Laugh at the Devil
This year, due to the coronavirus, St. Margaret’s Anglican got permission to celebrate Holy Week with the Orthodox according to the Julian calendar, so everything is running a week behind. This is a reflection I was asked to provide for our “Palm Sunday” weekend, Saturday service. I don’t like Palm Sunday. It always seems a bit too forced, a bit too put-on, a bit camp really. For over a month Lent has dragged on, making me face my mortality and the problems of sin, evil, and suffering. I read this book by Ben Myers once when I was 18 or 19 that introduced me to Rowan Williams and T. S. Eliot and the “lenten” spirituality they represent, and I’ve kind of loved staring down the barrel of Good Friday ever since. A religion that takes seriously the problem of godforsakeness that we see made manifest on the cross is a religion I can sign on to. But for some absurd reason this melancholic spirituality that suits me just fine is interrupted by the carnival procession of foliage we...