Here's a story for you. Once upon a time, a Goddess of the Dawn named Eostre found a bird whose wings froze over the Winter, and helped it by turning it into either a rabbit or a hare. Now, neither rabbits nor hares lay eggs, but this one, having been a bird, could, and there you have the Eostre Bunny. Or if you speak German, a hare, the Osterhase. Eostre had a festival in her honour, and Venerable Bede, a Benedictine English monk writing in the 8th Century in De temporum ratione (On the calculating of time), said she had the whole month named after her, Eostre Month, Easter month -- Eostur-monath in his original, a Latinised version of the many variants on her name -- the lunar month corresponding to the Roman month of opening, Aprilis, or April as we say in English now . The Grimm Brothers, maybe better known now for their children's stories, were scholars of Germanic mythology and Jacob Grimm called her Ostara in his Deutsche Mythologie in 1835.
So what do we have here? A pre-Christian Sping festival celebrating fertility and new life and awakenings, that got morphed into a Christian observance about a risen god but really is properly celebrated with bunnies and eggs and joy and happy gatherings, taking its place among the various celebrations in world culture that Winter is over and Spring is here? Yes, and no.
Holy Week began with Palm Sunday, seeing the crowds joyously welcoming the controversial teacher who just maybe was the Messiah, that being the person sent by God to remove the oppression of his people, currently the Romans, and inaugurate the Messianic era of universal peace. We saw that if we are really honest, it wasn't just the crowd that day but we too who want such a messiah, the one after which we will never again have to watch the news, get that phone call, or visit, or letter, or results from the physician, and wonder how a loving God could let such things happen, or try to explain how bad things can happen to good people -- like us, of course. And we saw that when no such thing began to happen, but rather that this supposed messiah began to suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and ended up being executed for blasphemy, the crowds were gone, after the palm branches turned to shouts of "Away with him". And if we are really honest again, we see that is still our response.
Along with Christmas, churches typically draw their best crowds at Easter. He is risen! Everything is in white, great music, a big service, the empty tomb story, pancakes or brunch in the fellowship hall, everybody is happy! And the message is -- Away with him!
The truth is for many Easter is Palm Sunday all over again, with lillies instead of palms. Now we can have the messiah we want for real! And the story of Jesus' resurrection becomes from among the many available the myth we happen to find culturally acceptable to start saying universal Springtime stuff about life, new life, eternal life, whatever, some sort of affirmation that everything is really OK after all in spite of the figurative Romans that plague us. So we put him back on the donkey and start cheering all over again for the messiah we want. But, as the great spiritual song asks, were you there when they crucified my Lord? Where were the crowds on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services?
Let my people go, Moses said to Pharoah before the original form of Passover. What was that? Let my people go because it's the right thing to do, let my people go because their condition is an affront to human dignity and a social wrong, let my people go because they have a right to self determination? Absolutely nothing of the sort. Moses was not told to tell Pharoah to let the people go, period. He was told to tell the reason too -- Let my people go, that they may sacrifice to me! The people are to be let go for one reason, and one reason only, that they may gather with God according to his instruction, and apart from that they may as well remain in slavery! Their social and political freedom was not sought for its own value, but derived its value from allowing them to heed the word of God.
The deliverance was hard to bear for the delivered. They lost sight of the fact that freedom is not freedom if it is not to heed the word of God, that it is not about a comfortable life here, victorious living, everything turning out in a way we want. And despite having seen powerful acts of God they began to wonder what sort of madness this is. Was it for lack of graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die? They began to pine after their days in Egypt, even slavery looking better than this! And when the moment came and Moses went up to receive the Law, they fashioned a god more to their liking.
They? Us. Do we not, no less than they, turn away when it doesn't go as we think it should, or hoped it would? Do we not, no less than they, begin to wonder what we are doing in church and wish we could just live in the world like everyone else? Do we not, no less than they, begin to build gods of our own when God seems to take too long or be too far away? Do we not, no less than they, want to listen to ourselves when God's pastor presents the Law? And do we not, no less than they, shout "Away with him!" when the Gospel is shown in a suffering and death for our sin rather than a sure-fire recipe for victorious and purposeful living?
We want Easter, but without Good Friday. We want Passover, but not to receive the Law. It cannot be. They come from God as parts of one whole, connected by God and meaningless apart from that. In the Law, God commanded the Passover. But it does not stand alone. Part of the Passover is to count the days until the celebration of the reason for the Passover, the giving of the Law. This is called counting the Omer. Just as God connected the call to be let go with the reception of the Law in the message he gave to Moses, so he connects the observance of the letting go, Passover, with the observance of the giving of the Law, called Pentecost, in the Law he gave through Moses.
What? Pentecost? In the Law? But that's a Christian thing, the birthday of the church, isn't it? In the Law, God commanded three major observances: Pesach, or Passover; Shavuoth, or Pentecost; Sukkoth, or Tabernacles, also called Booths, which is preceded by the Days of Awe which includes Rosh Ha-Shanah or New Years and Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. And the time between Pesach and Shavuoth, Passover and Pentecost, is ritually counted, the counting of the Omer, connected in the observance God commanded as they were connected in the historical events. This is why Acts speaks of all the people being in town for Pentecost -- there already was one!
"Easter" does not stand alone. And if it is isolated from that within which it stands and made to stand alone, it is not Easter but something else. The women who went out that first Easter went out not in joy to find their risen Lord but to tend to the body of a dead man. And when they found he was risen, they hurried to tell the Apostles -- who did not believe them. (You can't make this sort of stuff up -- here's the biggest news ever, but first shown not to those in the Office of Holy Ministry but to the women, who were told to go tell them!) No pancakes, no lillies.
Instead, the Passover seder becomes at Jesus' institution the mystery -- or using the English cognate for the Latin for the Greek word for mystery, the sacrament -- of his body and blood which we are now to observe, and then he gives his body and blood as the full and final Passover lamb so that those sprinkled with his blood will be passed over by death and saved, and then he rises from the dead, which far from being a nice family day with lots of good thoughts produces fear, doubt and confusion, which continues through the counting of the Omer until the observance of the giving of the Law, when he then bestows the Spirit.
That is the story. Deliverance from bondage and death in Egypt, a trek toward the reason for the deliverance, the giving of the Law at Sinai. The Passover seder and its lamb (Pesach), counting the Omer, Pentecost (Shavuoth). The Last Seder and Death of the Paschal lamb and his resurrection from the dead, God himself counting the Omer, the giving of the Spirit in Jerusalem. The triduum of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Pascha with its vigil, Paschaltide, Pentecost. That is the story of salvation we celebrate during this time.
We can take it as God gave it, with the seder giving way to and becoming the mass, the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb giving way to and becoming the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb Jesus, and the giving of the Law giving way to and becoming the giving of the Spirit. Then we have the religion of the Christ, Christianity; then we have Law and Gospel -- the Good News.
Or we can turn it into news more like we want to hear. We can turn it into hailing this great guy and teacher who showed us how to live so that we feel right with God and things go well with our fellow men and things don't get messy with all this about sin and death. We can call that sin and death stuff our metaphorical way among other ways of understanding that we're OK and there's a loving God who only wants us to try to be a good person. Then we have the religion of Man, an Easter no different really than the one about Eostre that might as well use the same name because the only difference is that a story about a goddess who helped a frozen bird become a happy bunny is replaced by a story about a dying and rising god who helps us become happy, successful and purposeful people as the metaphor for nice Spingtime thoughts about ourselves.
So what do we have here? Yes, while Eostre herself is largely forgotten we have what remains of a pre-Christian festival called Easter celebrating fertility and new life and awakenings, properly celebrated with bunnies and eggs and joy and happy gatherings, taking its place among the various celebrations in world culture that Winter is over and Spring is here. And yes, the name of her festival was appropriated to another religion's observance of the story of a risen god called Jesus which to many who observe it likewise is a myth and metaphor for new life and possibilities and purposes and awakenings suggested by the end of Winter and the arrival of Spring. Pretty much the same idea, just illustrated by a different myth. One often finds the two mixed to-gether. And why not? It's Easter either way.
But for those who follow the liturgy of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, it is something completely different, sharing nothing with Easter except two things -- it generally happens around the same time in April, and the name Easter. We would do well to discard the borrowed name in English and do what most languages do, call it by its own name derived from its own sources, Pascha. English is confusing enough being a hybrid language with its Germanic roots and its Greek/Latin overlay through French after the Norman Conquest. We say "moon" from a Germanic root, but don't refer to it as "moonal" but "lunar" from the Latin word for moon, for example. We've already taken the real word for Easter into English as an adjective for it, paschal, so let's use the noun too, Pascha!
