Fifth Tuesday

Tuesday, March 31, was a high and holy day at Highland Hills. The sacred nature of this particular Tuesday had nothing to do with its participation in Holy Week festivities, though if you celebrated the withered fig tree of Mark 11, I’ll give you a gold star for the day. No, the celebratory air wafting across the church grounds had no other cause than that it was a 5th Tuesday (not 3rd, nor 2nd, and certainly not 6th). 5th Tuesdays are important. They occur rarely across the calendar and on each blessed day the church staff gets gussied up for an adventure around town. We’ve done a scavenger hunt through Washington Memorial Library, picked strawberries at Lane Orchard, had a Halloween contest in Riverside Cemetery, and this week we experienced the beauty and hospitality of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church down on First Street. They host the Greek Festival every year - which I highly recommend - and Father Theo was kind enough to open the church doors to us for a tour.

Inside the Narthex, we were greeted warmly and a candle set in a dish of smooth sand was lit to represent God’s presence with us. Once inside the sanctuary proper, my eyes feasted on the smooth, curling wood separating the inner altar from the main room. All around were images of saints throughout the 2000 years of church history. Though the Greek in the icons may have been foreign, the stories of faithfulness, love, and sacrifice each depicted provided an invitation to our own faith. And tickling our noses was a faint lilac scent which we later learned was the incense used on Sunday mornings, now deeply imbued through all the church furniture and walls. As we stood around and asked questions like the clueless Baptists we were, Father Theo walked us through all that we were seeing, smelling, and experiencing. As he reminded us, humans are psychosomatic beings. We experience the world and our faith through our bodies - through all of our senses. The Greek Orthodox tradition tries to use all of our senses to draw us into an experience of God in worship. 

It was a great reminder for Holy Week. While I love and appreciate this simplicity of our sanctuary and our worship, perhaps every now and then we need a new experience to wake our minds attention and hearts affection to the presence of God. I love the Holy Week service for exactly that reason. At Maundy Thursday we taste the final supper with the disciples. With Good Friday we darken our eyes even as the light of the world dies. At our sunrise service we can experience all of creation waking up to the gift of life and at our Easter service the joy and celebration boils over in song and parade and color. I hope you can join us for some or all of these services, but wherever you are this Easter, I hope you come awake to the presence of God with your whole being. The journey of Lent is almost over.