Monday in Holy Week • 11 April 2022

Monday in Holy Week
 • 11 April 2022

Year after year after year I return to these familiar readings, now very much old friends*. For the third year in a row, I am not reflecting on these readings in the context of the Holy Eucharist. For the third year in a row, these reflections have no audience. It is just the written text and me. For the foreseeable future, that is how it shall be. 

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As much as I love the reading from Isaiah, increasingly even now I am aware of the dangers of successionism, that is, reading a Christian interpretation into the original Hebrew text. God’s servant, as described in Isaiah 42, is not a foreshadowing of Jesus but, rather, the prophet, or Cyrus, or even the Israelite nation itself. According to The Jewish Study Bible, Second Edition, ‘The term, “servant,” in most other passages in chapters 40-66 clearly refers to the nation Israel or to the faithful within Israel, and that is the most likely explanation here as well.… [T]his text looks forward to the ideal world in which justice will reign and the covenant between Israel and God will be observed perfectly.’** So, as cherished as our connection with the ‘suffering servant,’ interpreted to be Jesus, might be, we must let go of it. We will again hear from Isaiah tomorrow and on Wednesday and we must bear these comments in mind.

And, as dear to my heart is the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair is to my heart (having anointed a dying person’s feet, but not wiping them dry with my hair), I am going to lay this one aside for this year, as well.

So, the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews remains. 

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This year, in the context in which we find ourselves, the final phrase of the final verse of the pericope calls my attention: ‘So you may not grow weary or lose heart.’

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews lays out in front of us all these amazing people—’patriarchs, [matriarchs], prophets and heroes of the old covenant.’ Unfortunately, with another tip of the hat toward successionism, these commended people fall short (‘though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect’). In this day and age, when we recognise how interconnected we are; how much God’s love extends to ALL (as Desmond Tutu would proclaim with his arms extended wide), can we set aside the idea that if you are not Christian, you are not complete? As our Jewish brothers and sisters prepare to celebrate Passover, which begins this Saturday evening, might we find ways to embrace everyone’s faith?

Yes, Jesus is the ‘pioneer and perfecter of our faith,’ the Christian expression of a belief in God. And, yes, Jesus ‘endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.’ Yes, we can celebrate that fact that lies at the centre of our Christian faith. But may we never disparage our Jewish and Muslim (and any other expression of faith) brothers and sisters, who believe in God, too.

All of us seek an assurance that things cannot get worse, that evil and sin will not have the last word. As the news points out tonight that Russian troops are gathering on the eastern border of Ukraine for a ‘major assault on the east’ of Ukraine and more and more news comes out from Bucha; as radical Buddhist members of the Burmese Army have seized a Roman Catholic church and are holding people hostage; as COVID-19 still won’t let go of us, as we worry about the price of basic goods, there is plenty to cause us to lose hope. 

That is where our faith comes into play, where we can look beyond it all to God, so that we may not grow weary or lose heart. The race we run now is exhausting, there are mountains beyond mountains (as the Haitian saying goes), but ultimately, we will arrive in a place of comfort. This is not to say that we accept passively the wrongs and challenges in this world; no, we are to fight for justice and mercy. But, we can take heart that when our time comes, there is a place prepared for us at the Table of Life, where our feet will be anointed, the house filled with nard, and where Jesus will join us.

* I continue to use the 1979 Book of Common Prayer lectionary.
** The Jewish Study Bible, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2014), 848-49.

Palm Sunday 10 April 2022

 Palm/Passion Sunday 10 April 2022

Saint Peter’s,  Bennington VT

Have you ever gotten caught in a crowd? Have there been so many people in the crowd that your body is caught in between other people’s bodies and your feet no longer touch the ground and you are carried with the flow of the people and you panic because you can see yourself falling to the pavement and the crowd moving on over you? Have you felt the energy of the crowd and gotten caught up in the emotions that surge from a collective cry? Have you caught yourself shouting out whatever the crowd is crying out, even if you don’t agree with what the crowd is saying, but since you are there you don’t think about the words, you just go along with what everyone else is doing?

