“Holed Up for a Year, I Hope…”

Holy Week podcast from Joani Peacock

Dear Lord,

Let me linger among the alleluias,

at least for a little while.

It is Easter Monday morning and I am much hungover from Holy Week.

I am a very sleepy preacher.

Bells are still ringing.

Choirs are still singing.

And I am still sneezing.

Allergic to the lilies you know.

Bundles of bulletin pages fall to the floor,

swept up and recycled.

A cacophony of alleluias collect in my soul.

I covet them there.

But tears still fall for prodigal children lonely and lost.

And tears still fall for love that may not live to see the light of day.

Little liquid pools of lonely, I do confess well up,

as I celebrate the resurrection day.

Lord, let me wander among the alleluias, 

searching for the living among the dead,

where your resurrected body still lies torn.

Interceding for lives and livelihoods lost,

for half a million souls stolen by Covid-19,

for the small businesses boarded up and closed,

for playgrounds absent children’s laughter,

for the pews emptied of prayer.

Holed up for a year, hoping, weeping and aching for the fallen.

Breathe life into all the vacant places.

Breathe life into the darkest space that haunts the human heart.

Mend and tend to all that is broken.

Stumble Jesus — please — from your empty tomb.

Lord, let me find you among the alleluias,

living with the people on the streets,

lurking behind the most unlikely faces,

tripping up the hypocrites who take your name in vain,

(myself so much included.)

Holy One,

catch me in my petty sinfulness, 

my self centered ungraciousness.

Remind me still that I am a child of God,

grateful to be a celebrant of these holy days.

Lord, holed up for a year, I hope to live among the alleluias,

where the “green blade riseth,”

where the “strife is o’er,”

where the stone is ever rolled away.

Lord, may we linger among the alleluias,

a resurrected people, 

at least for a little while.

P.S. Click here to check out other posts in this series!

Note: The. Rev. Joan L. Peacock is “Associate for Liturgy & Hilarity” at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Alexandria, VA.

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