Preparing for Holy Week Part 3

 

On the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?”  He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is near; I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’ ” So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover meal.  Matthew 26:17-19

 

What is nourishing your life right now?  What is filling your soul?  Or, put another way, what is the story (or stories) you are you telling yourself about yourself?  You maybe be telling a story about how awesome and amazing you are and just keep getting more astonishing!  You maybe be telling a story about what schmuck you are because you stumble and bumble your way through life, and you should be so much further along by now (as compared to what?  You have never been this age before living at this exact moment, who is to say what is really “living the dream”?).  You may not realize what story you are telling yourself about yourself, because it is on autopilot, just beneath the unconscious. 

 

The story you tell about yourself is the table you welcome others to feast at.  You offer a meal of words to others.  Part of the reason why I write these meditations in the morning is to set a table for you, to offer you a heaping helping of grace upon grace, to remind you of the spaciousness of the sacred where there is plenty of room for your one wild and precious and messy life.  Prepare a place, Jesus said.  And Jesus still says to you and me.  Prepare a place.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to get out the fancy plates, unless you want to.  You don’t have to make a rack of lamb, Jesus is happy with leftovers, crackers and Cheez Whiz (yes, that was the second reference to this marvel of human ingenuity this week ~ way to pay attention!).  You don’t have to have all the dust bunnies in the corners of your house OR soul wiped away.  Be you, with your “Hosannas” and humanness and belovedness. 

 

Take a deep breath and slowly exhale.  Look around your life to see what is there, the place Jesus is entering right now to rest and reside as we inch closer to our holiest week. Amen.