The Lie the Serpent Told

Every Sunday we pray a collect. A structure so carefully designed that it has been teaching people how to pray for over a thousand years.

The tomb was empty. Nobody has ever been able to explain it. And everything that follows — flows from that one inconvenient, impossible, world-altering fact.

The tomb is empty. They couldn't stop it then. They cannot stop it now.

Every voice in the Good Friday story is some version of the same demand. Come down. Stop this. Prove who you are and get off that cross. But he stayed.

Jesus knew. He knew exactly what was coming. He knew who was about to betray him, who was about to deny him, who was going to run. And he washed their feet anyway,

Most of us learned confession wrong. We learned it as a transaction — you sin, you confess, you feel bad, you're forgiven, you try harder. The point was the guilt.

From the entry into Jerusalem to the Cross, everyone ran, hid or denied Jesus, everyone was broken.

Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, the ancient rhythm of praying the hours — was designed from the beginning to be carried into ordinary life.

Something happens on Palm Sunday that happens on no other day in the Christian year. We hold the parade and the death in the same hour, in the same hands.