrection. How does this week remind us of the challenges in our own lives? Holy Week and our daily lives connect around three words, Before and After.
I showed a movie, Before and After, starring Liam Neilson and Meryl Street in ethics class. It is a story that had a real impact on my students. The statement that is made during the introduction while the music is playing is “that your life can turn on a dime, and you never know when it is coming, sometimes it is bad news, but not always, sometimes it is good news.” The second theme in movie is how a small lie can cause huge negative consequences in your life and in the lives of others including your loved ones. It is a powerful movie about the perils of lying and thinking that you can cover it up.
Years later the power of the movie in the lives of my students was not forgotten. Some would go to lie or cheat. They would indicate to me that they remembered the movie and took the higher moral road.
Jesus enters Jerusalem to songs of praise, Hosanna! Hosanna! Some days later his life turns on a dime and he can hear the words, Crucify him! Crucify him!
This past month has been a difficult one for my friends, family, and the EA community. You know that you are in a time of intense times when there are too many occasions when you pick up that dreaded phone call that can send your life into heaven or hell with a diagnosis. One call and your life can turn on a dime bringing the best news or the worst news. It can happen as quickly as the snap of your fingers. Shouldn’t life provide us with a gentle warning that hell is around the corner? That is not the way our lives are often lived. The news comes as a thief in the night stealing any sense of possible hope or joy, but not always. There are times that turn our hell into heaven in a matter of moments when that phone rings.
I have been told by people in the EA community that if the Rev calls you, pick up because he never calls about the weather. But I was familiar being the bearer of news, good and bad! The tables turned on me during this last month. I was on the receiving end.
They asked Peter if he was one of Jesus’ disciples because they had seen him with him. He strongly denied this three times. He lied.
In the movie, Before and After, the father played by Liam Neilson destroys the very evidence that could absolve his son from being convicted of the murder of the son’s girlfriend. The father is confronted by the police who say, “Do you think that we are dumb? That we are quaint?”
That lie spins out of control throughout the narrative. The community shuns the family and a mob attacks his home for the supposed killing of the girl. The mother of the accused child is a physician and people refuse to continue their care with her.
Easter is the Day of Resurrection.
Through various exchanges during an intense court scene, his son is not convicted of the crime as it was an accident where the girl who was killed fell face down on a car jack.
However, the damage has been done. The Easter moment occurs when they move to another community to gain a fresh start. The final scene is the son riding carefree on a skateboard down the street with his sister smiling from her perch in a tree.
There is nothing that we can experience that the Lord himself hasn’t experienced as well. The famous Footprints image is appropriate for our footprints disappear as He carries us forward.
Before holy week, we were one way with hope and joy just out of reach. After holy week we clearly grasp the divine in the various ways that we experience him who we call Lord. Amen
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