ONCE more, we approach Holy Week, the week when time slows down. How so? I think it starts with a change in the narrative pace of the Gospels. Having covered Jesus’s genealogy, conception, life, ministry, and teaching in a mere 20 chapters, St Matthew suddenly slows down, focuses in, and gives us eight chapters on just the last week of his life.

Likewise, St Luke and St Mark take almost one third of their whole text for that final Holy Week, and, with St John, it’s nearly half. Suddenly, from a sweep of years and months, we slow down and walk with Jesus day by day and, finally, hour by hour. This slow-down and focus is reflected liturgically, as well. The lectionary takes us through the week, day by day from Palm Sunday onwards, and many churches have evening services commemorating the events of the week as they build towards the climax of Good Friday: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Temple, the anointing at Bethany, and then, of course, Maundy Thursday and all the events that follow.

What is the effect of this slow pace, this close-up focus? I think there is a paradox at work here. The more closely, deliberately, and imaginatively that we follow Jesus and walk with him into Jerusalem and through the events of his holy week, the more we discover that he is walking with us into our week, into our lives, into the Jerusalem of our hearts, till, finally, he reaches our own Golgotha, however terrible or deeply buried our suffering has been. We follow him to where he hurts, and find that he finds us where we hurt.

But following and finding take time. When I was an angst-ridden teenager, I was accosted by a street preacher, who told me that I should let Jesus into my heart. “How does that happen?” I asked him. “It’s easy,” he said. “You just open your heart and say this prayer, right here, and then it’s all done, your heart is fixed, and you are right with God.”

I remember thinking “Gosh, his heart must be so simple, so empty, so obvious. That wouldn’t work with me. My heart’s door’s not easy to open, and, frankly, the place is filthy and seething with all kinds of trouble.” So I said “No, thank you,” on that occasion; but I realise now that, ever since I did come to Christ, a few years later, I have been opening my heart to him, just like that preacher asked. But I’m still only 45 years, 45 Holy Weeks into that process, and it takes time.

About 15 years ago, I wrote a Palm Sunday poem, which has been my invitation to Christ each Holy Week to come into my heart a little further, a little deeper:

Palm Sunday

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The Saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus, come
Break my resistance and make me your home.