For Pascha is exactly what we have here! The Passover seder and lamb and cup of blessing has been changed by the Lamb of God Jesus into the mass where he gives us his body and blood as his pledge and last will and testament of his body and blood, which he then gives for our salvation from our sins that block us from God and from which we cannot free ourselves, and with the full and final sacrifice of the Temple offered and the Temple which he truly is destroyed by our sins God raises the Temple on the third day in the bodily resurrection of Jesus so the Temple is fully functioning again but this time with the mercy seat of God now wide open! He is risen and among us, now as then in the laying out of Scripture and fully discerned in the breaking of the bread, not in our doing for him or good feeling about him or service to him but in HIS divine service to us in Word and Sacrament in what we call just that, the Divine Service, or mass.
And now, Passover so transformed. we count the Omer with God until Pentecost is similarly transformed (we'll get to what happened to Tabernacles/Booths/Sukkoth later!), where as the Law was once given to show our sin, now the Spirit will be given to show our Saviour in the Gospel, empowering the Office of Holy Ministry and all Christians with them to be his witnesses from Jerusalem unto the ends of the earth and time!
22 March 2008
21 March 2008
BAM! or, Tenebrae 2008
What's up with Tenebrae?
As an RC kid in the 1950s, I used to see the words "Tenebrae" and "Sunrise Service" in the church ads in the paper for Protestant churches. It used to strike me as typical -- you gotta give them an E for effort, they're really trying to do the right thing, but this is what happens when you try to be church apart from the Church he put here, tinker around with the pieces of the former unity apart from their source and come up with all sorts of stuff, part of it the real deal and part of it whatever Reformer's ideas of the real deal one follows. (Hey Schuetz, you reading this?)
I mean, what's up with Tenebrae. Everybody knows -- well, everybody who's a dedicated altar boy thinking of maybe becoming a priest -- that Tenebrae isn't the church's main service on Good Friday or even of one day. It's a collective reference to Matins and Lauds for the last three days of Holy Week, originally said in the night and early morning but pushed back in the Middle Ages to the evening before! Monks do that kind of thing all the time -- that's how we got "noon", from pushing back None, the office of the ninth hour in the Roman (city/republic/empire, not church) day, about three in the afternoon, to right after the sixth hour office at midday, Sext, so you can work the fields all afternoon. Poor guys, they don't even know that "afternoon" is just that, after None, heck, most of us don't either, so why be surprised at having a Matins service, a word coming from the Latin for "dawn" and giving us our word matinee for a daytime showing, at night instead of the service that's supposed to be there at the ninth hour when he died (1500 hours if you know how to REALLY tell time!) which we ourselves often put off until later so people can get there after work! Maybe the whole thing's our fault originally, messing around with stuff. I mean, if you gotta knock off work to go in at 1500 to pray None, just do it; if you gotta knock off work to get to Good Friday service at 1500, just do it. Some places let people off about 1, some places they still don't go to work at all Good Friday. So here they are having "Tenebrae", a bunch of Protestants doing what's supposed to be a three day monastic service instead of the day's normal parish liturgy, and here I am in an ordinary parish and have never been to a real Tenebrae in my life! Oh well, at least we have it someplace and I know what it is, but you gotta give them E for effort and they'll probably walk right in. (That's a Catholic thing -- "walk right in" means walk right in to heaven without having to spend any time in Purgatory getting rid of what still needs to be gotten rid of.)
The heart of the real Tenebrae is its three "nocturnes" or readings. These are: The Lamentations of Jeremias (Jeremiah); St Augustine's commentary on Psalm 54 (in the Vulgate, Psalm 55 to Protestants); St Paul Hebrews 4:15-5:10 and 9:11-15. And of course there's the putting out of candles, one at a time after each Psalm. My first experience of anything by the name Tenebrae was in the mid 90s in WELS. (I first made profession of faith especially as taught in the Small Catechism in a WELS parish 15 December, 1996.) Holy Week consisted of Communion (in the sense of both consecration and communion, though in that context you'd probably raise an eyebrow if you said "mass") on Maundy Thursday with particular remembrance of Jesus' institution of Communion at the Last Supper, then "Tenebrae" on Good Friday, then nothing, meaning no Easter Vigil at all, one of the most ancient services of the church, until, hey, "Sunrise Service" on Easter, then pancakes, with a later "Festival" service for those of us who might rise with the Son but not the sun. I wondered a little bit, having just finished the Tappert Book of Concord (we didn't have the "McCain" Book of Concord yet!) and thinking I had cast off the Roman Catholic church for the real catholic church, if maybe I didn't end up just Protestant after all!
There was the putting out of candles thing, but nothing else of the office of Tenebrae. It was constructed instead around the Seven Last Words, with each passage read followed by an appropriate prayer and hymn and putting out a candle. No Lamentations, no St Augustine, no St Paul, or if my professors at my Benedictine university are to be believed, whoever wrote Hebrews. Totally out of my experience, totally new to my experience! But I'm thinking hey, maybe there is a better service to be using (even WELS has a version of the traditional Good Friday service!) but the Seven Last Words are his seven last words and this is Good Friday, at least nobody's got it mixed up with Holy Thursday and offering Communion or anything, and I'm going with it, each "word" leading to the end. Consummatum est, it is finished. And I'm sitting there in darkness thinking, what is finished? Jesus? Hardly. He is risen, and we will soon celebrate that. Sin? Hardly. The world goes right on sinning, and me with it despite myself. But right now, what is finished is the sacrifice that takes away my sin and the sin of the whole world. Passover indeed, from bondage to the promised land. Real nice thoughts to have all safe here in church but before long I'll be back out there where real nice thoughts are hard to maintain a lot of the time. And then it happened.
BAM!
Strepitus! It all came to-gether. The promise, the old covenant, was now closed, complete, and the fulfillment was here! Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui, over ancient forms departing new rites of grace prevail, says the hymn Tantum Ergo. For real. So for real the earth could not support nor the sky shine on the injustice which is my justification. And most of all, the veil to the Holy of Holies in the Temple is rent asunder by the full and final High Priest and the mercy seat of God open wide, and all who are sprinkled with the blood of the full and final Passover Lamb can, well, walk right in! And so I shall, but for right now, I'll depart in darkness and silence, stunned that someone just took the bullet I had coming, died so that I might live, took my guilt and gave me his innocence, not to wallow in survivor's guilt as if this were by accident, good for me but bad for him, or even the supreme gesture of another human, but stunned for the moment that this is precisely what he came to do, on purpose, God so loving his children that he offered himself for me, for us, and opens wide his mercy.
I have come to love the Tenebrae service more than any other in our observance. Tenebrae in my present LCMS parish is little different. Not the Seven Last Words, but the Passion account of John read in seven sections, with an appropriate hymn after each and a petition based on the prayers after the Johanine Passion reading in the traditional Good Friday service found as "The Bidding Prayer" in TLH p. 116, and of course the candle putting out thing. And some things that usually set confessional types right on edge -- female acolytes, a "praise band" as well as choir and organ, a time for young disciples aka children's sermon. Well, as they say in my part of town, It's all good. Yeah it's all good bro. There was O Sacred Head too, to chime in with my basso grosso. It's all good. I still love the traditional service of the church for Good Friday. But it ain't got the Bam. The temple curtain is aside, the High Priest has entered and the mercy seat is open!
BAM!
Speaking of the Temple, maybe next year I can get them to work in Lamentations. It's supposed to be there anyway, but there's more to it than that. Just as the New Covenant is an organic outgrowth of the Old, so is worship in the New Covenant an organic outgrowth of worship in the Old. What is the mass anyway but a Christianised synagogue Sabbath service followed by a Messianic seder? In the Tenebrae with its traditional Lamentations though, instead of understanding worship in the New Covenant as an organic development of worship in the Old, here New Covenant worship actually anticipates what would happen to the worship of the Old after it did not accept the New.
Jesus said, Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it up. They thought he meant the physical Temple in Jerusalem. Don't we always do that? Just a few days ago we thought great, here's the Messiah to cast off the Romans and begin the era of universal peace. God's just fine as long as it's our idea. But he meant himself. He is the Temple, he is the High Priest, he is the sacrifice. And you know what? He'd better be, because unless he is, we ought to call off the whole thing because he got what he deserved, not by claiming to be Messiah which we thought was a man anyway, but by claiming to be God, which is blasphemy punishable by death. He said he was God and he is but he was put to death. We say we're good people really and therefore all going to the same good place, but we're not yet we think we're going to live.