Somehow I think this is what happened to the people who threw palms or large leaves on the ground to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem and then turned their backs on him and shouted out that he should be crucified. They lost sense of their own humanity in the frenzy that a crowd stirs up. They lost sight of boundaries and thus betrayed the one who would be their saviour. Instead, the crowd, made up of scores of individuals, became a monster without a heart.

That crowd mentality that contributed to, but did not cause Jesus’s death, was not new then and it is not new now. The horrific events of 6 January 2021 still reverberate in our collective consciousness. I have been reading Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. He writes in Chapter 8: ‘Stand Out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.’ (People standing out in the crowds in Jerusalem back when would not have changed the course of history, though it is an interesting thought to ponder. We, however, can make a difference.) 

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On Good Friday the ruling political forces, the Romans (not the Jews!) of the day tortured and executed an innocent man. The crowds that had welcomed him, turned on him. The powers-that-be sacrificed the weak and the blameless to protect their own status and power. On the third day Jesus was raised from the dead, revealing not only their injustice, but also unmasking the lie that might makes right.

In a country still living under the shadow of the lynching tree, we should be troubled by the violent forces being released by the current political rhetoric. Americans are turning against their neighbours, particularly those on the margins of society. They seek to secure their own safety and security at the expense of others. There is legitimate reason to fear where this rhetoric and the actions arising from it might take us. 

In this moment, we resemble God’s children wandering in the wilderness. We, like they, are struggling to find our way. They turned from following God and worshiped a golden calf constructed from their own wealth. The current rhetoric is leading us to construct a modern false idol out of power and privilege. We must reject the idolatrous notion that we can ensure the safety of some by sacrificing the hopes of others. No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, we must respect the dignity of every human being and we must seek the common good above all else. I could produce too many examples, as recently as this week, of situations where someone has not respected their neighbour’s God-given dignity.

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We are better than this, my brothers and sisters. We are made in God’s image. We are God’s beloved. As we walk the Way of the Cross this week, may we recognise ourselves in the passion narrative, as we acknowledge our complicity in systemic evil and then commit ourselves to a better way, Christ’s way of unconditional love. May we recommit ourselves to walking the way of love in order to hold onto and, more important, share hope. 

As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry writes, 

Imagine our homes and families when love is the way. Imagine our neighborhoods and communities where love is the way. Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when love is the way. Imagine this tired old world when love is the way. When love is the way — unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive — when love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream, and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook.

When love is the way, poverty would become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty of room for all of God’s children. When love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family.

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Because, when all is said and done, we are one. And the way we walk this week, paradoxically, is the Way of Love. So let us be on our way.

Holy Saturday 2021

 Holy Saturday • 3 April 2021

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Job 14.1-14; Psalm 130; 1 Peter 4.1-8; Matthew 27.57-66

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Just as I cannot imagine moving directly from Palm Sunday to Easter without going through the daily services of Holy Week, nor can I imagine jumping from Good Friday to Easter, without pausing for Holy Saturday. Indeed, this day until sunset invites us to linger just a while longer in this strange space between Christ’s death and resurrection. I always had to beg the altar guild to give me just a little more time in the emptiness of the church, now a tomb, lonely without the reserve sacrament, before plunging into Easter preparations. (I never prevailed.)

The office for Holy Saturday is stark: no opening greeting, just a prayer,  two or three readings, a psalm, a hymn from the Burial Office, the Lord’s Prayer and a finally blessing. 

One might think the readings are a downer. The reading from Job begins:

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
comes up like a flower and withers, 
flees like a shadow and does not last. 

One is better off being a tree which, when chopped down, will sprout new shoots, than to be a mortal that will die and be lain low. The writer wonders finally: 

If mortals die, will they live again?
 All the days of my service I would wait 
until my release should come.

The response, Psalm 130, counters the gloomy reflection by professing confidence in God:

I wait for the Lord: my soul waits for him:

in his word is my hope.

