Diocese of New Jersey | Bishop Councell

The liturgy for Holy Saturday (page 283) must surely be one of the least-used pages of The Book of Common Prayer, right down there with the Ratification (page 8), the Preface (pages 9-11) and the Tables and Rules for Finding the Date of Easter Day, including the formula for finding the Golden Number (pages 880-881).

I have only ever led this service with a few members of the Altar Guild as they began to prepare the sanctuary for the observance of Easter. Still, today is an important day because it affirms an article in the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into hell” (Rite One); or, “He descended to the dead” (Rite Two).

On this day we recall that Jesus was laid in the tomb and rested on the Sabbath. I’m not certain what kind of rest this was, however, since two verses in the First Letter of Peter tell us that Jesus, while among the dead, preached the gospel to them.

He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison. . . (3:18b – 19).

For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead. . . (4:6).

The language here is challenging, but the intention is clear: the saving work of Christ is intended for all of humanity and not only for Jesus’ contemporaries. It is offered to those who came before and for those who come after his earthly ministry.

Great theological minds have wrestled with this creedal affirmation. Martin Luther saw Jesus’ descent into hell as the invasion of Satan’s realm and the beginning of his triumphal procession. Easter began in hell, as it were. John Calvin emphasized that hell is complete estrangement from God and that Jesus’ descent was the deepest point of the humiliation of the Son of God. Both of these approaches affirm how far Christ’s saving, liberating work goes and that no person is beyond Christ’s saving embrace. (See the discussion of this point in The Faith That We Confess, by Jan Milic Lochman.)

So Holy Saturday really is a bridge between Christ’s death and resurrection, between hell and heaven, between Good Friday and Easter. “Like a bridge over troubled waters” (Simon and Garfunkle), today proclaims that there is no where that Christ will not go to bring the good news of salvation. He never obeys the cautionary phrase, “Don’t go there.” He wants to go there, as R.S. Thomas wrote in his poem, “The Coming.”

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There: crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.

a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
; On

Dear reader, by the grace of God we have made our way through these 40 days from ashes to Easter. May our celebration of the Day of Resurrection and the great 50 days of Eastertide be filled with joy. May our God grant that “we so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light.” (BCP, page 285)

+GEC

Day 39 of Lent: Good Friday, 10 April 2009

Good Friday.

Those two words form a sermon for today. Maybe they are all we need. Really. The day we did the worst that we could do (“Crucify him! Crucify him!”) to the best that God can offer (“This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom my soul delights”) we call “Good Friday.”

You know that, in order to call this day, “Good,” there’s got to be more to the story. There is. It happened on Sunday. That’s the day when God bested our worst. Another two-word sermon suggests itself: “Sunday’s coming!” Or, as a friend is famous for saying: “Joy, anyway.”

An intensely powerful and awesomely beautiful line from the ancient hymn known as the Exsultet gives us the foundation for calling this Friday Good:

How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son. (The Book of Common Prayer, page 287)

The terrible truth of this day is that we slaves took the Son, the Prince of Glory, and put him to death on a cross of shame. That makes this Friday the most sorrowful day, ever.

And yet, Christ’s passion had a purpose. The purpose of Jesus’ death was that we might be reconciled with God and each other and come alive in Christ. In God’s hands the instrument of a shameful death for him became the means of life for us. We can never look at the Cross in one dimension only. This Friday is Good. How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God. . .

Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, once wrote about the cross of Jesus as being for us “an object both of sorrow and of joy: sorrow, because this is what we do, day after day; joy, because at the very moment we bang in the nails he forgives us. No matter how hard we try, we cannot kill God’s love for us. He forgives and forgives and forgives. And there is no more terrible word in any language than that, once you feel its meaning and its cost. There is no weapon effective against that unwearying love. There is nothing we can do against it. . . . His cross will have the victory. His love will win. He knew it. It cost him dear, but he knew it. That is why he said: ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32).”

One verse from one of the greatest passion hymns says it all:

In they most bitter passion my heart to share doth cry,
with thee for my salvation upon the cross do die.
Ah, keep my heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath,
to mourn thee, well beloved, yet thank thee for thy death.

+GEC

Day 38 of Lent: Maundy Thursday, 9 April 2009

Last night Jewish children all over the world asked the question at the Passover Seder, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

Maundy Thursday is a different sort of night. It is named for the new commandment — mandatum novum — that Jesus gave his disciples on the final night of his life: “I give you a new commandment,” he said, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).

This is the night in which Jesus was betrayed. Before tomorrow is over, an innocent man will die a horrible death. What did Christ do for his closest friends as he ate with them on that last night, within hours of their betrayal and abandonment of him? “He loved them to the end” (13:1). Totally. Utterly. Completely. To the max, as we used to say.