Well, the real Temple to which the physical Temple pointed, Jesus, was destroyed and in three days built back up. And just as he said, the generation that saw that had not passed away before the end of the world as previously known before it -- the Temple destroyed, the priesthood killed and scattered, the sacrifices ended. This happened by the Romans on the ninth of the Jewish month of Ab, which falls somewhere between what we call late July and mid August, in 70 AD, or CE (Common Era). And you know what? That was exactly the day on which the first Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, or BCE (Before the Common Era) and the people hauled off into captivity. Jeremiah told them it was coming, and after it came, though overwhelmed with what had happened, he told them this was not because the enemies' gods are stronger than ours but because ours is giving us what we deserve for our faithlessness, for which he was branded a traitor to his religion and people, flogged at the Temple and left for dead in a pit. His Lamentations was written at the destruction of the first Temple. Tisha Be'Av, or the Ninth of Ab, is marked in the synagogue with the reading of DT 4:25-40 for the Torah portion and Jeremiah 8:13-9:23 for the haftorah, or related reading from the Prophets. But that is not all. Guess what? In the evening of that day Jews gather for the reading of Eikha, which is -- Lamentations! One sits on the floor like a mourner rather than in a seat. It is a full fast day to the max -- no eating, no drinking, no bathing, no leather shoes, no perfume or make up, no sex, although you can smoke or go to work. Tradition has it the Messiah will be born on Tisha Be'Av, the only happy thing about the day.
At the conclusion of the Passover Seder, one sings "Next Year in Jerusalem". But the Last Seder was in Jerusalem, and the full and final Passover sacrifice has been offered, as we commemorate on this day. The Temple has already been destroyed though the physical one still for a time stands, and so, we read Lamentations. But this Temple will be raised again in three days! We read Lamentations not in mouring over the loss of two Temples and in hopes for a third, in fact not in mourning at all for the "Temple" but for our faithlessness which destroyed both the physical Temple and the Temple Jesus to which it pointed.
You looking for a purpose to drive your life? Wanna find your best life now? Wanna make things sensitive to seekers? Looking to put Jesus first? Well here it is, pal. We read Lamentations, and celebrate Holy Week in our various traditions and liturgies in union with believers before us, now, and to come, precisely and for no other reason than to profess ourselves and proclaim to those who don't know it yet the knowledge that the Temple is indeed raised up again after three days, with the mercy seat of the loving God who opened it for us open to all through the body and blood of the Passover Lamb, even Jesus the Christ!
BAM!
As an RC kid in the 1950s, I used to see the words "Tenebrae" and "Sunrise Service" in the church ads in the paper for Protestant churches. It used to strike me as typical -- you gotta give them an E for effort, they're really trying to do the right thing, but this is what happens when you try to be church apart from the Church he put here, tinker around with the pieces of the former unity apart from their source and come up with all sorts of stuff, part of it the real deal and part of it whatever Reformer's ideas of the real deal one follows. (Hey Schuetz, you reading this?)
I mean, what's up with Tenebrae. Everybody knows -- well, everybody who's a dedicated altar boy thinking of maybe becoming a priest -- that Tenebrae isn't the church's main service on Good Friday or even of one day. It's a collective reference to Matins and Lauds for the last three days of Holy Week, originally said in the night and early morning but pushed back in the Middle Ages to the evening before! Monks do that kind of thing all the time -- that's how we got "noon", from pushing back None, the office of the ninth hour in the Roman (city/republic/empire, not church) day, about three in the afternoon, to right after the sixth hour office at midday, Sext, so you can work the fields all afternoon. Poor guys, they don't even know that "afternoon" is just that, after None, heck, most of us don't either, so why be surprised at having a Matins service, a word coming from the Latin for "dawn" and giving us our word matinee for a daytime showing, at night instead of the service that's supposed to be there at the ninth hour when he died (1500 hours if you know how to REALLY tell time!) which we ourselves often put off until later so people can get there after work! Maybe the whole thing's our fault originally, messing around with stuff. I mean, if you gotta knock off work to go in at 1500 to pray None, just do it; if you gotta knock off work to get to Good Friday service at 1500, just do it. Some places let people off about 1, some places they still don't go to work at all Good Friday. So here they are having "Tenebrae", a bunch of Protestants doing what's supposed to be a three day monastic service instead of the day's normal parish liturgy, and here I am in an ordinary parish and have never been to a real Tenebrae in my life! Oh well, at least we have it someplace and I know what it is, but you gotta give them E for effort and they'll probably walk right in. (That's a Catholic thing -- "walk right in" means walk right in to heaven without having to spend any time in Purgatory getting rid of what still needs to be gotten rid of.)
The heart of the real Tenebrae is its three "nocturnes" or readings. These are: The Lamentations of Jeremias (Jeremiah); St Augustine's commentary on Psalm 54 (in the Vulgate, Psalm 55 to Protestants); St Paul Hebrews 4:15-5:10 and 9:11-15. And of course there's the putting out of candles, one at a time after each Psalm. My first experience of anything by the name Tenebrae was in the mid 90s in WELS. (I first made profession of faith especially as taught in the Small Catechism in a WELS parish 15 December, 1996.) Holy Week consisted of Communion (in the sense of both consecration and communion, though in that context you'd probably raise an eyebrow if you said "mass") on Maundy Thursday with particular remembrance of Jesus' institution of Communion at the Last Supper, then "Tenebrae" on Good Friday, then nothing, meaning no Easter Vigil at all, one of the most ancient services of the church, until, hey, "Sunrise Service" on Easter, then pancakes, with a later "Festival" service for those of us who might rise with the Son but not the sun. I wondered a little bit, having just finished the Tappert Book of Concord (we didn't have the "McCain" Book of Concord yet!) and thinking I had cast off the Roman Catholic church for the real catholic church, if maybe I didn't end up just Protestant after all!
There was the putting out of candles thing, but nothing else of the office of Tenebrae. It was constructed instead around the Seven Last Words, with each passage read followed by an appropriate prayer and hymn and putting out a candle. No Lamentations, no St Augustine, no St Paul, or if my professors at my Benedictine university are to be believed, whoever wrote Hebrews. Totally out of my experience, totally new to my experience! But I'm thinking hey, maybe there is a better service to be using (even WELS has a version of the traditional Good Friday service!) but the Seven Last Words are his seven last words and this is Good Friday, at least nobody's got it mixed up with Holy Thursday and offering Communion or anything, and I'm going with it, each "word" leading to the end. Consummatum est, it is finished. And I'm sitting there in darkness thinking, what is finished? Jesus? Hardly. He is risen, and we will soon celebrate that. Sin? Hardly. The world goes right on sinning, and me with it despite myself. But right now, what is finished is the sacrifice that takes away my sin and the sin of the whole world. Passover indeed, from bondage to the promised land. Real nice thoughts to have all safe here in church but before long I'll be back out there where real nice thoughts are hard to maintain a lot of the time. And then it happened.
BAM!
Strepitus! It all came to-gether. The promise, the old covenant, was now closed, complete, and the fulfillment was here! Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui, over ancient forms departing new rites of grace prevail, says the hymn Tantum Ergo. For real. So for real the earth could not support nor the sky shine on the injustice which is my justification. And most of all, the veil to the Holy of Holies in the Temple is rent asunder by the full and final High Priest and the mercy seat of God open wide, and all who are sprinkled with the blood of the full and final Passover Lamb can, well, walk right in! And so I shall, but for right now, I'll depart in darkness and silence, stunned that someone just took the bullet I had coming, died so that I might live, took my guilt and gave me his innocence, not to wallow in survivor's guilt as if this were by accident, good for me but bad for him, or even the supreme gesture of another human, but stunned for the moment that this is precisely what he came to do, on purpose, God so loving his children that he offered himself for me, for us, and opens wide his mercy.
I have come to love the Tenebrae service more than any other in our observance. Tenebrae in my present LCMS parish is little different. Not the Seven Last Words, but the Passion account of John read in seven sections, with an appropriate hymn after each and a petition based on the prayers after the Johanine Passion reading in the traditional Good Friday service found as "The Bidding Prayer" in TLH p. 116, and of course the candle putting out thing. And some things that usually set confessional types right on edge -- female acolytes, a "praise band" as well as choir and organ, a time for young disciples aka children's sermon. Well, as they say in my part of town, It's all good. Yeah it's all good bro. There was O Sacred Head too, to chime in with my basso grosso. It's all good. I still love the traditional service of the church for Good Friday. But it ain't got the Bam. The temple curtain is aside, the High Priest has entered and the mercy seat is open!
BAM!
Speaking of the Temple, maybe next year I can get them to work in Lamentations. It's supposed to be there anyway, but there's more to it than that. Just as the New Covenant is an organic outgrowth of the Old, so is worship in the New Covenant an organic outgrowth of worship in the Old. What is the mass anyway but a Christianised synagogue Sabbath service followed by a Messianic seder? In the Tenebrae with its traditional Lamentations though, instead of understanding worship in the New Covenant as an organic development of worship in the Old, here New Covenant worship actually anticipates what would happen to the worship of the Old after it did not accept the New.
Jesus said, Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it up. They thought he meant the physical Temple in Jerusalem. Don't we always do that? Just a few days ago we thought great, here's the Messiah to cast off the Romans and begin the era of universal peace. God's just fine as long as it's our idea. But he meant himself. He is the Temple, he is the High Priest, he is the sacrifice. And you know what? He'd better be, because unless he is, we ought to call off the whole thing because he got what he deserved, not by claiming to be Messiah which we thought was a man anyway, but by claiming to be God, which is blasphemy punishable by death. He said he was God and he is but he was put to death. We say we're good people really and therefore all going to the same good place, but we're not yet we think we're going to live.