With him there is plenteous redemption,

and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

The gospel relates how Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate, asks for Jesus’ body, takes it to his grave and places it in there. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are there, sitting at the tomb. Later Pilate will order that a stone be placed in front of the tomb so that Jesus cannot escape.

Then the congregation responds with a hymn from the Burial Office, also from Job: 

In the midst of life we are in death;
from whom can we seek help?

From you alone, O Lord,
who by our sins are justly angered.

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So many of us have experienced that strange time between a person’s death and their burial. It is time out of time, an agonising form of waiting, one of nervous energy, on the one hand, and emptiness for what and whom we have lost, on the other. 

That is where we find ourselves in the journey toward Easter. Jesus is dead and in the grave. We will not celebrate his resurrection until after sunset tonight or before sunrise tomorrow, if we keep the vigil or tomorrow morning. We wait.

The church traditionally marked today as the Harrowing of Hell, when Jesus descended to the dead.
Every Holy Saturday, I have read from an ancient homily on the holy and great Sabbath, which describes Jesus’ descent to the dead. 1

The homily begins: 

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

The homily then describes Jesus’ search for Adam and Eve, ‘he who is both God and son of Eve,’ to set them free. God says that God did not create Jesus to be a prisoner in hell. ‘Rise, let us leave this place,’ God cries, ‘for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.’ The story of salvation unfolds in poetic form with the voices between God and Jesus intermingling.

The homily concludes, ‘Rise, let us leave this place.’ Humanity will never return to the first paradise, but will, instead, be in heaven with God. ‘The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you for all eternity. 2

I cannot say this last paragraph without tears, even after 25 years of reading it out loud in this office. Why? Therein lies all my hope: ‘The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you for all eternity.’ That is where you and I are headed and where our loved ones no longer with us already are.

The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you for all eternity.’

For a moment, linger in the wonder of that simply sentence. Think about those moments when you have touched the sense of eternity. They exist. And marvel that that promise is what this whole week’s journey has been about.


NOTES
1 http://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010414_omelia-sabato-santo_en.html
2 Howard Galley, The Prayer Book Office (NY, NY: The Seabury Press, 1980), 735-37.

Good Friday 2 April 2021

 Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10.1-25; John 18.1-19.37
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On a grey Good Friday, with snow flurries off and on (this is Vermont, after all), we enter closer and closer into liminal space, where heaven and earth come closer and closer and, eventually, touch. We touch the mystery of life and death and get a glimpse perhaps of eternity, which awaits us all.

Once again, the usual—and perhaps comforting—rituals of the day have been put aside because of the pandemic. I know that in other parts of the world of Christian expression, people have worshipped together last night, stripped the altar, set aside the reserve sacrament for today, kept vigil by the Altar of Repose where the sacrament sits, but where I am worshipping virtually, we are doing none of these actions.

Instead, the liturgy has been pared down to its barest form: words. The Good Friday office in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer is rich and stands on its own. 

It begins abruptly, but we need to remember that the service is a continuation of the Maundy Thursday liturgy from last night. Good Friday is the hinge between Jesus’ life and his death and resurrection. We begin the liturgy with the recognition that Jesus is still alive; we end with him dead.

We always hear from the Gospel according to John. Its description of the actors in Jesus’ Passion remains problematic in its anti-Semitism, and is a sermon unto itself. Likewise, the many theologies about why Jesus died on the cross are problematic: they range from God needing to substitute Jesus on behalf of humanity; humanity being so depraved that the only thing God could do was kill God’s Son on our behalf to the cross being God’s self-emptying love in Jesus, a love that exceeds our comprehension. Again, the theologies are too many to consider here.

The Solemn Collects we pray uniquely on Good Friday are powerful in their petitions that cover every aspect of our common life together. They end with the collect we pray at ordinations, at the end of the readings of the Great Vigil of Easter (just tomorrow night or early Easter morning), a collect that offers a vision of hope: ‘Let the whole world see and know that things which were case down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord….’

