Tuesday in Holy Week: The storm before the calm

Today it rained buckets. Our staff meeting went through the details for the next five days. Do we have enough candles? Does anyone remember where we hid the towels for the foot washing Thursday? Any last minute music changes? And on and on the day went.

At noon I took a break for the Holy Eucharist led by the Rev. Ed Tourangeau. He preached about courage. I enjoy his gentle style.

We were no sooner done than the bishop's secretary, Amy Williams, came through the door holding a box with the supplies (oil, programs) for the Maundy Thursday reaffirmation of ordination vows service with Bishop Gulick (11 am -- come if you can). We went to lunch, then it was back to our respective to-do list.

Tomorrow we have our regular Community Night dinner, and Joe Lenow will be preaching. Joe is a very gifted PhD student who is also preparing for the priesthood. Do come if you are in the neighborhood.

May your Holy Week be blessed.

Holy Week: The palms are drying out, the days are wearing on

The palms from last Sunday still adorn our worship space, but they are drying out and will soon disappear. The Cross will soon be veiled in black, but not yet.

St. Paul’s at mid-holy Week is a bustle of activity. Extra hands on Tuesday were cleaning floors. The office staff prepared newcomer packets for Sunday and attended to a thousand other details. I tried to stay out of the way by plugging away on a sermon in my office.

At noon, Father Nik led the Holy Eucharist in the Chapel. He read from a long gospel passage about Jesus teaching in the Temple, and then he bid us to sit in silence for a time to simply be in the presence of the Lord and relax for a few moments.

I welcomed the quiet respite for a time. My eyes focused on the palms behind the chapel altar (in the photograph at right). They look so dry now. The week is wearing on.

When we were through, I went back to my office to work on my sermon. But not getting much creative traction, I looked at my Facebook page. It was ablaze with red-and-pink equality icons.

Many of my friends and relatives had bannered their Facebook pages with the icon because The U.S. Supreme Court was hearing arguments Tuesday and Wednesday about whether gay people should have the same right to marry as straight people.

I’ve long supported marriage rights for all people – gay or straight. Marriage is for those who can make a serious commitment in love for life to their partner. Marriage, as the Book of Common Prayer states, is first and foremost for the “mutual joy” and support of those who make this commitment. Sexual orientation is beside the point, or ought to be.

There is nothing in the Bible that puts limits on God’s call to love-based marriage, but there is a great deal of bias in our culture that is against it. Our culture is shifting, and for the better. We’ll see if the Supreme Court agrees. I changed my profile picture to the red-and-pink equality icon; it seemed like the holy thing to do this Holy Week.

The week is wearing on. And all things will be made new (and sermons will be written).

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Tuesday in Holy Week: Healing

The theme for today is healing. At our 12:15 pm Holy Eucharist, Pastor Heather Warren preached a wonderful homily about how God turns our expectations upside down so that we might experience the indwelling of God. We had prayers for healing, and I could use some of that now. I've been fighting off a throat infection since Saturday that is stealing my voice.

I went to the doc this afternoon; he said the bug is floating around Charlottesville and he's had it too. So he fixed me up with a few drugs and sent me home for rest, plenty of water and all that.

So dear readers, I am resting up. Please have a very blessed Holy Week!

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Prayer for the sick

O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and grant to your servants (NAMES) the help of your power, that their sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Holy Week: To sit at a table, eat a piece of fish

I kept reminding myself all day: It's only Tuesday. . . It's only Tuesday. . .

We had a productive staff meeting, plotting our way through the rest of Holy Week and Easter. The clergy, music leaders and acolyte leaders then held a walk-through in the church, going through all of the details from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday. Do we have enough candles for the congregation at the Great Vigil? Check.

Does anyone know where the candelabra for Tenebrae is stashed? How about towels for Maundy Thursday? Let's go look.

Meanwhile, John in the office slogged his way through detail after detail in the programs, rubric upon rubric. He had a few questions. We needed all of our collective brains to come up with answers. On went the day.

At noon we paused for our Tuesday Holy Eucharist. All of the St. Paul's clergy attended. We are the church, right? And we are supposed to be praying, that is what all these details are supposed to be about, right? The Rev. Dr. Heather Warren was celebrant and preacher, and she gave us a few needed moments of laughs and prayer. Then it was back to writing sermons, proofing programs, looking at covers. I began to feel like a movie director looking for "high production value."

So I went to the hospital to visit a very sick parishioner. I stayed about an hour. We visited, and I was reminded again that Holy Week for some is more than about production value; it is about living on the precipice between life and death. And it comes to all of us, sooner or later.

Then it was back to the office and a few more details. My printer broke down. Time to go home.

It was Tuesday in Holy Week, a day that seems like the fulcrum for all that comes next in Holy Week. The Great Three Days will soon be here but not yet. Today, it's only Wednesday.

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Among the most fascinating poets I have ever met is Franz Wright, who won a Pulitzer in 2004.   He is the son of another Pulitzer prize recipient, James Wright, and Franz's mother is a very close friend of mine. A few years ago, we got him to read a few of his poems at our parish in Sacramento from his book, God's Silence. This poem says more about Holy Week than most sermons I've ever heard (or preached) and with many fewer words:

FROM A LINE BY REVERDY
By Franz Wright


To sit at a table with Jesus
and eat a piece of fish
after his death, I don't think I could
bear it. But today I am following
in the blue stained-glass footsteps of a doctor who works with doomed children,
of the old poet, the rays in my eyes
walking to Heaven
which is not far--
a little face turns to the window

and it is there.