Well, the real Temple to which the physical Temple pointed, Jesus, was destroyed and in three days built back up. And just as he said, the generation that saw that had not passed away before the end of the world as previously known before it -- the Temple destroyed, the priesthood killed and scattered, the sacrifices ended. This happened by the Romans on the ninth of the Jewish month of Ab, which falls somewhere between what we call late July and mid August, in 70 AD, or CE (Common Era). And you know what? That was exactly the day on which the first Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, or BCE (Before the Common Era) and the people hauled off into captivity. Jeremiah told them it was coming, and after it came, though overwhelmed with what had happened, he told them this was not because the enemies' gods are stronger than ours but because ours is giving us what we deserve for our faithlessness, for which he was branded a traitor to his religion and people, flogged at the Temple and left for dead in a pit. His Lamentations was written at the destruction of the first Temple. Tisha Be'Av, or the Ninth of Ab, is marked in the synagogue with the reading of DT 4:25-40 for the Torah portion and Jeremiah 8:13-9:23 for the haftorah, or related reading from the Prophets. But that is not all. Guess what? In the evening of that day Jews gather for the reading of Eikha, which is -- Lamentations! One sits on the floor like a mourner rather than in a seat. It is a full fast day to the max -- no eating, no drinking, no bathing, no leather shoes, no perfume or make up, no sex, although you can smoke or go to work. Tradition has it the Messiah will be born on Tisha Be'Av, the only happy thing about the day.
At the conclusion of the Passover Seder, one sings "Next Year in Jerusalem". But the Last Seder was in Jerusalem, and the full and final Passover sacrifice has been offered, as we commemorate on this day. The Temple has already been destroyed though the physical one still for a time stands, and so, we read Lamentations. But this Temple will be raised again in three days! We read Lamentations not in mouring over the loss of two Temples and in hopes for a third, in fact not in mourning at all for the "Temple" but for our faithlessness which destroyed both the physical Temple and the Temple Jesus to which it pointed.
You looking for a purpose to drive your life? Wanna find your best life now? Wanna make things sensitive to seekers? Looking to put Jesus first? Well here it is, pal. We read Lamentations, and celebrate Holy Week in our various traditions and liturgies in union with believers before us, now, and to come, precisely and for no other reason than to profess ourselves and proclaim to those who don't know it yet the knowledge that the Temple is indeed raised up again after three days, with the mercy seat of the loving God who opened it for us open to all through the body and blood of the Passover Lamb, even Jesus the Christ!
BAM!
Good Friday / Karfreitag 2008
Everyone knows Good Friday is about the death of Jesus. Humanly speaking, what's so good about death? Most everybody knows Jesus was executed as a criminal. What's so good about that? Whoever heard of a religion built around someone convicted of a capital offence and executed for it? This is good?
Most likely, we come by the modern phrase Good Friday the same way we come by Good Bye -- "God be with ye" over time crystallised into Good Bye, and the name God's Friday, or in its earlier English form, Godes Friday, morphed into Good Friday. The good in Good Friday is God.
The Passover seder begins with the youngest present asking, Why is to-night different than all other nights?, and the story of the Passover of the Angel of Death of those marked with the blood of the sacrificial lamb is told and the meal commanded in the story eaten. Last night, we celebrated Jesus' celebration of the Last Seder (Supper) and his transformation of it into what we call the mass in the West, into the the pledge that is his last will and testament, his body and blood given for us and given to us. The question Why is to-night different than all other nights might seem to belong there, but even more we may ask it of this night, Good Friday, when we confront and are confronted by not the sacrament he left us but the historical event of the death of the Lamb itself. It isn't pretty. It's brutally ugly. My dad was a physician, and he used to say that the average person, reading a detailed medical account of what happens to the human body in the process of dying from crucifixion, probably wouldn't be able to finish it because it is so gruesome and horrible. It is so ghastly that under Jewish law, which does sanction capital punishment, it is not allowed. And so as we gather to mark this event, we have a night unlike any other night, when the Passover Lamb is slaughtered. No mass, no communion, no joyous recessional and conversation on leaving -- but silent darkeness, unlike any other service of the church. Why is to-night different than all other nights?
In the Eastern church, there are three related services: before noon the Royal Hours; around 1500 hours (3 pm) the time the Gospels give for the death of Jesus, and in the evening. In the Western church, there is a single service around 3 pm, often also said later. In neither case is this a mass, or divine liturgy, different than all other observances. The Western service historically has two parts, A Liturgy of the Word, similar to the first part of the mass, but instead of a Eucharist a service of Adoration of the Cross follows.
In the first part, the reading are Hosea 6:1-6, with its call for a return to the Lord and prophecy of raising after three days to live in his sight, then Exodus 12:1-11, the institution of the Passover meal of the sacrificial lamb (Hey, Why is tonight ...), then the conclusion of the Passion account of John begun last night, John 18 and 19, telling the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Then follows a series of intercessory prayers, quoted in The Lutheran Hymnal as the Bidding Prayer, page 166: for the church; for church leaders; for catechumens; against illness and disaster and calamity; for heretics and schismatics; for the Jews; for pagans.
In the second part comes the focus of the while thing, the Cross. Veiled since Palm Sunday, we now see it in its stark reality, nothing abstract about it, not a pious meditation, but a gruesome execution, all the more so because the victim was innocent. The celebrant removes the veil from the upper portion of the crucifix and chants, Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, and we answer, Come let us adore. Then the celebrant moves to the Epistle side of the altar (anyone remember which side that is?), uncovers the right arm, and chants again, Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, and we answer again, Come let us adore. Finally the celebrant goes to the middle of the altar, uncovers the whole cross, and again chants Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, and we again answer, Come let us adore. The celebrant, who significantly has removed his chasuble, the vestment put on over the others to signify his service of the Lord, to underline the focus on the Lord himself, now kneels and takes off his shoes too, and begins the adoration of the cross.
While in turn everyone comes before the cross, the Improperia, also called the Reproaches, are sung. It begins. O my people, what have I done to thee, or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me, and beginning with the Exodus, the acts of the Lord to deliver his people are mentioned in answer to the question each time -- at every stage, God has acted to deliver us, and we have acted to reject him. This question and answer, which so completely lays out the impropriety of what has happened, so to speak, is among the most ancient parts of the liturgy, so ancient that even in the Western rite when said in Latin the full Greek Sanctus hymn is sung. His love and our spite, his faithfulness and our infidelity, laid out fully. And it continues, to further underscore the point, with the Pange lingua, Sing my tongue the Saviour's glory, in verse and response form with the Crux fidelis, Faithful Cross.
And so it ends. No pomp, no ceremony, no smells and bells, no chancel prancing. Nothing.
Absolutely unlike anything else in the church's worship, because what it commemorates is absolutely unlike anything else that has ever happened on earth. What is the point? To feel sorry for Jesus? Not at all. As Bishop Sheen used to point out, for everyone else, death stops his life's work, but for him, this is why he came, this was his life's work. Are we to carry on as if we did not know there was a Resurrection, feel real bad as if maybe this is the end? Hardly.
The utter starkness, the absence of what usually constitutes our worship, the lamentation -- that is what the German name for the day means, Friday of Lamentation -- is not as if just a human being had suffered this. Say, you or me for example. It is because I, you, all of us, should have suffered this, it is what we deserve, not him, it should have been our execution, not his, but God so loved us that he did not regard his divinity and became one of us to be the sacrifice we could not be, do what we could not do, take away our sins, so that whoever is sprinkled with the blood of this Lamb he has provided as he provided a lamb for Abraham instead of Isaac should not taste death but have eternal life. We have witnessed the commutation of our death sentence. We have watched him take upon himself our guilt, so that we make take upon ourselves his innocence. Or in the word so dear to us, justification.
It should have been my condemnation, and at the cost of everything to him it is my justification. We are shown our sin in its grossest reality and we are shown our Saviour in his greatest reality. The supreme moment of Law and Gospel. Yes, the joy of finding the tomb empty will come, but for now we leave in stunned silence at the God who spared nothing to save us who could do nothing to save ourselves, who so loved us that he gave himself for us who have nothing for him, so that whoever believeth in him shall not die but have eternal life.
Sweet wood, sweet nails, both sweet and fair,
Sweet is the precious weight ye bear.
Most likely, we come by the modern phrase Good Friday the same way we come by Good Bye -- "God be with ye" over time crystallised into Good Bye, and the name God's Friday, or in its earlier English form, Godes Friday, morphed into Good Friday. The good in Good Friday is God.
