Friday - Sunday

These two days, Good Friday and Easter, serve as an insuperable center for our understanding of who we are as Christians. We are at once informed by the actions of Friday and what they meant two days later because of that day's actions. Referring to one iwthout the other is not only useless, it is in many ways dishonest.

Several years ago, I defended Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ to my friends. I thought he had every right to make a movie that told only the story of Good Friday. Just because he told the first half of the story, however, that doesn't mean that he has told a sufficient story. It's like following the story of Frodo and the ring but ignoring the journey to Mount Doom, or talking about Spider-man in reference to the death of Uncle Ben, while ignoring his internal struggle of what to do with his new powers.

On Friday of Holy Week, Jesus died. He was executed in a rebel's way (crucifixion) and his body was laid in a tomb. That was the first day. On the third day (Sunday), he had left the tomb. Mary Magdalene and two other women had come to see him, but the stone had been rolled away and Jesus was gone. Jesus appeared to Mary and told her to go ahead and tell the disciples that he would be with them in Galilee (in Luke's gospel, he says he will meet them in Jerusalem).

What does this story mean to you? How does hearing it again affect/change the way you see Jesus? Do you ever think about what the death of Jesus meant to the disciples and the other followers (including Mary)?

Jesus was followed by many people, including women. His ministry was (and is) to help those that aren't seen in our society. This was very appealing to women, as they had little power in either the Jewish or Roman cultures. Who are people that you have seen that need your help? Who are the people that need to be heard? What can you do to make that happen?

Finally...the beginning

It is hard to think of Maundy Thursday as anything but the beginning of the story. Mostly because we fast forward through all of the important parts that are full of talking to get to the action. And as far as action goes, Thursday's got it.

On Wednesday, Jesus is annointed. Thursday, he gets up and tells two of his disciples to go find a good place to share the Passover meal. Then they all meet for Passover, the most important Jewish holiday. Jesus, in sharing what we know as the Last Supper provides us with such rich imagery and gives us the language we use in our Eucharist. Three of the gospels show Jesus comparing the bread and wine to his flesh and his blood. These have become such powerful images for us.

John's gospel has a unique element that isn't in any other book of the Bible: a footwashing. Jesus asks to wash the feet of the disciples, demonstrating the way he saw leadership: to lead, you must serve. He was their rabbi, their teacher. He was "supposed" to tell them to wash his feet, and they would have scrambled to be the one to do it. But instead, Jesus asks to wash their feet--showing the disciples, and us today--what it really means to do what God has called us to do.

Jesus also does a strange thing and points out that one of the twelve will betray him to the authorities. We know who that is to be: Judas. So that night, he brings some soldiers into the Garden of Gethsemane and has Jesus arrested. Jesus is brought before the high priest of the temple and condemned to death--not something that a Jewish high priest would ordinarily do. At the sight of the soldiers, the disciples run away and don't appear in the story again until Easter.

Maundy Thursday is tough day for us. It would be easy to pin the blame here on Judas and on Jewish leaders that had Jesus arrested and killed by the Romans the following day. This would make us feel better, but pulls us away from the truth.

We could take this as an opportunity to condemn ourselves, saying that we are all responsible for Jesus's death--not much of a better option, either--because it wasn't people that loved him that had him killed.

So what do we make of this time? What confusions do you have about this story? Where does this leave you for Good Friday?

I find it incredibly reassuring that Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples and friends. The meal, shared in that community, was Jesus's opportunity to 'hammer home', if you will, the ideas Jesus had for us. For how we are to live with one another.

In what ways can you show leadership by serving others? Do you have any experiences in which something you've done for someone else "caught on"? Sometimes it is opening a door for someone and sometimes it is much larger than that.

Lastly, how do you see yourself preparing for Good Friday?

Holy Week

Man, where'd it go?

It's Wednesday of Holy Week. If we retraced Jesus's steps, it would be this, essentially: Three days ago, he entered Jerusalem with his peasant entourage on a colt to the excitement of the crowd. Two days ago, he came to the temple and shut it down, keeping the machinery of business from running. Yesterday, he came back to the temple to teach an ever-expanding crowd about the amazing things we could be doing if only we listened to God. The truth is, yesterday, Jesus was a rock star. He was standing out in the open-air entrance to the temple just a couple of days before the holiest day of the year in a space bigger than three football fields, surrounded by cheering fans, doing what? Trashing the temple's chief priests.

Wednesday, however, is different. Jesus spent it, not with the adoring crowds, but with his disciples and select few. The main action for the day is done by a woman whose name was never recorded. She anointed Jesus in advance of his death and burial. She understands what Jesus is talking about in a way that none of the disciples did, and he commends her for it.

Think of the unpopular people you know. Have you ever seen a true act of kindness from them? Have you ever watched someone do something that caused you to say "I should've thought of that?" How did that make you feel? Do you ever think about it now, when faced with similar situations?

The example of the "unnamed woman" is one of true discipleship--but the main thing is that it shows us how to love. That we can be so incredibly giving and generous for its own sake; we don't need to expect anything in return.

What can you do today to prepare Jesus for burial? What can you do today to be there for someone you love?

PS--Here's an article I found that can liven up what we're really in the midst of: Into Holy Week.
Read it and enjoy!

Not-so-happy anniversary

We have now been in Iraq for five full years.

Here is a Collect For Peace (BCP, p. 258)

Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquillity your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Curate's Corner for April

This is a preview of April's newsletter article:

Last month’s question was “to fast or not to fast”. This is based on our deep-rooted need to better ourselves and atone for mistakes. I don’t really know where that need comes from, but I recognize that it’s there in most of us. In that way, Lent becomes a time of fasting.

Then we run into Holy Week, which often feels like a sprint (or for some of us, a marathon disguised as a sprint). But this disguises the mysteries we experience—or fail to experience—during this one week of the year. So here it is:

Who is Jesus—I mean, really?

The last few weeks we have been bombarded with the politics of race and the gospel in the YouTube-centered circulation of videos of various sermons preached by the pastor of a presidential candidate (Sen. Barack Obama). These videos have been labeled a great number of things: inflammatory, divisive, angry, and even hateful. But did any of us listen to the whole clips? Did we pay attention to what this now retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ actually said? Did you listen to his arguments? He said that violence inspires violence. Abuse of anyone is incompatible with God’s Kingdom. Because the U.S. is preoccupied with abusing others without and within, we don’t embody the Kingdom of God. I couldn’t agree more.

Lent, and especially Holy Week is about the Kingdom of God. In my experience, I have found the church most confused by Holy Week. We can all agree that it is central to our faith. We can all agree that it is something that we ritually celebrate with profound necessity. But somewhere along the way, we made the story less important than the ritual. Jesus’s movement to Jerusalem and time in the city (including death and resurrection) make up more than half of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus’s teachings about the Kingdom of God, so central to his crucifixion, were the exclusive teachings of Jesus’s final months in that gospel. For us, however, we devote one week out of 52. And even then, it is dissected into questions about Jesus’s nature as “Son of God” and what that means in relationship to God, and what our sins have to do with it all. In fact, it seems to be the one week in which we avoid listening to what Jesus actually said. As Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, “it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth (Nickel and Dimed, pp. 68-69).”

The public criticism of Obama’s former spiritual advisor is not only unwarranted, but unjust. His preaching reveals both a strong understanding of Jesus’s message on the path to Jerusalem, and a passion for the justice that Jesus represents. As we revel in the glory of the risen Christ, take time to be that agent of Christly change in the community and examine who Jesus challenged us to be: the present disciples that help God realize his Kingdom in the here and now.

Shalom,

The Rev. Drew Downs