Last Sunday in Lent, First Sunday of Passiontide

This Sunday is the fifth Sunday in Lent.  We could think of it as the last Sunday of Lent, since Holy Week is a different time in the calendar of the church.  An older way of thinking about this day is that this Sunday begins Passiontide, the two weeks before Easter.  Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, which will mark a different season, that time when we travel with Jesus from the praise of Palm Sunday, to the last encounters with disciples before the crucifixion to the crucifixion itself to the tomb to resurrection.

But before we get to Palm Sunday and the increased pace that it portends, there is time to stay with the austerity of Lent a bit longer.  If we have abandoned our Lenten discipline, we could return to it for this first week of Passiontide.

It is also part of an older tradition to mark the 5th Sunday of Lent as Passion Sunday.  These days, many of us will compress much of crucifixion part of the story into one day.  Many churches go directly from palms to passion on Palm Sunday, since so many of us can't get back to church for Good Friday.

We could use this time between the 5th Sunday of Lent and the Saturday before Easter to focus our attention on the passion of Christ.  We could take each day and focus on a station of the cross.  You can find a traditional version here  The Episcopal church has put together a resource that ties the suffering of Jesus to current issues, which you can find here. Or maybe we want to focus on the seven last words of Christ from the cross.

Our Easter will be richer if we spend time thinking about what Jesus suffered--and we might want to think about why he suffered.  Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for those who were seen as an enemy of the state, the highest threat to the governing empire of Rome.  Jesus wasn't stoned or beheaded, other types of capital punishment of the time.  What part of the message of Jesus and his life so threatened Rome?  How does the message of love so upset the established order?

And how can we be that love in the world?  How can our lives be an incarnation of that love?