The Passover seder begins with the youngest present asking, Why is to-night different than all other nights?, and the story of the Passover of the Angel of Death of those marked with the blood of the sacrificial lamb is told and the meal commanded in the story eaten. Last night, we celebrated Jesus' celebration of the Last Seder (Supper) and his transformation of it into what we call the mass in the West, into the the pledge that is his last will and testament, his body and blood given for us and given to us. The question Why is to-night different than all other nights might seem to belong there, but even more we may ask it of this night, Good Friday, when we confront and are confronted by not the sacrament he left us but the historical event of the death of the Lamb itself. It isn't pretty. It's brutally ugly. My dad was a physician, and he used to say that the average person, reading a detailed medical account of what happens to the human body in the process of dying from crucifixion, probably wouldn't be able to finish it because it is so gruesome and horrible. It is so ghastly that under Jewish law, which does sanction capital punishment, it is not allowed. And so as we gather to mark this event, we have a night unlike any other night, when the Passover Lamb is slaughtered. No mass, no communion, no joyous recessional and conversation on leaving -- but silent darkeness, unlike any other service of the church. Why is to-night different than all other nights?
In the Eastern church, there are three related services: before noon the Royal Hours; around 1500 hours (3 pm) the time the Gospels give for the death of Jesus, and in the evening. In the Western church, there is a single service around 3 pm, often also said later. In neither case is this a mass, or divine liturgy, different than all other observances. The Western service historically has two parts, A Liturgy of the Word, similar to the first part of the mass, but instead of a Eucharist a service of Adoration of the Cross follows.
In the first part, the reading are Hosea 6:1-6, with its call for a return to the Lord and prophecy of raising after three days to live in his sight, then Exodus 12:1-11, the institution of the Passover meal of the sacrificial lamb (Hey, Why is tonight ...), then the conclusion of the Passion account of John begun last night, John 18 and 19, telling the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Then follows a series of intercessory prayers, quoted in The Lutheran Hymnal as the Bidding Prayer, page 166: for the church; for church leaders; for catechumens; against illness and disaster and calamity; for heretics and schismatics; for the Jews; for pagans.
In the second part comes the focus of the while thing, the Cross. Veiled since Palm Sunday, we now see it in its stark reality, nothing abstract about it, not a pious meditation, but a gruesome execution, all the more so because the victim was innocent. The celebrant removes the veil from the upper portion of the crucifix and chants, Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, and we answer, Come let us adore. Then the celebrant moves to the Epistle side of the altar (anyone remember which side that is?), uncovers the right arm, and chants again, Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, and we answer again, Come let us adore. Finally the celebrant goes to the middle of the altar, uncovers the whole cross, and again chants Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, and we again answer, Come let us adore. The celebrant, who significantly has removed his chasuble, the vestment put on over the others to signify his service of the Lord, to underline the focus on the Lord himself, now kneels and takes off his shoes too, and begins the adoration of the cross.
While in turn everyone comes before the cross, the Improperia, also called the Reproaches, are sung. It begins. O my people, what have I done to thee, or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me, and beginning with the Exodus, the acts of the Lord to deliver his people are mentioned in answer to the question each time -- at every stage, God has acted to deliver us, and we have acted to reject him. This question and answer, which so completely lays out the impropriety of what has happened, so to speak, is among the most ancient parts of the liturgy, so ancient that even in the Western rite when said in Latin the full Greek Sanctus hymn is sung. His love and our spite, his faithfulness and our infidelity, laid out fully. And it continues, to further underscore the point, with the Pange lingua, Sing my tongue the Saviour's glory, in verse and response form with the Crux fidelis, Faithful Cross.
And so it ends. No pomp, no ceremony, no smells and bells, no chancel prancing. Nothing.
Absolutely unlike anything else in the church's worship, because what it commemorates is absolutely unlike anything else that has ever happened on earth. What is the point? To feel sorry for Jesus? Not at all. As Bishop Sheen used to point out, for everyone else, death stops his life's work, but for him, this is why he came, this was his life's work. Are we to carry on as if we did not know there was a Resurrection, feel real bad as if maybe this is the end? Hardly.
The utter starkness, the absence of what usually constitutes our worship, the lamentation -- that is what the German name for the day means, Friday of Lamentation -- is not as if just a human being had suffered this. Say, you or me for example. It is because I, you, all of us, should have suffered this, it is what we deserve, not him, it should have been our execution, not his, but God so loved us that he did not regard his divinity and became one of us to be the sacrifice we could not be, do what we could not do, take away our sins, so that whoever is sprinkled with the blood of this Lamb he has provided as he provided a lamb for Abraham instead of Isaac should not taste death but have eternal life. We have witnessed the commutation of our death sentence. We have watched him take upon himself our guilt, so that we make take upon ourselves his innocence. Or in the word so dear to us, justification.
It should have been my condemnation, and at the cost of everything to him it is my justification. We are shown our sin in its grossest reality and we are shown our Saviour in his greatest reality. The supreme moment of Law and Gospel. Yes, the joy of finding the tomb empty will come, but for now we leave in stunned silence at the God who spared nothing to save us who could do nothing to save ourselves, who so loved us that he gave himself for us who have nothing for him, so that whoever believeth in him shall not die but have eternal life.
Sweet wood, sweet nails, both sweet and fair,
Sweet is the precious weight ye bear.
19 March 2008
An Urgent Message To This Blog's Readers
In a stunning bureaucratic blitzkrieg, forces with the power to do so have removed Issues, Etc from KFUO, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's radio station, without a trace and without an explanation, and summarily fired the show's host and producer.
The program had for many, many people been a source of inspiration and strength for the faith that every single one of us Lutherans professed at confirmation, adult profession of faith, or ordination. Apparently no further charges are needed.
First, the human side. For the financial support of the two men cut off at the pockets for their fidelity to the Lutheran faith, please visit Pastor Weedon's blog
http://weedon.blogspot.com/2008/03/funds-to-support-wilken-and-schwarz.html
on how to help these men and their families through this difficult time.
There are calls for restraint, for waiting for full information to surface, indeed, and the 8th commandment is not to be taken lightly. However, whether in corporations or gangs, full information is not going to surface and ultimate responsibility for executions like this are hidden under layers of structure. That's how it works.
What a shame to the Gospel that it works no differently in a church body.
The important thing to understand is, this is the sort of thing for which those who can use such power do use such power. These things are not done among people who are really about the same thing, just in different ways. They are done to enemies. And in the classic saying, know thy enemy.
Issues, Etc. was not for me a big influence. But it was for so many people who are brothers and sisters in the faith. My personal take would be more that I saw all kinds of this sort of thing in the RCC after the Second Vatican Council. We had a Reformation for this? I don't think so. What will happen if unresisted is that the faith of the Lutheran Confessions will be isolated and allowed to exist as out of sight and as removed from the mainstream of the church body as possible. Guaranteed. Been there. And so have those true to the classic confessions of other church bodies. It is always the same pattern.
Anything that so consistently put forth the faith of the Lutheran Confessions is my people. If you hold to the faith of the Lutheran Confessions, it's your people too. We cannot simply say Come, Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus in his Word had plenty to say about false teachers and holding fast to the faith.
For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God. I Peter 4:17.
The program had for many, many people been a source of inspiration and strength for the faith that every single one of us Lutherans professed at confirmation, adult profession of faith, or ordination. Apparently no further charges are needed.
First, the human side. For the financial support of the two men cut off at the pockets for their fidelity to the Lutheran faith, please visit Pastor Weedon's blog
http://weedon.blogspot.com/2008/03/funds-to-support-wilken-and-schwarz.html
on how to help these men and their families through this difficult time.
There are calls for restraint, for waiting for full information to surface, indeed, and the 8th commandment is not to be taken lightly. However, whether in corporations or gangs, full information is not going to surface and ultimate responsibility for executions like this are hidden under layers of structure. That's how it works.
What a shame to the Gospel that it works no differently in a church body.
The important thing to understand is, this is the sort of thing for which those who can use such power do use such power. These things are not done among people who are really about the same thing, just in different ways. They are done to enemies. And in the classic saying, know thy enemy.
Issues, Etc. was not for me a big influence. But it was for so many people who are brothers and sisters in the faith. My personal take would be more that I saw all kinds of this sort of thing in the RCC after the Second Vatican Council. We had a Reformation for this? I don't think so. What will happen if unresisted is that the faith of the Lutheran Confessions will be isolated and allowed to exist as out of sight and as removed from the mainstream of the church body as possible. Guaranteed. Been there. And so have those true to the classic confessions of other church bodies. It is always the same pattern.
Anything that so consistently put forth the faith of the Lutheran Confessions is my people. If you hold to the faith of the Lutheran Confessions, it's your people too. We cannot simply say Come, Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus in his Word had plenty to say about false teachers and holding fast to the faith.
For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God. I Peter 4:17.
16 March 2008
Maundy Thursday / Gruendonnerstag 2008
Maundy. Now there's a word for you. Just like a lot of that liturgical stuff, doesn't seem to make any sense in the real world of ordinary spoken language. Is there a maundy anything else? What is it to be maundy? As if that isn't enough, to German speakers this Green Thursday. OK, green is plain enough, but what's green about this day? Hey, why not skip the whole thing and just put Jesus first?
