For those of us who make our home in the Christian household, as writer J. Philip Newell calls the Christian tradition, this is the beginning of Holy Week. During this week we come to the of end our forty days of Lent and begin to focus on the final days of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a week that holds different experiences for different people. It is filled with a dramatic telling of Jesus, gathering with his friend’s,his acts of servanthood to them, their sharing of a final meal, his ultimate betrayal by one that sat around the table. The scripture that will be read will be heard and interpreted differently by individual hearers in an effort to understand once again what this life, lived more than 2000 years ago, has to do with our lives today. Those who have studied and read much will bring one lens to the telling while those who find themselves hearing the story again on Easter Sunday much as they did last year will experience it quite differently.

For those of us who find themselves reading, studying and thinking about these sacred texts more than perhaps others, it always brings an opportunity to be confronted once again with fullness of this story. Yesterday as we waved palms and heard the telling of Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey, I was given the opportunity to reflect on this story in yet another way.  I was reminded of a process I learned from author and cultural anthropologist Angeles Arriens for approaching any situation, any meeting, indeed even any given day. It a fourfold way of making sure one is true to one’s self. Her invitation is this: “Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don’t be attached to the results.”

On the surface it sounds so simple. But when I have chosen this way of being in a meeting, for instance, I find out quite quickly how much I have a need to control what actually happens! When this process is played out from that angle, the truth telling becomes stilted toward controlling the conversation, paying attention goes out the window as I wait to make my point rather than listening to the other and showing up becomes primarily a way to win my desired outcome.

So yesterday as we once again told this story of Jesus heading out into what was to become the last days of his life, he chose to be his true self. He entered the city in the humble way he had moved through the country side as healed and taught and told of God’s movement in his living. He most likely knew he was entering hostile territory but he knew what he had to do: Show up. Pay attention to the people and the way he knew God to be at home in the world. Tell the truth about the injustices he saw and the power that was being misused. And, in the end, to not be attached to the results. It proved a faithful but risky choice.

I am going to take this fourfold lens into my experience of the fullness of this Holy Week. I am going to pay particular attention to the words we read, sing, and say, listening for the authentic message that invites me to walk the Way of Jesus in the holy and not-so-holy weeks of my own life. And in the final analysis, I think that is the point of this walking, this observation of this week which leads us toward Easter.