April 6th

“It was on the Monday” that Jesus had people to meet and places to go. Moving through the crowded festival filled streets of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives and Bethany where he stayed with his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Jesus had things to teach.

So he went to the Temple courts, he watched the rituals and rites as well as the trade. He saw people going about their everyday business. And he taught them how to see life with different eyes. Like the old widow who came quietly, almost unnoticed to the Temple Offering to put in her small coin, leaving with her head bowed. The Temple would never survive on her donations! Ah, but following her came the rich man with his servants carrying the treasure pots that would fill up the Temple’s accounts, no one could miss this gift. The pomp and ceremony which inspired admiration and favour. Who gave the most, said Jesus? Isn’t it obvious? But with other eyes to see we might ask the same question, on whose devotion will the Temple survive?

How irritating? Jesus seems only to have cared about the heart. The heart of the matter is not how much, but how much it meant.

And Holy Week, our journey through it, as with all of Lent, isn’t about how much we give up, or do, but how much the giving up means, how much the doing is from a place of love.

It was on the Monday that Jesus called them to see with new eyes the difference between how much and how much it means to us.

Rachel Haig