Well, the names came about because of putting Jesus first. Here's the deal.
In Holy Week the church commemorates the saving acts of Jesus, not that we don't do that all year, but this week we add to it laying them out over the days they happened as actual historical events, things which really took place, not just religious or theological beliefs. In her liturgy to-day, the church commemorates the night before Jesus died, when Jesus gathered with his Apostles to celebrate the Passover seder, the memorial meal of the night before the exodus from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land began. The seder was already centuries old at the time. We can wonder how astounded the Apostles must have been when Jesus, instead of the well known words of the seder they were expecting, said something different at the breaking of the bread and a cup of blessing, making it his body and blood, the body and blood of the Lamb of God whose sacrifice would take away the sins of the entire world, and passing on to us this last will and testament to have until he comes again!
And so the church celebrates mass, a mass as always and also a mass in remembrance of that first mass ever, the one he celebrated on the night we commemorate to-day, at once the last seder, or last supper, of the Old Covenant and the first mass of the New. The purple vestments of Lenten penance are set aside and white is used; the Gloria, which has not been said during Lent (of course, if one follows the newer Vatican II style liturgies it isn't said anyway a good bit of the time!) is now said again -- and then, along with mass and communion, disappears again until the Resurrection.
To emphasise that the lamb now goes to the slaughter for our sakes, not only do these things go away, but after mass the altar is stripped bare of all its usual stuff, while Psalm 22 (or 21 in some numberings) is recited -- My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Then the most amazing thing -- so amazing we don't do it much, maybe can't bring ourselves to do it much, it's just a little too stark and graphic. A wooden clapper gives the signal, the deacon sings the Gospel of the day -- John 13:1-15, the account of the Last Seder, and the next verses telling the Crucifixion we will hear to-morrow -- while the celebrant takes the action Jesus took told in John and washes the feet of twelve people. During this a series of antiphons are done, starting with one drawn from John 13:34 -- a new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you. In Latin, this begins "mandatum novum", a new commandment; our word mandate derives from the Latin mandatum for commandment, and so does the word maundy. This is the day of the new commandment, mandatum or maundy Thursday! Hard to put Jesus any more first than to name the whole day after his giving his new commandment! Than to do what he did and as he said in the Gospel for the day!
That's our liturgy. And what of us? We're Peter. When Jesus got up during the seder and prepared to wash his disciples' feet and came first to Peter, what did Peter say? OK? Sure Lord, I know this must be right if you say so? No, he questioned Jesus: Lord, dost thou wash my feet? How often is that our response to Jesus -- you really mean that Lord? To which Jesus said, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Right, I'll get it later; not good enough, not to Peter, not to us. So he says Thou shalt never wash my feet! Just like us, imposing his idea of what God should do even in front of God himself. Jesus makes it just a little clearer for him: If I do not wash thee, thou shalt have no part with me. Peter then gets it, and just as we do then runs to the opposite extreme, no less than before imposing his idea of what God should do and his idea of what he should do before God himself -- Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head! Do we not do the same? Run from one self willed idea of God and our interaction to another, from one rejection of his word to another disguised as an acceptance -- anything, anything at all except just what he said!
We run from the washing of the feet liturgically like we run from the new commandment itself in all aspects of our lives, wanting it to be, like Peter, after our ideas rather than his. We can no more save ourselves than a man can wake himself from the dead, as CFW Walther said in one of his sermons. But the good news is we don't have to, so why don't we quit trying? He has done it for us, and this night given us his body and blood as the pledge and testament of our salvation to be ours until he comes again in glory!
Almost forgot -- about Green Thursday. Nobody really knows. It's a German thing. Some say it comes from the Latin dies viridium, Tag der Gruenen in German, the Day of the Green Ones. Huh? Who are the Green Ones? Those who are now fresh and green after forty days of Lenten penance. Some say it comes from the practice of eating green vegetables this say. Some say it comes from green rather than white being the liturgical colour at one time replacing the Lenten purple. Some say it comes from greinen, to weep. Some say other things.
But for sure Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin name for the day, Dies Mandatum, the day of the new commandment. The liturgy shows us the new commandment in the giving of the Eucharist and the washing of the feet. May we Peters as we stagger in our lives between No, never and Well OK then let's do it this better way come to just do it his way!
Well, the names came about because of putting Jesus first. Here's the deal.
In Holy Week the church commemorates the saving acts of Jesus, not that we don't do that all year, but this week we add to it laying them out over the days they happened as actual historical events, things which really took place, not just religious or theological beliefs. In her liturgy to-day, the church commemorates the night before Jesus died, when Jesus gathered with his Apostles to celebrate the Passover seder, the memorial meal of the night before the exodus from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land began. The seder was already centuries old at the time. We can wonder how astounded the Apostles must have been when Jesus, instead of the well known words of the seder they were expecting, said something different at the breaking of the bread and a cup of blessing, making it his body and blood, the body and blood of the Lamb of God whose sacrifice would take away the sins of the entire world, and passing on to us this last will and testament to have until he comes again!
And so the church celebrates mass, a mass as always and also a mass in remembrance of that first mass ever, the one he celebrated on the night we commemorate to-day, at once the last seder, or last supper, of the Old Covenant and the first mass of the New. The purple vestments of Lenten penance are set aside and white is used; the Gloria, which has not been said during Lent (of course, if one follows the newer Vatican II style liturgies it isn't said anyway a good bit of the time!) is now said again -- and then, along with mass and communion, disappears again until the Resurrection.
To emphasise that the lamb now goes to the slaughter for our sakes, not only do these things go away, but after mass the altar is stripped bare of all its usual stuff, while Psalm 22 (or 21 in some numberings) is recited -- My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Then the most amazing thing -- so amazing we don't do it much, maybe can't bring ourselves to do it much, it's just a little too stark and graphic. A wooden clapper gives the signal, the deacon sings the Gospel of the day -- John 13:1-15, the account of the Last Seder, and the next verses telling the Crucifixion we will hear to-morrow -- while the celebrant takes the action Jesus took told in John and washes the feet of twelve people. During this a series of antiphons are done, starting with one drawn from John 13:34 -- a new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you. In Latin, this begins "mandatum novum", a new commandment; our word mandate derives from the Latin mandatum for commandment, and so does the word maundy. This is the day of the new commandment, mandatum or maundy Thursday! Hard to put Jesus any more first than to name the whole day after his giving his new commandment! Than to do what he did and as he said in the Gospel for the day!
That's our liturgy. And what of us? We're Peter. When Jesus got up during the seder and prepared to wash his disciples' feet and came first to Peter, what did Peter say? OK? Sure Lord, I know this must be right if you say so? No, he questioned Jesus: Lord, dost thou wash my feet? How often is that our response to Jesus -- you really mean that Lord? To which Jesus said, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Right, I'll get it later; not good enough, not to Peter, not to us. So he says Thou shalt never wash my feet! Just like us, imposing his idea of what God should do even in front of God himself. Jesus makes it just a little clearer for him: If I do not wash thee, thou shalt have no part with me. Peter then gets it, and just as we do then runs to the opposite extreme, no less than before imposing his idea of what God should do and his idea of what he should do before God himself -- Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head! Do we not do the same? Run from one self willed idea of God and our interaction to another, from one rejection of his word to another disguised as an acceptance -- anything, anything at all except just what he said!
We run from the washing of the feet liturgically like we run from the new commandment itself in all aspects of our lives, wanting it to be, like Peter, after our ideas rather than his. We can no more save ourselves than a man can wake himself from the dead, as CFW Walther said in one of his sermons. But the good news is we don't have to, so why don't we quit trying? He has done it for us, and this night given us his body and blood as the pledge and testament of our salvation to be ours until he comes again in glory!
Almost forgot -- about Green Thursday. Nobody really knows. It's a German thing. Some say it comes from the Latin dies viridium, Tag der Gruenen in German, the Day of the Green Ones. Huh? Who are the Green Ones? Those who are now fresh and green after forty days of Lenten penance. Some say it comes from the practice of eating green vegetables this say. Some say it comes from green rather than white being the liturgical colour at one time replacing the Lenten purple. Some say it comes from greinen, to weep. Some say other things.
But for sure Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin name for the day, Dies Mandatum, the day of the new commandment. The liturgy shows us the new commandment in the giving of the Eucharist and the washing of the feet. May we Peters as we stagger in our lives between No, never and Well OK then let's do it this better way come to just do it his way!
10 March 2008
Palmarum / Palm Sunday and Holy Week 2008
"Who do you say that I am?"
