by Peter Mullen, TCW
IT ALL happens in one week. On Palm Sunday Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey. He throws the crooks and wheeler-dealers out of the temple. He has his Last Supper with his followers and institutes the Holy Communion. He is betrayed, arrested, given a show trial, tortured and put to death. On the following Sunday, he rises from the dead.
And so the Sunday after these momentous events we settle into the routine of the Christian year. Is it a bit of a let-down? Today, as every Sunday, the Prayer Book calls me to repentance. Assuming that I answer this call to penitence – albeit in a weak and inadequate way – what happens next? Usually nothing much. Nothing spectacular, anyway. But I keep telling myself that I must not be always going in search of excitements and emotional shocks.
Samuel Johnson used to confess after attending church every Good Friday: ‘O God, since last year I have made no amendment, no improvement.’
My Christianity doesn’t make me into a good person. Those who think of themselves in that way are the people Jesus condemned as whited sepulchres and hypocrites, and told us to take no notice of them. I don’t suddenly, or even slowly, start to feel good, but I do begin to feel the necessity of trying to listen to God. A friend once said to Evelyn Waugh: ‘You know, Evelyn, you’re an utter bastard!’ And he replied, ‘Yes, but think how much bigger a bastard I’d be if I were not a Christian.’
Attendance at the Holy Communion is of the nature of a duty and an obligation. Christ commanded: ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’
We don’t have to be commanded to do that which we enjoy doing.
The life of faith is not about my feelings.