It all started when they wanted me to be Jesus. You’d think if I could handle that, I could handle anything. But apparently…
What’s that? Oh. Right. Hang on. Let me go back.
I guess it really all started when I began attending this Episcopal church. My parents had traded in 30 years of Presbyterianism for the Episcopals when I went off to college, so I kinda-sorta knew what was going on. You kneeled. There was a prayer book. John Calvin mattered significantly less.
But it was COVID and the church was a long drive and I had a commitment the night the small group met, and well, anyway, a year or more passed and I was *going* to this church, but I wasn’t really *doing* anything for it, you know? I was starting to feel like a slacker.
It was at just one of these “I’m a slacker” moments that my phone pinged with a message from the church. They wanted readers for Sunday mornings. Old Testament, epistles, prayers, that sort of thing.
“Well! How do you like that?” I thought. “I’ve got three full degrees in English! If there’s one thing I surely know how to do, it’s read.”
So I said, “Yes.”
One should not say “yes” without asking for details. This is another thing (along with reading) that I have learned in my near-43 years on this planet. *Always* ask for the details.
The details came later. I learned that my debut was to be on Palm Sunday. This was not excellent news. Even the Presbyterians make a big deal out of Palm Sunday. And for pomp and circumstance, the Episcopalians beat the the Calvinists straight out of the water eight days a week.
But OK. I said yes, I meant yes. Please, tell me more.
There was more.
It seemed that a battalion of readers was recruited for the Palm Sunday festivities. All of them, I was assured, had years, nay decades, of experience reading on the church’s second-highest holiday. They knew the script backwards and forwards, muttered it in their sleep. These hardened Veterans of the Palms would be…reading bit parts from the safety of a podium. I was to have nothing to do with them.
I was going to be front and center between the priests, with a wraparound Brittney Spears microphone, being Jesus.
That’s right. Jesus. The Christ.
“Ah,” I said.
“That’ll be all right, right?” said the woman walking me through things.
“Of course,” I said. “No problem!”
I thought I might die.
I spent the intervening weeks wondering if the Episcopalians endorsed hazing at an official level, or if this was a parish-specific tradition. I maybe could have found the answer in the prayer book somewhere, but that thing is more than a little confusing. There I am following along, thinking I’ve got it, and all of sudden the priest has gone careering off into something called a Proper Preface which is so proper, it’s apparently kept, primly, under lock and key somewhere in the catacombs. I imagine catacombs. Possibly a vault.
Anyway. A third thing I know is that one can’t keep time from passing. Unfortunately.
In due course, Palm Sunday came. At the appointed hour, I strode to the front as confidently as I could, faced my executioners (the congregation played the Free Barabbas mob), and gave voice to the final words of our soon-to-be risen Lord.
And Palm Sunday went.
It went ok, actually.
I did not die. The priests, I will note, got to play the priests, which seemed a little like cheating, but I was just thankful to have emerged unscathed. I wouldn’t quibble.
So IT SEEMED LIKE EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE JUST READING THE BASIC BIBLE ON AN ORDINARY SUNDAY. I mean, right? Forgive my all-caps. But honestly. If you’ve been *Jesus*, everything else should be a piece of cake.
And yet, the ordinary Sunday came (that whole time passing thing, again) and I was more than ordinarily nervous.
“For goodness sake, Sarah,” I told myself. “You know how to read. Just settle. What could possibly go wrong?”
See. The thing is — the fourth thing — is that one should not ask, ever, under any circumstances, “What could possibly go wrong?” The Lord, having ascended into heaven, seems to adore that question. He is a heavenly cornucopia of answers. They rain down.
The rains came when I, anxiously checking the bulletin for my cue, rose from my seat, into the side aisle to head to the podium.
I knew something was amiss right away. In the periphery of my vision, I could see…someone else. It was a woman. She was…she was striding down the center aisle.
*She* was heading for the podium.
Oh no. Oh dear lord. What had I done? Had I misread the schedule? Had I — but it didn’t matter what I’d done. What should I do?! Now?
There were few choices. She was a good two or three strides ahead of me. I could either break into a Rich Strike streak for the altar, or try to wrestle her once I got there, or…propose a choral reading? Or… I…no.
I turned on my heel and walked back to my seat with as much dignity as I could muster, and waited for everything to be over.
In the end it was a simple mix-up. She was sorry, I was sorry; it was really kind of funny. I found myself, on the way home, in the car, neither nervous nor upset. I found that I was laughing.
This Sunday was another ordinary Sunday. And while I’d kinda hoped nobody noticed what happened before, I didn’t really mind the six or seven people who stopped to say, “Maybe you’ll actually get to do it this time!” and “Get on up there! Don’t let anybody stop you!” Everyone had absolutely noticed, and it was ok. It was nice, actually. Felt good.
And, so, I mean…it all started with me thinking I really ought to *do something* for the church. Preferably perfectly.
And God said, “Ah.” and then, “Of course! No problem! Why don’t you just climb onto this sled here…what’s that you’ve been praying?”
“Um. I haven’t been praying anything, particularly.”
“Ha! That’s right. But what you will be praying! Oh, never mind. You’ll see. Away we go!”
We went down hills and around curves, and I thought I might die. But of course I wouldn’t. Of course I didn’t. Of course, Palm Sunday was beautiful entirely aside from me, and regardless of me. Because there is beauty in last things. In the sun pulsing at the end of the day; in the quiet of the deathbed; in that high and holy ceremony when we sing praises and wave palms, when we exult and rejoice and are glad, despite the coming tears.
And of course, when I was striving so hard to be perfect, what could go wrong absolutely did go wrong, and it turned out not to matter at all.
Of course, it was all for the good.
Because now, on a Monday, when I have been praying, as often as I can remember, “God, let me not insist on my own way, not in my heart; not in my soul,” I can hear laughter and feel gentleness. I can know (a little bit; for a moment at least) that when the way I have not chosen is harder — harder to laugh at, harder to endure, harder to hope through — that I am, even then, being led and guided.
And in the end, at the last, it will all be, all of it, for the good.
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