Holy Week, or Great Week as it is also called, concludes the preparation for Easter. The church in her liturgy does in a particularly intense way what she does all year, present the Gospel revealed in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Gospel readings for this week follow the Biblical order of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, a tie between the events of the Gospel accounts and the liturgy that not even the three year Vatican II lectionary could break. Palmarum or Palm Sunday offers the Passion account of Matthew. Monday in Holy Week does not have a Passion account but the passage from John where Judas' unbelief, which like so many after him was disguised as a concern for the poor, is expressed six days before Passover when Jesus was in Bethany, where Lazarus had died and who was now at table with Jesus. Tuesday in Holy Week offers the Passion account of Mark. Wednesday offers that of Luke, and is sometimes called Spy Wednesday in reference to Judas' betrayal. Maundy Thursday (aka Green Thursday) and Good Friday (aka Lamentation Friday) both offer the Passion account of John, Thursday for the institution of the Eucharist and Friday for the Crucifixion.
The events we the church remember this Palmarum day ask us who do we say Jesus is because they present one answer to this question. We already know the end of the week's story -- the man welcomed with wild cheering by the crowds this day will in a few days be executed as a criminal among criminals.
But this day, such an end is not in sight -- except to him. Covering a person's path is a sign of great esteem, widely practiced in the ancient near East and still a part of our mentality, as in "roll out the red carpet" from the custom of royalty. Joshua was given the same triumphal accord. Joshua, who led the people into the Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not; Joshua, a name that is with the name Jesus a variant of the same name, who would lead the people into the eternal Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not. Here, perhaps, was the Messiah! Here, perhaps, was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the Messiah predicted by Zechariah, to whom our Gospel account, Matthew, refers! How does the wild joy of seeing the king come turn to a criminal's execution? It is not because Jesus turns out not to be Messiah, but because Messiah turns out to be not the Messiah we want.
Does not Zechariah speak of the removal of chariots and war horses from Jerusalem, breaking battle bows, with a reign of peace from the Jordan throughout the Earth? Let us not congratulate ourselves that thinking of the Messiah in the political and social terms of removing the Roman occupation from the land was the failing of the Jews of Jesus' place and time, something that Jew or Gentile in more elightened times, oh, say us in our time, would never do. It wasn't a reaction to the Romans. The mainstream of the entire Prophetic tradition, from the Prophets themselves to the atmoshpere in which the Apostles were raised to our own time, is that Messiah is a man, not God, not a God-Man, who will usher in a lasting era of universal peace here in this world, not a world to come, in which the light of the true God first given to a nation called out from the nations will extend to all nations -- nothing about sin, forgiveness, justification!
Is that not the Messiah we all want -- Jew and Gentile alike, then as now? A Messiah in earthly terms, one who will straighten out the mess of things here on earth, with no reference to the mess being of our making, allowing us to live long and prosper right here, who asks not repentance and conversion but simply to do good works like he did, who is about giving us a purpose driven life rather than giving us the sacrifice that takes away our sin, our best life now rather than eternal life, whose religion is not about what he has done but what we will do to follow him? And do we not, Jew and Gentile alike, then as now, turn away from him when he turns out to be not the Messiah we wanted?
Jews typically do not believe Jesus is Messiah not because they fail to see how Jesus fulfills the Messianic prophecy, but because they do not see the Messianic prophecy as pointing to anything like Jesus. This was a persistent problem even for the Apostles. Gentiles do not believe Jesus is the Messiah not because they fail to see how Jesus fulfills the Messianic prophecy, in fact many of them say he does, but because they too find the Messianic prophecy to be a matter of a good man showing us the way to live as good people, to become better people, and find in Jesus such a man. That is why Scripture describes the Gospel as a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.
In the Hellenistic, which is to say Greek based, culture that surrounded Jesus' time and place, many religions existed featuring gods who had miraculous births, worked miracles, acted on behalf of man, entered the city, died and rose again, and whose followers partook of rites of bathing and eating and sacrifices, called mysteries, which the Romans termed sacraments. The Greek Dionysus, whom the Romans appropriated as Bacchus, the Persian Mithra and the Egyptian Osiris are the best examples among many others.
Is this Jesus too? Is he simply another failed Jewish Messiah, whose followers, when what will happen after Messiah comes didn't happen after he came, recast Messiah in the Hellenistic terms surrounding them to fit him so they could continue to say he was Messiah after all, thereby obscuring his true value as a moral teacher? Is he simply another Hellenistic mystery cult figure, perpetuated by those who derived power from presiding over the mysteries, obscuring the real Jesus and his true value as a moral teacher?
"Who do you say that I am?" was not Jesus' first question. That was "Who do men say that I am?" And indeed, who DO we say that he is -- one of the great prophets of Hebrew Scripture come back, one of the great moral teachers in human history over whom, as with other great teachers, has been laid religious fables by those who claim to follow him but in fact falsify the historical person for a figure of faith, and in any case, a teacher, a model, an example. Would we not cover the path of such a figure with palms, since that is the saviour we want? And would we not be just as mistaken as those who covered his path thinking here was deliverance from the Roman oppression and the era of peace? And on finding out that is not who he is, would we not shout as well, Away with him!
That is still who men say he is. Who do you say that I am? Simon answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus told him flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but his Father who is in heaven. Flesh and blood, that is, human wisdom, never reveals this unto us because it is beyond all human wisdom and contradicts all human wisdom. Therefore it cannot be arrived at by human wisdom nor chosen by human decision, but is the gift of the God and only the gift of God. Human abilities even with Law and Prophecy and Writings from God could not grasp it; human wisdom apart from revelation constructs bits and pieces of it around mere fable characters who cannot deliver. Either way the natural knowledge of God written in every human heart strives for something it senses is there but cannot discern, and which can only be given by the gift of God.
The Sanhedrin had it exactly right. Jesus was not executed because he said he was the Messiah. One can claim that, and simply be wrong or right. The Messiah is a great man, but a man. He was executed because he said he was God. One cannot claim that without blaspheming God -- unless it is true. We'll take a Messiah who is a great man, we'll lay palms to cover his path, we'll rejoice that what we want is at hand, but when it turns out instead he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed to be raised again on the third day, well, it shall not be unto the Messiah we want, and thus we become an offence to him, Satan, savouring the things of Man rather than God.
Men say all kinds of things about who Jesus is. Things for which we will joyfully lay palms to cover his path, or at least accord him a place in the gallery of the great teachers and moral figures to be so honoured.
And then he asks each of us, Who do YOU say that I am?
Holy Week, or Great Week as it is also called, concludes the preparation for Easter. The church in her liturgy does in a particularly intense way what she does all year, present the Gospel revealed in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Gospel readings for this week follow the Biblical order of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, a tie between the events of the Gospel accounts and the liturgy that not even the three year Vatican II lectionary could break. Palmarum or Palm Sunday offers the Passion account of Matthew. Monday in Holy Week does not have a Passion account but the passage from John where Judas' unbelief, which like so many after him was disguised as a concern for the poor, is expressed six days before Passover when Jesus was in Bethany, where Lazarus had died and who was now at table with Jesus. Tuesday in Holy Week offers the Passion account of Mark. Wednesday offers that of Luke, and is sometimes called Spy Wednesday in reference to Judas' betrayal. Maundy Thursday (aka Green Thursday) and Good Friday (aka Lamentation Friday) both offer the Passion account of John, Thursday for the institution of the Eucharist and Friday for the Crucifixion.
The events we the church remember this Palmarum day ask us who do we say Jesus is because they present one answer to this question. We already know the end of the week's story -- the man welcomed with wild cheering by the crowds this day will in a few days be executed as a criminal among criminals.
But this day, such an end is not in sight -- except to him. Covering a person's path is a sign of great esteem, widely practiced in the ancient near East and still a part of our mentality, as in "roll out the red carpet" from the custom of royalty. Joshua was given the same triumphal accord. Joshua, who led the people into the Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not; Joshua, a name that is with the name Jesus a variant of the same name, who would lead the people into the eternal Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not. Here, perhaps, was the Messiah! Here, perhaps, was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the Messiah predicted by Zechariah, to whom our Gospel account, Matthew, refers! How does the wild joy of seeing the king come turn to a criminal's execution? It is not because Jesus turns out not to be Messiah, but because Messiah turns out to be not the Messiah we want.
Does not Zechariah speak of the removal of chariots and war horses from Jerusalem, breaking battle bows, with a reign of peace from the Jordan throughout the Earth? Let us not congratulate ourselves that thinking of the Messiah in the political and social terms of removing the Roman occupation from the land was the failing of the Jews of Jesus' place and time, something that Jew or Gentile in more elightened times, oh, say us in our time, would never do. It wasn't a reaction to the Romans. The mainstream of the entire Prophetic tradition, from the Prophets themselves to the atmoshpere in which the Apostles were raised to our own time, is that Messiah is a man, not God, not a God-Man, who will usher in a lasting era of universal peace here in this world, not a world to come, in which the light of the true God first given to a nation called out from the nations will extend to all nations -- nothing about sin, forgiveness, justification!
