monday’s god is fair of face…

I’ve taken the nursery rhyme ‘Monday’s Child’ and used it as the bones for Holy Week reflections.

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

Each day’s imagining will be from the vantage point of the disciple Jesus loved. I am not that disciple… but my name is John.

✝✝✝

I called to him ‘Lord, where are you going?’ But he kept walking toward the Temple, and then he began to run. I’d only seen him run one other time, for Lazarus. That story is told now in a strange manner, that Jesus hesitated, dawdled even for two more days while his friend was sick. But I was there, I saw his fury. He was being hobbled by the Father, he knew it, I sensed it, we all did. So for two days he strained against the reins, obedient, but still straining.

Then without warning, his words: ‘Its time.’ He took off walking toward Bethany and we followed. He paced with urgency the better part of a mile, shoulders squared, upright, not a word. Then his posture deepened, he leaned forward, and began to run. It was as if he’d been told ‘Now!’ We struggled to keep up, such was his unbridled swiftness. Then Mary was there, falling at his feet, weeping. I saw him begin to shake violently, and then he wept. Jesus wept. He ran on to the tomb, crying desire: ‘No! No, Lazarus!’ I witnessed in that moment the depths of his enmity with the old sorrow. You see, he had come that men might live.

His body sank into that same posture as he ran toward the Temple after the palm-induced Hosanas!, like he’d been told ‘Now!’ You would think a dying man would not have it in him to run so pure, but he did. We ran and followed, breathless. As he stepped inside he began to shake, and then he wept once more. Jesus wept again and howled ‘No! Not here!’ As if in a dream where he was both author and character, the unhobbled God ran from corner to corner damning the merchants’ world: ‘No! This shall be a gentle place!’ We simply stood and watched. In the wake of his storm the prey slowly began to appear – the lonely ones, the lost and wounded ones, those hindered until then. The ire of God subsided; he was then fair of face. Jesus spoke to the least of these: ‘There is still time.’ Then he touched them, all of them, and they lived.