March 28, Passion Sunday B (Mark 14:1-15:47)
Did Easter even come last year? Will it ever come again?
Read Pershey’s column for the Liturgy of the Palms.
I don’t even know what time means anymore. As I write this, the light is retreating, darkness extending tentacles deep into the day. My family lit two candles on our Advent wreath last night. I preached on the Magnificat to an empty sanctuary on Wednesday morning and then spent the afternoon rereading Mark’s Passion narrative. I’ve read it six times since Thanksgiving, once snuggled up in my cozy armchair next to the twinkling lights of our Christmas tree.
Of course, for all the ways the pandemic has upended our sense of time, it isn’t COVID that has me reading about Christ’s death whilst the church purportedly prepares for his birth. It’s the editorial schedule of the Christian Century. But the chronological confusion is all the more intense because in many ways, it feels as if Lent 2020 never ended—as if Easter never came.
