Tuesday in Holy Week

As an artist, I find I cannot always keep in sync with the seasons, especially the Christian liturgical seasons. I have to draw (or in my case, composite) what the spirit leads me to... often after the season has passed.

For several years I've thought about doing a series of abstracts for Lent on the stations of the cross. I've never quite been able to get my act together to complete the project... I have one image I really love (station eleven) and have used it a couple of times when only one was required. The rest have not come as easily as that one.

This Good Friday my friend will be preaching on the dialog between Jesus and the two bandits crucified with him... part of the "Seven Last Words" liturgy. We often have conversations about the topic he is to preach on; it's part of what we do as friends. It occurred to me that dialog is from station eleven. Small world.

Our celebrant last Sunday preached about the sometimes helpless fascination we have with grisly death, whether it's brought on by the force of nature or caused by humans... any catastrophe, and we'll continue to watch the reruns on TV, over and over again.

Holy Week is a kind of rerun. We are morbidly drawn to the story of the unraveling of Palm Sunday's great beginning... of how it all went downhill, ending in Jesus' grisly death on Good Friday. But today is only Tuesday. Perhaps tonight is Bethany night, a party in full swing, when Mary anoints Jesus with the expensive perfume and Judas adds one more item to his growing list of grievances. But we've seen the video clip already... we know what's coming, and the tension is building. It's harder to breathe than it was yesterday.


Station Eleven: Jesus is nailed to the Cross
When they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him; and with him they crucified two criminals, one on the right, the other on the left, and Jesus between them. And the scripture was fulfilled which says, “He was numbered with the transgressors.”