This is but a synopsis of what we pray on Good Friday. This year, however, I want to focus on our mortality and what we can glean from Good Friday

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If there is anything we have had to face this year, it has been our mortality. The COVID-19 pandemic that has turned our lives upside-down has snatched away over 553K of our citizens and 2,83M souls world-wide. The early days were terrifying in the acceleration of mortality; now, 54 weeks later of lockdown in Vermont, have we become inured? The 21 February front page of the New York Times had the devastating graphic of what 500K deaths looks like and was described thusly: 

From afar, the graphic on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times looks like a blur of gray, a cloudy gradient that slowly descends into a block of solid ink. Up close, it shows something much darker: close to 500,000 individual dots, each representing a single life lost in the United States to the coronavirus, signifying a staggering milestone that the nation is reaching in just under 12 months.(1)

Thus, we come to Good Friday, when COVID-19 cases are alarmingly rising in Vermont, the positivity rate is going up, despite Vermont having the nation’s highest rate of vaccinations. We are not out of the woods yet; we still have a long way to go. Death still surrounds us at very close proximity.

We have so much to grieve… the loss of our former lives, the uncertainty of the current moment, those people lost to COVID-19 and everyone else who has died, whose deaths perhaps have not received the same amount of attention and this grief is all wrapped up in the yearly existential grief of Jesus’ death on the cross, something that, if not understood intellectually, we grasp in the depths of our hearts and being.

This year, more than ever, I am purposely conflating Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ death with the Day of the Dead (2 November). Ultimately, Jesus’ death leads to the promise of the resurrection, which we will celebrate in two days on Easter. We cannot have Easter without today. So, I wrap together the deaths we know with the death of Jesus.

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In prior years, for the portion of the Good Friday liturgy, the Veneration of the Cross, I offered an expression that is more in line with the Orthodox  liturgy and, perhaps, more accessible to people’s experiences. Instead of walking up and touching or kissing a cross, I invite people to approach a cross lying on a bier, take a rose from the vase in front of it, and place it on the cross, the way one might cast flowers into a grave, such that they land on the casket or urn. The cross I have used is a Salvadoran painted cross. Jesus’ halo is red and yellow and the sun rises above it. Over the years, I have been moved to see how people have chosen to place their roses. Some years, they leave his face uncovered; other years, they completely cover it. Regardless, I believe that in the veneration of the cross, they leave their collectives griefs and losses with Jesus.

Maybe this gentle gesture is something you can do today to remember those whom you have loved and see no more, and be still with Jesus, whose death on the cross is part of the great mystery of our faith. You can take a cross, place it on a clear table, perhaps on top of some material, light some candles and then place flowers on it. Then be still in the silence and depth of the moment.

 

(Above: after people have prayed at the cross; Below: roses in the vase form a heart.)

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The final collect of the Good Friday Office says it all:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

NOTE
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/insider/covid-500k-front-page.html

Maundy Thursday 2021

 Maundy Thursday • 1 April 2021

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Exodus 12.1-14a; Psalm 78.14-20, 23-25; 1 Corinthians 11.23-32; John 13.1-15; Luke 22.14-20

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Maundy Thursday solidifies the turning-point that we noted yesterday. There is no looking back, only going forward deeper and deeper into the journey to the cross and Easter Resurrection. We move from the betrayal of Jesus by Judas into the further confusion of the disciples, who are frantically trying to understand what is happening to them.

he readings and collect for this liturgy complicate matters because they focus on both foundational actions that become part of the church’s story: foot-washing with the new commandment to love one another (John) and the institution of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians and Luke). The collect, when added to the reading from 1 Corinthians, would make the listener think the major focus of Maundy Thursday is the sacrament of Holy Eucharist. But then there is the gospel from John, that relates how Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, gives them the example of the teacher humbling himself before his disciples, prior to Judas’ betrayal, and teaches them the Great Commandment to love. The person preaching and the person preparing the liturgy always have to decide which reading to choose—the norm is the reading from John with the footwashing.

