A Pastoral Reflection for Holy Week

Rev. Bobby Musengwa
Mar 19
5 min read

Mission Presbytery

End of Lent — Beginning of Holy Week

By Rev. Bobby Musengwa

On the Field of Play: A Vision for Peace

This week I found myself watching Team USA in the World Baseball Classic Championship, facing Venezuela. When I woke one morning to read that Venezuela had claimed the championship, the footage of those players — their cathartic elation, their tears and embraces — stayed with me.

And I began to wonder: what if it could be like this? What if the great conflicts of our world were decided not by bombs and bullets, but on the baseball diamond, the basketball court, the tennis court? What if those who disagree could work it out — nonviolently — on the field of play?

It is, of course, a dream. But it is not a foolish one. It is the dream embedded in the heart of every parent who has watched a child compete, every coach who has tried to form not just athletes but human beings. It is, in its own way, a holy longing.

The Children I Have Known: Refugees in Our Midst

Those images from the ballfield brought to mind the students I once coached — in high school tennis and middle school coding classes. I did not always know their full stories. It was a former student of mine, now a respected teacher himself, who first told me the truth: some of my students were refugees. Children from Sudan. Children from Syria. Children who had crossed oceans and deserts to sit in our classrooms.

It was a particular joy to see this young man — once in my youth group, now a beloved educator — and to know that he had grown through his teenage struggles into someone who cared for the vulnerable. He opened my eyes to who was sitting in my classes. And what I saw filled me with both grief and wonder.

I remember one boy in particular. He sat quietly one day, visibly melancholic. At first I assumed a bad mood, an attitude. So I went to him. He told me students were bullying him. I addressed that directly — it was not right, and I made that clear. But as we talked more, his deeper story began to surface.

He was Syrian. His family had fled when he was nine years old. And he carried in his heart a particular grief: his grandmother had refused to leave. She would not abandon her home. She would rather die there than go. And so this boy — now eleven, sitting in my classroom — wondered every day whether his grandmother was still alive.

He was also working hard for a different reason. His father had promised him a wonderful prize if he earned all A's. He had a B+ in one class, and it weighed on him. Then one day he came in beaming. He had made the grade. His face was luminous with the particular joy of a child who has worked hard and succeeded. He told me he wanted to be a doctor — to help his family, and to help others.

The trauma of war was woven into this child at eleven years of age. And I could not help but ask myself: how many other children — boys and girls scattered across this earth — carry that same weight? How many small souls have been shaped, and scarred, by the vagaries of violence?

Lazarus, and Those Who Would Silence the Life-Giver

This Sunday's Gospel text brings us to the raising of Lazarus — that magnificent, strange, heartbreaking story in John 11. Jesus weeps. Jesus commands. The stone is rolled away. And Lazarus walks out of the tomb.

This miracle is not simply a precursor to the Resurrection. It is also a turning point. It is the moment when the religious authorities — threatened by the power of life, threatened by crowds who believed — began to target Jesus for elimination. The one who gave life became the one marked for death. The giver of resurrection became the object of murderous conspiracy.

There is a terrible, familiar logic in this. Those who threaten the established order — who speak life into dead places — are often met with the desire to silence them.

Violence Against Our Own: A Presbytery Under Pressure

Sadly, that logic has found expression close to home. Congregations within Mission Presbytery have recently been targeted.

One of our congregations in Round Rock was attacked and vandalized. The action appeared designed to intimidate — to make the worshipping community feel unsafe in their own sacred space. This is unacceptable. We condemn it without reservation, and we stand with our brothers and sisters there.

Another congregation has been targeted because one of its members is running for United States Senate. The online bullying of their pastor is, in its own way, a striking testimony: this church has formed and equipped someone so thoroughly grounded in theology and Christian ethics that they are prepared to speak with fluency and courage in the public square. That formation is a mark of faithfulness, not a cause for shame.

Presbyterians have always believed that faith has something to say to the ordering of public life. We understand the urgent demand for justice proclaimed by the prophets — who spoke at their own peril, who were threatened and imprisoned and killed for naming the truth. We stand in that tradition.

It is worth remembering: the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence was a Presbyterian — the Rev. John Witherspoon, a Scottish minister and president of what is now Princeton University. The Presbyterian DNA, our conviction that faith must engage the world, is woven into the very founding of this nation. We do not apologize for that heritage. We honor it.

A Prayer as We Enter Holy Week

We stand now at the threshold of Holy Week — the most sacred stretch of the Christian year. We enter it carrying much: the grief of children displaced by war, the anger of communities targeted by violence, the hope kindled in the elation of athletes on a baseball field, the remembered face of a Syrian boy who wanted to become a doctor.

We carry these things toward the cross. And we trust — because we have read John 11, and because we have heard the stone rolled away — that the cross is not the last word.

As we come to the end of Lent and enter Holy Week, may we continue to pray: for peace, and the end of war. For the end of violence in all its forms — including the violence of intimidation, of online cruelty, of civil strife. For the children who carry wounds they did not ask for. For the congregations who are being tested. For those who speak truth at personal cost.

May the one who wept at the tomb of Lazarus weep with us. And may the one who called him forth by name call us, too, out of whatever tombs we have been sealed inside — into the impossible, undeniable, life-giving light of resurrection.

A blessed and holy Lent's end — and a blessed Holy Week — to all in Mission Presbytery.