In his love for them, he left them an example, a sermon in deed. He took the role of the gentile slave and washed their feet. He took not their best selves, but their road weary selves — the less presentable, less polished, scrubbed and respectable parts. He took their feet in his hands and accepted them, held them, bathed and tenderly toweled them off.

Christ invites us to let him love the not-so-acceptable pieces of our lives — the corns, the calluses, the warts, the deformities; all the parts that we would rather crop out. When Peter protested against the foot-washing that Jesus offered, Jesus told him, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing” (John 13:8b, The Message). Christ says to you and to me, “Unless you allow me to hold those parts of you in my hands, and to care tenderly for them, unless you trust me to hold with gentleness and dignity those parts of you that you would rather cover over and hide, unless you allow me to serve you — the real you behind all the masks and the poses — you can have no part in what I am doing. I accept all of you, I love all of you, I heal all of you, I redeem all of you. Trust me.”

Does that speak to you, as it did to Peter? Are you reluctant to allow Christ to serve the undeserving parts of you? Are you still striving to deserve his love? Do you really only want the love that you deserve? Would you rather that Christ do it your way, like Peter?

One summer during my seminary years I worked in a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. During the first week of the course, all of us students participated in an orientation program that included serving as orderlies each morning. We helped patients with their basic needs and comforts, assisting them in various ways to get ready for the day.

As we soon discovered, our morning duties included providing sponge baths for our patients. I remember caring for one elderly man who needed a lot of assistance. I was quite nervous about giving him a bath. In fact, I dreaded the prospect of it. Nevertheless, I assembled the pan of hot water, soap, wash cloth and towel. I started to wash his back. As tense as I was, he was completely at ease. I had never given anyone a bath before and I was certain that I was doing it all wrong. My patient, however, was relaxed and unselfconscious. He not only accepted the fumbling ministrations of an anxious 21-year-old, he seemed to be satisfied. Then, as now, I wanted the grace to accept grace, whenever and however it is offered, as this man did. I never want to be caught in thinking that I should only accept the love that I’ve earned.

When Jesus had finished washing their feet, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?” Do we? Whenever people have accepted Christ’s answer to that question, they have wanted to find a way to serve others. It would have been a grand gesture and a great honor for any one of the disciples to wash the feet of Christ. But it’s not Christ’s feet, or the feet of some great saint, some worthy person, that we are called to wash. His example is given to us so that we might wash another sinner’s feet, for Christ’s sake.

In 1989, Mother Theresa gave a radio interview in Phoenix. In a private moment off the air, the announcer asked her if there was anything he could do for her. He expected that she might ask for some media help, a contribution or maybe a list of potential donors. Instead, Mother Theresa said, “Yes, there is. Find somebody nobody else loves, and love them.”

Why did Jesus come from God? It was, according to John, to love the unloved to the end. It was to wash and feed and serve his friends, that they might become his body and serve as they have been served.

Why is our worship on this night different from all other nights? Because it is an unfinished liturgy. We have no closure tonight: no blessing, no procession, no dismissal, and no postlude. Tonight the Church says to us: “Here is the washing of Christ. Now, go and wash one another’s feet, for Christ’s sake. Here is the Body of Christ. Now, go and be the Body of Christ, wherever you are. Write your own dismissal, but get going. Find somebody nobody else loves and love them, as you are loved, in Jesus’ name.”

+GEC

Day 37 of Lent: Wednesday in Holy Week, 8 April 2009

One of his disciples — the one whom Jesus loved — was reclining next to him. John 13:23

So, after receiving the piece of bread, [Judas] immediately went out. And it was night. John 13:30

Judas and John: the betrayer of Jesus and the beloved of Jesus. What caused Judas to hand Jesus over to the authorities? Was it the presence of Satan (13:27)? Did Judas, a thief (12:6), do it for the money? Or was Judas a master manipulator who tried to force Jesus’ hand? Did he perhaps expect that, once betrayed, Jesus would do something dramatic to incite the crowds, his followers and friends to start the revolution that would overthrow the occupying forces of Rome? Maybe Judas believed that his betrayal would not harm Jesus so much as set in motion the events that would bring about the kingdom.

There are as many theories about Judas and his motivations as there are commentators. But, in any case, it seems likely that Judas was doing what we all do, all the time: attempting to control and use Jesus for his own purposes. He did not ask, “What would Jesus do?” Rather, “What would Jesus do for me?”

No wonder John adds this detail to his account of Judas’ departure from Jesus, to betray him: “And it was night” (13:30). No matter what time of day it is, when we betray Jesus by attempting to manipulate or use or control him as the means to our ends, it is night.

“Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee? ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee” (Hymn 158, The Hymnal 1982).

But there is another character in the Gospel appointed for today (John 13:21-32). It is “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It is thought that his was John’s way of referring to himself. He portrays himself as one who reclined next to Jesus; right next to the breast, the bosom, the heart of Jesus (13:23).