The lull in Holy Week and the rock of our rescue

Tuesday in Holy Week feels like the lull before the storm. Palm Sunday is behind us, but the Great Three Days is not yet here. Perhaps my chief accomplishment of the day was cleaning up the Paschal Candle and attaching the "2010" gold lettering to it. It will be lit next on Saturday evening at the Great Vigil of Easter.

On Tuesday, we had a lengthy "walk through" with key participants for each of the services beginning with Maundy Thursday. There are many details to remember, and some of it is still evolving.

The Rev. Dr. Ann Willms, our associate rector, was the celebrant at our noonday Eucharist. She spoke of how the apostle Paul "boasted" of the Cross. It got me thinking about the sermons I have yet to write. Holy Week is first and last about the death of Jesus long ago, and what that means to us now. It is about how Jesus walks with us into our own valley of the shadow of death and brings us out into the light of Easter and into the place of salvation.

Recently I've been using Robert Alter's translation of the psalms in my morning prayers. His language has sharpened my understanding of the meaning of salvation. Psalm 95 is used each Friday in Lent to open Morning Prayer, and I've been using Alter's version rather than the prayer book version. Here is the opening line from Alter's translation of Psalm 95:

Come, let us sing gladly to the LORD, let us shout out to the rock our rescue.

Rescue. That word is usually rendered "salvation" in English translations. But rescue is closer to the Hebrew meaning of salvation, and Alter's translation captures it perfectly. The verb rescue is active; it comes with the hope that God will find us and snatch us away from whatever harms or hurts us. Rescue does not have to wait until the afterlife, but comes to us now. That is the boast of the Cross.

Collect for Wednesday in Holy Week

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.

Liturgical notes: Some have asked about the use of red on Palm Sunday and the days of Holy Week. Red is the traditional color for days remembering martyrs, and because Jesus is truly the Church's first martyr it is appropriate to mark the week with red. Red has long been used throughout the Episcopal Church in Holy Week, and again on Pentecost. The red chasuble (the priestly tunic) used on Palm Sunday was made by The Rev. Deacon Anne Scupholme last year as a gift to St. Paul's. We will put away the red on Maundy Thursday when we strip the altar and store all the linens and clerical stoles until the Great Vigil of Easter when we will use white.

Book reference: The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, by Robert Alter, 2007, W.W. Norton & Co.

Postcard art of Glacier Point, Yosemite

Does Jesus mean everyone? Tuesday in Holy Week

It is the holiest of all weeks, but the less-than-holy routine of the church still plods along as it always does. This morning, shortly before our noon Eucharist, I got a call from a sales representative  from a well-known religious supply company (yes, for those unfamiliar with the hum-drum of church business, there are companies that specialize in selling everything from candles to wafers, vestments to Sunday school booklets, and they have sales people who make blind calls). 

I have talked with many such religious supply sales people over the years, and usually I can get

by with asking them to send me a catalog or a website link.

But this salesman pressed a little harder than most, and he had a hint of despair in his voice. The church supply business is hurting like all businesses these days, and our conversation ended with his plea that I support "Christian business" because "that will make our economy recover."

I have to say the end of our conversation left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The company he represents is a fine company, their items are of high quality, so I am not naming the company. But it seems to me that the point Jesus tries to make over and over is that he comes for everyone, and salvation (recovery?) belongs to all, not just those carrying the label "Christian." If I understand anything at all about being a follower of Jesus, it has something to do with breaking out of tribal loyalties. 

And so off I went to our noon Eucharist pondering again the meaning of being a Christian, mixed with my thoughts about last night's wonderful conversation with the Shalom Group on the topic of Holy Saturday and Jesus's going into Hell. We had 18 people at the noon Eucharist in the chapel (see photo above), and I sat in silence still thinking about all of this. 

The gospel lesson for today (John 12: 20-36) is one of the long discourses where Jesus tries to explain the meaning of his impending death. It struck me as I heard it that today's lesson has to directly to do with who is included (everyone), and how they are included (by the Cross of Good Friday and Holy Saturday): Jesus descends to the dead to free everyone from death. And by everyone, he means everyone. Hear again his words...

"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

All people are included, all. There are no boundaries to the events of Holy Week, as there are no boundaries to the power of God's grace and mercy. 

Tonight at 7:30 pm we will return to this sacred space for the mystical haunting chants of Taize, led by University of Virginia students in our Canterbury Fellowship. I hope you will join us.

Tuesday in Holy Week: The Cross in sight

Last night Lori and I shared mac-and-cheese with the members of our young adult Shalom Group, and they were most intrigued by the swirl of events that is compressed into Holy Week. We talked especially about Holy Saturday, and how Jesus goes into the depths of Hell to defeat death. We are not yet there in our walk through this week, but the Cross is definitely in sight.

Tuesday in Holy Week has a tone of foreshadowing Good Friday. Today we hear the same gospel lesson (John 12: 20-36) that we heard on the Fifth Sunday of Lent about how following Jesus to the Cross means following Jesus into serving others. Look for the Cross of servicehood today, and if you can, join us for our noon Eucharist. 

The mosaic cross in the photo is near the High Altar at St. Paul's. Look for it the next time you are there. It is easy to miss, just as our opportunities for simple service are easy to miss. 

Here is the Collect for Tuesday in Holy Week. It is about the Cross:

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.