This Sunday the lectionary tells us that ‘Passiontide begins’. It’s a curious thing, especially to me, coming from the Roman Catholic church, which did away with Passiontide as part of the second Vatican Council reforms in the early ‘60s, and so consequently I have never quite been able to make sense of it. What’s different about the fifth week of Lent and weeks 1-4.

Well we mused over this over breakfast at the Rectory on Wednesday and studying the scriptures together we did sense a change of pace and a change of focus; as though we are now moving very definitely into the final chapters of this extraordinary story - our story, which began in creation and culminates with the new creation of the risen Christ.

We get more than a hint of this change of pace in our first reading from Jeremiah; the days are surely coming says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Jacob.

Not like the old one, nothing like the old one, where our relationship with God was fractured and fragmented and would routinely be broken, when the people turned from God, and then every now and then decided to come back to God for a while. When God would punish the faithless and reward the faithful. No completely different.

I will put my law within them. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other ‘know the Lord’ for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

I don’t think I have ever paid enough attention to this reading and what a shame because this is the most wonderful, most reassuring, anticipation of the completely new relationship we share with God through and in Jesus Christ that there could be. Nothing can now separate us from the love of God whereas under the old covenant we became separated from God again and again but in Jesus this new covenant, this fractured relationship, is once and for all repaired by Jesus whose body is broken and whose blood is shed. Healing and new life, creation restored through the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice.

The passages from the letter to the Hebrews which we have been ploughing through every evening this month at evening prayer, and hear from in our second reading today, also contrasts the mechanisms through which a right relationship with God was maintained in the old covenant, through the repeated sacrifices of the Levitical priests, with the once and for all perfect sacrifice made by the great high priest Jesus Christ.

And so the stage is set for the events which our Gospel reading anticipates when at one of the most sacred moments in Jewish year 'the passover' which marked the beginning of Israel's liberation from Egypt, the Lamb of God will give his life for the liberation of all. And when I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself.

Through Holy week and Easter beginning next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we journey with Jesus and

We share the excitement of those who witnessed Jesus' entry into Jerusalem We share the intimacy of the upper room We experience the tender attention to our individual need for restoration in the washing of the feet We watch with Jesus in the garden at night We face the desolation of the cross We gather together to search for meaning in the no-mans land of Holy Saturday And then, finally, we rejoice to hear the astounding message that Christ is risen from the dead It might seem like a curious sort of religious reenactment but within this drama we locate ourselves, our own story, our own reality; and the story of those we love, and of those we live amongst.

Where will you find yourself this Holy Week and Easter, caught up in the excitement of Palm Sunday? In the unnerving intimacy of Maundy Thursday, in the desolation of Good Friday, in the shock of Holy Saturday or the joy of Easter Day itself.

What marking Holy Week in this away does, is it allows us to be real and to really engage with the Gospel, not just reading it, but through living it together as a community of faith whose many members meet themselves on different stages along the way.

It is the one time of the year when we truly engage corporately with this reality. Usually, Sunday by Sunday, we find ourselves in a mini celebration of the resurrection, but to do that without making the difficult and demanding journey to the upper room, the garden, and the cross and beyond makes our Sunday celebrations a poor and pale reflection of what they should be.

And so I am going to say something that might make you feel uncomfortable and perhaps it should. If you don't put yourself out to walk with Jesus through this Holy Week and Easter and don't feel put out, then perhaps you won't have experienced the depths and full mystery of our faith.

Of course family comes first and the bank holiday weekend brings its own opportunities, but make room for the Passion if you can, because if you can you will arrive at Easter with a deeper understanding of what it means to be a disciple, and to walk the way of the cross.