No wonder the Maundy Thursday liturgy itself has gotten so complicated over time. Which narrative do we emphasise? How do we enter into the three most holy days of the year, the Triduum, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday? How do we convey that once we start the liturgy on Maundy Thursday, it does not end until Easter? There are no blessings, the liturgies flow one to the next until, finally, we gather after sunset Saturday night or before dawn Easter morning for the Great Vigil and the first Eucharist of Easter.

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For most of us, today is the second year in a row where we are unable physically to gather and do all the rituals associated with this night. Accordingly, we have had to do a lot of rethinking about the physicality of the actions commemorated this evening, particularly the Holy Eucharist.

Last year, we had barely entered the pandemic with all its restrictions. In my neck of the woods, the bishop had already ordered the buildings closed, even to the clergy, so we did not have access to the usual symbols and spaces associated with Holy Week. Where I was serving, we did not even try for Communion on Easter; we just read Morning Prayer, the way it used to be back in the 1960s, before Communion became the norm for Sundays.
This year, we find ourselves still in a time of pandemic, Coronatide 54 and, in Vermont at least, is still worshipping remotely. All those actions of this night—foot washing, celebrating Holy Eucharist for the last time until Easter (only three days off but an eternity spiritually), reserving blessed bread and wine, Christ’s Body and Blood, that are lovingly placed in a separate space for an overnight vigil, in preparation for Good Friday; reading Psalm 22 while the congregation removes everything from the altar area, strips the altar and washes the altar with crosses of wine on the corners and in the middle and then cleans it with water—all these familiar actions once again won’t happen and all we are left with are words.

People are champing at the bit to get back into the buildings, back to having weekly communion, but it still is not safe to do so. Others have tied themselves up in theological knots over the expectation that on Good Friday, whatever bread and wine still remain, must be consumed so that there is no Jesus anywhere until the first Eucharist of Easter. Yet yesterday I picked up two tiny little plastic containers that hold wine and a minute piece of bread, which were blessed on Palm Sunday. I have placed them in a secure place and they shall wait for us to consume on Easter along with a remote congregation. There will be Jesus in my house tomorrow and Saturday morning and it will be OK. We adapt as we go along.

Weekly communion, which used to be the breath of my life, my being, now seems like a distant memory. Since last March, I have had communion just once, on Christmas Eve, in the same fashion. The next time I will be able to receive will be on Pentecost, off in May. Even though I could celebrate at home, I do not, as part of my vow to obey my bishop and remain in solidarity with my sister and brother priests who, likewise, have abstained from celebrating at home or privately. We fast. We wait. And we sometimes whine.

Nor can we wash each other’s feet this year. That, too, remains an impossibility, given the restrictions of the pandemic.

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So, again, we are back to the memories and the words. Like the people of Israel in exile, we remain in exile in this Holy Week. Maybe next year, we can return to some of these familiar actions, though I imagine after two years of virtual Holy Week, we may reimagine much of what we do. Some of our rituals may become sweet memories, no longer necessary for our worship.

On this Maundy Thursday, while still in exile, while still unable to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and wash people’s feet, while not yet able to imagine a future with physical worship, my heart turns to Psalm 126:

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy.

Then they said among the nations,
‘The LORD has done great things for them.’
The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are glad indeed.

Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the water courses of the Negev.
Those who sowed with tears
will reap with songs of joy.

Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed,

will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Whether we gather together physically or remotely, God is with us. And where God is, there is love. And where love is, there is God. That fundamentally is the message of tonight. Ubi caritas, Deus ibi est. May you carry this hope in your heart through the next three days.

Wednesday in Holy Week 2021

Wednesday in Holy Week   
31 March 2021

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 69.7-15, 22-23; Hebrews 9.11-15, 24-28; Matthew 26.1-5, 14-25

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Wednesday in Holy Week always marks the point of no return in the narrative for me. The gospel reading on this night, whether from Matthew or John (as appointed), focuses on the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. 

