Not so long ago Susan and I went to Covent Garden in London – where we are friends of the Royal Opera House – to see the Royal Ballet. We had chosen specifically to witness the tantalising Argentine Principal Dancer Marianela Nuñez and her partner Principal Dancer, Russian, Vadim Muntagirov. It has been an ambition to see them on stage live and we stood for ages at the stage door afterwards in the freezing cold just to see one of them in person. I had read Muntagirov’s autobiography – Small steps to big leaps – and, on Instagram, he had kindly offered to sign it.
He’s a perfectionist and it shows. His is an amazing story of winning awards, and also poignant. At the age of 16, having won the Prix de Lausanne he arrived in London with no English. He rose up through the ranks of the English National Ballet and then the Royal Ballet. Why poignant? Well I found it poignant that, because of the geopolitical situation, it wasn’t until July 2023, that he ever managed to dance live in front of his father and mother and his sister.
Why do I tell you all this? Well it was his birthday on Wednesday and I happened to see him – again on Instagram – being interviewed and he said something simple yet profound that struck a chord in the midst of Holy Week. He said this – ‘I try to live the story when I am on the stage’. ‘I try to live the story when I am on the stage’. His is an immersive approach. It is more than the technical steps. It goes beyond technique to expressing the story through movement and acting – the anger and heartbreak, for example, in his recent portrayal of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.
As I say this struck a chord, because it seems to me that year by year, as Christians, in the cycle of things Holy Week becomes a stage in which we are all invited and drawn in to live again and again the entire story of the last days in the life of Jesus, our Saviour. Ballet dancers often say how painful and stressful the dance can be on their bodies – and there are frequent injuries – they are among the world’s fittest athletes, these artists. In the same way, Holy Week and Easter make extraordinary demands on those who preside at the liturgies, on musicians and choirs, on readers and on the whole parish setup. We are all grateful to them. However, we too are asked to go out of our way every year to make Holy Week entirely different from the rest of the year – even to the point of inconvenience and extra effort.
But, as Vadim Muntarigov says of his performances, Holy Week is all about the story – reliving it, inhabiting it, immersing ourselves in it to the point of going through the emotions of it. And when we do so, we discover how much and how intensely these last days in Jesus’ life, reflected in the liturgies of each day, embrace and beyond the full scope of our own human predicament and vulnerability.
This is a story that was 33 years in the making – like so many hopes and ambitions in our own lives – the long haul. And last Sunday a donkey, of all things, is borrowed, and Jesus rides into Jerusalem and is greeted as a hero with joy, love and affection … a hero’s welcome to shouts of Hosanna! It all started out so well, but very quickly it fell apart – things unravelled. This can happen to us too.
Almost every emotion we can go through in life is brought to the fore in the experience of Jesus in this Great Week: the joy of dinner in the safety of friends’ home – Mary, Martha and Lazarus; the envy and jealous bitterness of Judas as an onlooker when he saw that very extravagant gift of perfume; the people plotting, conniving and scheming against Jesus; arguments about who was the greatest and who should be in charge; Jesus trying to keep things on track with some good advice and final instructions; Jesus – preoccupied and bewildered, teetering on the brink of a lack of resolve and failure, questioning the meaning and point of it all; and knowing deep down that one of his closest friends was going to turn on him and betray him; a last and very powerful meal together; trying to get away from it all by seeking the peace and solitude on the Mount of Olives; friends promising they wouldn’t let him down but then they do; they fall asleep, it’s all too much for them; lots of prayer, especially in Gethsemane where Jesus wishes it all away and feels tormented. He is betrayed, arrested, toyed with, tortured, and friends pretend not to know him. There are false accusations and despair, and the feeling that God has abandoned him. There’s not just one but several trials and people washing their hands of responsibility. He is mocked and paraded in front of the same crowd. ‘ You’re only as good as your last act’, they say. He is eventually executed and around that cross, there is love, devotion, terror, trust, indifference, exploitation, self-sacrifice, sneering, ridicule and derision – and above all else, immense pain and suffering. He is buried in a hurry as an expediency. Isn’t this almost the totality of our own human experience too?
I am challenged to think of a human emotion that is not in that story and journey. On Friday there was darkness and desolation – a world that had fallen apart for those who had invested so much in that man, Jesus. It appeared to be a day of complete and forlorn failure. Yesterday was a day of empty waiting and not knowing. Waiting – hanging around – not knowing – like so much of life that we find hard to cope with.
And that brings us to today – early morning – the women trying to do the decent thing as soon as possible – faced with the totally unexpected. Not knowing how to handle it. They are perplexed, we are told, and terrified by whatever experience they had.. Not long afterwards, Peter came too, and he was amazed. But his response was very strange – he just headed home. Very odd. So it is alright to come to Church on Easter Day ‘perplexed’. That is part of faith too – or amazed. This is how it was explained to them by the messengers:
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ (Luke 24.5b-7)
What we have here too in these short affirmations about the Easter faith seems very close to what Peter preached – we heard it in Acts – our first reading today – the earliest preaching of the Church:
‘You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear,…’
That’s the kernel of our faith that gives us joy and hope today. Holy Week and Easter invite us to live the story and, to see in this story, not only the story of Jesus and those who were there, but our own story and emotions on our life journey too. And we are invited to come today at this healing high point of the story and to discover here the solidarity, love, joy and grace of God’s love for us.
That is what empowers and enables us to proclaim ‘Christ is risen!’