Just as, in some sense or another, each of us is Judas, each of us is the beloved disciple as well. As Martin Smith writes in A Season for the Spirit, “I am called to live, I am called to pray, ‘close to the breast of Jesus.’ There is no one and nothing between me and the heart of Christ.”

Some years ago I had an important decision to make. Because it would determine the shape of the rest of my life, it weighed heavily on me. While on retreat praying about the matter I found a chapel with an icon of this scene in John 13. While gazing at the icon my eyes were drawn to the intimacy that is depicted between our Lord and the beloved disciple. As I contemplated that closeness, my prayer changed. I came to want that close connection with Jesus more than I wanted Jesus to tell me how to make the right decision. I no longer wanted to use Jesus as a means for my end. I came to know and believe that, as long as I was next to Jesus – close enough to feel his heartbeat – I would be all right, no matter what decisions I was facing.

The Son is in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18) and I — a disciple whom Jesus also loves — am invited to abide in the bosom of Christ, close enough to know and feel his joy and his pain. Where else should a friend of Jesus be?

+GEC

Day 36 of Lent: Tuesday in Holy Week, 7 April 2009

The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak;
     They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne;|
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
     And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.

     Edward Shillito, Jesus of the Scars

One of the treasures of my library is a book entitled, The Cross of Christ, by John Stott. Every Holy Week for the past twenty years I have returned to Stott’s exploration of the person and work of Jesus Christ, especially in his atonement on the cross. In his final chapter (“Suffering and Glory”), he attempts to answer the question, “How does the cross speak to us in our pain?” Stott offers the following points.

First, the cross of Christ is a stimulus to patient endurance.
Secondly, the cross of Christ is a path to mature holiness.
Thirdly, the cross of Christ is the symbol of suffering service.
Fourthly, the cross of Christ is the hope of final glory.
Fifthly, the cross of Christ is the ground of a reasonable faith.
Finally, the cross of Christ is the proof of God’s solidary love.

I have no time for any theology that is not centered in the seriousness of sin and our separation from God as well as the costly atonement that Christ accomplished, once and for all, upon the cross, to reconcile us to God. I am not at all interested in a portrait of Jesus that edits out the realities of his passion, agony, abandonment and tears; or that offers no convincing hope of the glory of the resurrection. I am in complete agreement with John Stott when, in the final pages of The Cross of Christ, he writes, “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”

My favorite hymn is, “When I survey the wondrous cross,” (474 in The Hymnal 1982). The words, by Isaac Watts, take us right to the heart of the power of God’s sacrificial love, as seen in Jesus’ passion and death upon the cross. Watt’s final verse bears witness to the grace of God, working through the cross, to change our life, our vision and our values and those of every human being. For once we glimpse God’s love, so amazing, so divine and poured out for us on the hard wood of the cross, we want to give our soul, our life and our all to Him who gave Himself for us.

Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

+GEC

Day 35 of Lent: Monday in Holy Week, 6 April 2009

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (John 12:3)

A new rector came to a parish. Things were going well, except for one feature of the rector’s ministry: she was a little too “high church” for this particular parish. Her ritual gestures and ceremonial were thought by many of the members to be too much.

Finally, some one spoke to the cleric. “You’re a good priest and I’m glad that you’re here, but your manner of leading worship is, well, a little too extreme.”

The new rector thought for a moment and said, “When I consider all that our Lord Jesus Christ has done for me, nothing I do for him could ever be too extreme.”

Mary’s offering of a pound of pure nard was extreme, indeed. It was a most extravagant gift, worth nearly a year’s wages for a laborer. Yet, Jesus accepts Mary’s lavish action as a preparation for his burial. John’s note on the house being filled with the fragrance of the perfume puts us in mind of the verse from which a very popular offertory sentence is taken: “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). His sacrifice is extravagant and the priceless offering of his death fills the whole Church and the entire world with a richest fragrance.

When we truly observe Holy Week, it may appear to others to be too extreme an investment of our time and talent and energy. It may cause some to wonder whether our gifts shouldn’t rather be directed toward the poor and oppressed. But Jesus himself observed Passover. He seems pleased to welcome both our personal devotion and social action. He has confidence in his disciples, that a spontaneous act of tender, loving care for Jesus will not distract them from ongoing support for the poor. Would that we had so many members giving so much in Jesus’ name and for Jesus’ sake that the world were astonished by our extravagance.

Betty is a long-time member of St. George’s Church in Riverside, California. She is deeply committed to the parish, in any number of ways. Her service and her sacrifice are known to all of her friends. One day someone remarked that it seemed like, whenever she drove by St. George’s, Betty’s car was always in the parking lot. “What would that church do without you?” the friend remarked. Betty replied, “That’s not the question. The question is, ‘What would I do without my church?’”

What would any of us do without the fragrant offering of Christ’s death?

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world. (BCP, page 281)

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