Judas’s betrayal and the chain of events it will unleash reminds me of sitting at the bedside of someone who is dying. The person can linger sometimes for quite a while and then, suddenly or gradually, it becomes clear that the person has passed a point from which it is impossible to return to the land of the living, they can only move forward into eternity. I often think of this gospel reading in the same terms: Jesus can no longer look back; he can only look forward to what awaits him, his certain death. This knowledge, despite hearing it year-in and year-out, still kicks me in the stomach and heart.

This year, the words of the chief priests and elders of the people, who have conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him, and their deciding not to do so during the festival, lest there be a riot among the people, take me back to the incomprehensible hours of 6 January, with the attack on the US Capitol, when my mind just could not understand what my eyes and ears were witnessing. There, too, there were people who wanted to take someone, the vice president, and kill him.

And doesn’t it seem tragic that even back then, money would lie at the centre of this story? For thirty pieces of silver, Judas is bought to betray his teacher. 

Again, my mind does not grasp what it hears: Judas will betray his teacher during the Passover meal, an intimate gathering of Jesus and his disciples and his teacher already knows who will do so and what will happen:
The Jesus in the gospel of Matthew may not have the piercing clarity that Jesus in John’s gospel possesses, but he still knows ahead of time what is to happen to him. That he directs the disciples to find a certain man in the city of Jerusalem, to tell him that Jesus’ time is near, is stunning. That Jesus then knows who will betray him, though he does not identify Judas; rather, his conversation with Judas allows for Judas to fall into a verbal trap and identify himself, makes the heart ache. Jesus’s fate is a death foretold and makes one think of words that presage his death from other gospels—e.g., the gospel of Luke recounts how Simeon tells Mary at the time of the presentation of Jesus that he is ‘destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.’

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What to do with the disparate emotions of grief, disbelief, horror, fear and despair that this reading evokes? At the most simple level, one cannot avoid them. It does little good to walk around them and pretend they are not there. One has to walk through them, through the valley of the shadow of death to come out the other side. This journey is precisely what Holy Week invites us to do, to go to the depths in order to arrive at the Easter promise of resurrection.

Perhaps grief is the strongest of the above emotions that people feel these days. We have spent a year out of time, in pandemic time, where the world as we knew it, has been turned upside-down. Last year, in my thinking, the country’s leadership betrayed our trust by not taking the pandemic seriously and by sending out a message that it would ‘miraculously go away.’ Instead, the death toll kept mounting and mounting. Even as we seem to be getting a handle on the pandemic with 1/3 of the country now vaccinated at least once, the pandemic still has the upper hand as it continues to mutate into more infectious strains. We are so close to the finish line and we seem on the verge of blowing it. We have some much to grieve.

In a strange way, we are the disciples huddled in that room at a Passover supper, not certain of what will happen next, or who will turn our lives further upside-down. We do not know in a crowd who has been vaccinated and who has not; who will spread the virus that will perhaps land one of us in hospital. We don’t know what systemic betrayals might still be out there. Like the confused disciples at that last supper, asking, ‘Surely not I, Lord?,’ we struggle to understand with what we know.

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Perhaps this year is not the year to delve deeply into our participation in betrayal and systemic evil. The pandemic is too present and sapping our energy.

Instead, on this Holy Wednesday, may the gospel text lead you to contemplate where your deep griefs lie, and how you can embrace them, rather than avoid them. If there is a loss close to your heart, acknowledge it and then give yourself permission to say: ‘It’s OK that you’re not OK’ (also the title of a very helpful book by Megan Devine). Perhaps you need to step back from the daily news and the pandemic (though get a vaccination because that is like resurrection emotionally). If making a confession prior to Easter will help clear up the soul, find a person who can hear it with compassion.

It may have been night when Judas left the upper room but, as we know well, the depths of the night, while awesome, can also be the hardest, yet the sun will always rise. So wait for the sun to rise because there, too, the Son will rise.

Tuesday in Holy Week

 Tuesday in Holy Week
30 March 2021

O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Isaiah 49.1-7; Psalm 71.1-14; 1 Corinthians 1.18-31; Mark 11.15-19

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Perhaps it is where we are in week 54 of Coronatide, but today’s readings from Isaiah and the gospel today speak to me of weariness. 

