Holy Week - inside and outside

I'm writing this on Good Friday morning having just returned from 'outside' the campus gates.  The Stations of the Cross are walked and prayed around Suva city centre from 6.00 - 8.00am. More of that later.

'Inside' refers to the Maundy Thursday drama which the College community enacted last night, initiated and directed by our Principal, Revd Professor Dr Feleterika Uili Nokise. It was a major production: scripts, spotlights, music, costumes, cues. The community had worked phenomenally hard; rehearsals on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings for a number of weeks, along with the demands of assignment deadlines and exam revision for those on the BD and MTh. Our 'students'  - now addressed as such but being experienced ministers and Church leaders of the Pacific in their own right - have my utter admiration and deepest respect.

Everyone deserves appreciation and God the glory. Alofa sang Stainer's 'God so loved the world' as a beautiful and moving soprano solo, with the choir offering four part harmony for chosen phrases. I've never heard the piece done this way before. Rev Iosefa gave the part of Jesus a magnificent yet quiet dignity. 

The College youth group became armed guards and soldiers for the evening, marching menacingly to arrest the Innocent One. Personally, I found this a shuddering contemporary reminder of today's 'child soldiers' in some parts of the world, recruited and manipulated by military oppressors to carry out their dirty work. Powerful and disturbing to contemplate.

The labours of many others beforehand, including our tireless maintenance team, had produced the costumes and sets for an Upper Room, a Garden of Gethsemane and an olive grove: venue for the traitor's kiss. In and among all this, reflections were read, feet were washed, bread and wine shared, darkness fell and - at the end - only the cross remained lit. 

Still light at 6.15pm as we gather, seated on woven mats, waiting for the drum beat at 6.30pm to start us off. If it's of any interest, I'm in black with the altos on the first row of the choir in the distance - look for pale person with arms reaching downwards straight ahead...

Jesus and his friends enter the Upper Room...

'One of you will betray me....' 'Who is it Lord?!'

Sosefo reads...

'Jesus is arrested. 

His trial is arranged, fixed and ugly.

He goes through torment and agony.

But where are we?

We are standing by, worrying about our own importance; concerned about our own comfort...

The night is long...

meetings were held...

decisions made...

preparations begun...


We are part of such preparations.

We made the cross

Anxiously awaiting the 

conductor's cue

for 

'God so loved the

world...' 

But confidently awaiting Resurrection