The prophet sighs to God:

But I said, ‘I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the Lord,
and my reward with my God.’

And Jesus’ wrath at the temple as he overturns the tables of the money-changers has to have come from a place of utter frustration and weariness that, after all the time he had been teaching, these injustices were still happening. 

We know too well how frustrated the prophets and sometimes Jesus could get. 

Isaiah speaks to his people during their exile in Babylon or Egypt or remaining as the poorest of the poor in their own land. This long period of alienation, brought on by a sense of betrayal of their God, who had established a covenant with David that was supposed to go on for ever, was bitter. Yet they could work and travel, as long as they were obedient to Babylon, so one might argue that it was not a period of extreme suffering. Nonetheless, the people did seek for a meaning of their faith. 

Toward the end of the exile, Isaiah appears with words of compassion: Comfort, comfort, you my people. The prophet, the Servant will restore the remnant of the people, those who have survived and those who have been faithful to Israel.

Yet, this particular moment, the prophet expresses an understood weariness.

Likewise with Jesus.

Prior to his riding into Jerusalem on a colt (as per the gospel of Mark) and overturning the tables in the temple, Jesus has cursed a fig tree that it bear no fruit. To imagine Jesus condemning a living thing to suffer seems bizarre and against what we would think of Jesus’ teachings. Likewise, his furor at the money changers  in the temple seems out of character. Some suggest that he is overturning the old in order to create space for the new. Certainly he was reacting to the injustice of the money system that prevented people from worshipping if they did not have money to change in order to purchase birds and animals for sacrifice. 

In this discussion, I am more interested in Jesus’ state of mind as portrayed in the gospel than the why—that is for another meditation. Jesus seems exceedingly cranky and weary of it all.

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And aren’t we also weary as a world right now? 

The soul is weary.

Weary of rising numbers of cases of COVID-19.
Weary of a possible fourth surge.
Weary of the uncertainty that still faces us.
Weary of having to wear a mask.
Weary of having to stay hunkered down.
Weary of…
The soul is weary.

On a personal front I am 

Weary (and angry to the point of wanting to overturn tables of injustice the way Jesus did at the temple) of the forthcoming legislative bills that will restrict the freedom of people to vote, and bills that want to prevent trans people from being fully themselves, and all the assaults on the common good. 

Like the people of Israel grousing and complaining about their time in the desert, we are weary of so much.

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In moments of despair, I always turn to the psalms because I know they express the breadth of emotions. The psalmist laments, despairs, but usually manages to work themself to a place of serene hope in God. Even Psalm 22, which in the old lectionary we read on Palm Sunday and still do at the end of the Maundy Thursday liturgy during the stripping of the altar and church and, again on Good Friday, ends on a hopeful note.

Psalm 71 today contains that same impulse: 

1 In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; *
let me never be ashamed.
2 In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free; *
incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; *
you are my crag and my stronghold.

These three verses echo Psalm 31, which is appointed in Compline and is a psalm of confidence. Whether you pray these three verses of the first three verses of Psalm 31, I find they always provide a gentle way to close out the day.

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On this Tuesday in Holy Week, perhaps your heart calls you to write a psalm of lament. 

Perhaps it calls you to read Psalm 71 or 31.

Perhaps it calls you to pray Compline—at 8.00 PM tonight, one can join the Green Mountain Abbey for Compline. (1)

Perhaps it calls you to listen to Simon and Garfunkels’ song, now 50 years old, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ that holds its roots in gospel song. (2)

Or perhaps your heart calls you to listen to the Taizé Chant, Nada te turbe. (3)

As the late Bishop Barbara Clementine Harris often said, ‘We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.’ We are called to be people of hope, not optimism, but a radical, life-giving hope.

Wherever your heart leads you tonight, confide in God’s ever-present love and the knowledge that all shall be well.


NOTES
1 https://diovermont.org/2021/03/03/online-prayer-with-bishop-shannon/
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwRt6J32o
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go1-BoDD7CI