Is that not the Messiah we all want -- Jew and Gentile alike, then as now? A Messiah in earthly terms, one who will straighten out the mess of things here on earth, with no reference to the mess being of our making, allowing us to live long and prosper right here, who asks not repentance and conversion but simply to do good works like he did, who is about giving us a purpose driven life rather than giving us the sacrifice that takes away our sin, our best life now rather than eternal life, whose religion is not about what he has done but what we will do to follow him? And do we not, Jew and Gentile alike, then as now, turn away from him when he turns out to be not the Messiah we wanted?
Jews typically do not believe Jesus is Messiah not because they fail to see how Jesus fulfills the Messianic prophecy, but because they do not see the Messianic prophecy as pointing to anything like Jesus. This was a persistent problem even for the Apostles. Gentiles do not believe Jesus is the Messiah not because they fail to see how Jesus fulfills the Messianic prophecy, in fact many of them say he does, but because they too find the Messianic prophecy to be a matter of a good man showing us the way to live as good people, to become better people, and find in Jesus such a man. That is why Scripture describes the Gospel as a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.
In the Hellenistic, which is to say Greek based, culture that surrounded Jesus' time and place, many religions existed featuring gods who had miraculous births, worked miracles, acted on behalf of man, entered the city, died and rose again, and whose followers partook of rites of bathing and eating and sacrifices, called mysteries, which the Romans termed sacraments. The Greek Dionysus, whom the Romans appropriated as Bacchus, the Persian Mithra and the Egyptian Osiris are the best examples among many others.
Is this Jesus too? Is he simply another failed Jewish Messiah, whose followers, when what will happen after Messiah comes didn't happen after he came, recast Messiah in the Hellenistic terms surrounding them to fit him so they could continue to say he was Messiah after all, thereby obscuring his true value as a moral teacher? Is he simply another Hellenistic mystery cult figure, perpetuated by those who derived power from presiding over the mysteries, obscuring the real Jesus and his true value as a moral teacher?
"Who do you say that I am?" was not Jesus' first question. That was "Who do men say that I am?" And indeed, who DO we say that he is -- one of the great prophets of Hebrew Scripture come back, one of the great moral teachers in human history over whom, as with other great teachers, has been laid religious fables by those who claim to follow him but in fact falsify the historical person for a figure of faith, and in any case, a teacher, a model, an example. Would we not cover the path of such a figure with palms, since that is the saviour we want? And would we not be just as mistaken as those who covered his path thinking here was deliverance from the Roman oppression and the era of peace? And on finding out that is not who he is, would we not shout as well, Away with him!
That is still who men say he is. Who do you say that I am? Simon answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus told him flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but his Father who is in heaven. Flesh and blood, that is, human wisdom, never reveals this unto us because it is beyond all human wisdom and contradicts all human wisdom. Therefore it cannot be arrived at by human wisdom nor chosen by human decision, but is the gift of the God and only the gift of God. Human abilities even with Law and Prophecy and Writings from God could not grasp it; human wisdom apart from revelation constructs bits and pieces of it around mere fable characters who cannot deliver. Either way the natural knowledge of God written in every human heart strives for something it senses is there but cannot discern, and which can only be given by the gift of God.
The Sanhedrin had it exactly right. Jesus was not executed because he said he was the Messiah. One can claim that, and simply be wrong or right. The Messiah is a great man, but a man. He was executed because he said he was God. One cannot claim that without blaspheming God -- unless it is true. We'll take a Messiah who is a great man, we'll lay palms to cover his path, we'll rejoice that what we want is at hand, but when it turns out instead he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed to be raised again on the third day, well, it shall not be unto the Messiah we want, and thus we become an offence to him, Satan, savouring the things of Man rather than God.
Men say all kinds of things about who Jesus is. Things for which we will joyfully lay palms to cover his path, or at least accord him a place in the gallery of the great teachers and moral figures to be so honoured.
And then he asks each of us, Who do YOU say that I am?
09 March 2008
On Blogging and Anniversaries
I've reached an anniversary of sorts with blogging. Laetare Sunday was last Sunday this year, and it was Laetare Sunday 2007 that I posted my first post attempting to say something.
However, last year Laetare was 18 March, a date we haven't reached yet this year. And, my first post of any kind was "Getting Started" on 22 February last year. Plus, I had set up "Past Elder" as a Blogger identity in October 2006 not to run my own blog but to stop ranting as Anonymous on the blogs I visit and to start ranting on blogs I visit that don't allow Anonymous, like Father Hollywood.
So who knows -- who cares? -- what is my blogging anniversary. Anniversaries are kind of different to me. Sometimes it's the date that is significant, sometimes when it falls. For example, 12 June is the anniversary of my birth regardless of when it falls in any given year, and I can't say right off what day of the week that was the year I was born. But I always think of the anniversary of my wife's death as the night before Thanksgiving because that's when it fell, and I can't say right off what date that was the year it happened.
In the year (or so) I've actually been running this blog lots has happened in the blogosphere. Two of the blogs I really liked when I started hanging around blogs are gone -- Beggars All, and What You Do, Do Quickly. One of the major factors in my joining LCMS on 27 August 2006 was the confessional Lutheran blogosphere, as I saw that Lutherans like me tend to be not in the synod I was in but LCMS. Good new blogs have come since, and here lately another two of my favourites have gone, Luther at the Movies and The Wittenberg Catholic, though I'm going to leave them on my blogroll for a while since there is some small hope they might be back.
Holy Week was when Past Elder really got rolling, so I plan to enter my second year of blogging in the sense of running a blog by posting new editions of my Holy Week posts.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
However, last year Laetare was 18 March, a date we haven't reached yet this year. And, my first post of any kind was "Getting Started" on 22 February last year. Plus, I had set up "Past Elder" as a Blogger identity in October 2006 not to run my own blog but to stop ranting as Anonymous on the blogs I visit and to start ranting on blogs I visit that don't allow Anonymous, like Father Hollywood.
So who knows -- who cares? -- what is my blogging anniversary. Anniversaries are kind of different to me. Sometimes it's the date that is significant, sometimes when it falls. For example, 12 June is the anniversary of my birth regardless of when it falls in any given year, and I can't say right off what day of the week that was the year I was born. But I always think of the anniversary of my wife's death as the night before Thanksgiving because that's when it fell, and I can't say right off what date that was the year it happened.
In the year (or so) I've actually been running this blog lots has happened in the blogosphere. Two of the blogs I really liked when I started hanging around blogs are gone -- Beggars All, and What You Do, Do Quickly. One of the major factors in my joining LCMS on 27 August 2006 was the confessional Lutheran blogosphere, as I saw that Lutherans like me tend to be not in the synod I was in but LCMS. Good new blogs have come since, and here lately another two of my favourites have gone, Luther at the Movies and The Wittenberg Catholic, though I'm going to leave them on my blogroll for a while since there is some small hope they might be back.
Holy Week was when Past Elder really got rolling, so I plan to enter my second year of blogging in the sense of running a blog by posting new editions of my Holy Week posts.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
02 March 2008
Update, Cars and Otherwise
It's been a busy month, and I see I haven't posted during it!
One car not running and in need of major repair to run again, the new car I'm making payments on needing cosmetic repair, and the 16 year old van, the workhorse that makes having either of the other two possible since those two won't cover all the family needs, now needing some replacement beyond routine maintenance -- it hit me, why not just trade this whole fleet off and if you're going to have a car payment have it be for something that does meet all the family needs in one vehicle.
So I did, and my sole vehicle is now a 2008 Chrysler Town and Country Touring.
Red. My first red vehicle. But hey, this is Nebraska and we got new, good, coach.
It's great, the kids love it, and while I thought I might have a little nostalgia, I don't miss juggling three cars in a one car driveway and garage at all. And at least the payments go to a vehicle that can do it all for us. The power doors are pretty cool too according to the kids -- now you only have to have a finger free when getting in and out with all your stuff rather than a whole hand! And for the kid in me, there's this ambient lighting thing that makes it look like a jetliner cabin flying at night. I think we're all set, and didn't even see it coming!
Just in time for my older son to be down for a week with Type A influenza!
One car not running and in need of major repair to run again, the new car I'm making payments on needing cosmetic repair, and the 16 year old van, the workhorse that makes having either of the other two possible since those two won't cover all the family needs, now needing some replacement beyond routine maintenance -- it hit me, why not just trade this whole fleet off and if you're going to have a car payment have it be for something that does meet all the family needs in one vehicle.
So I did, and my sole vehicle is now a 2008 Chrysler Town and Country Touring.
Red. My first red vehicle. But hey, this is Nebraska and we got new, good, coach.
It's great, the kids love it, and while I thought I might have a little nostalgia, I don't miss juggling three cars in a one car driveway and garage at all. And at least the payments go to a vehicle that can do it all for us. The power doors are pretty cool too according to the kids -- now you only have to have a finger free when getting in and out with all your stuff rather than a whole hand! And for the kid in me, there's this ambient lighting thing that makes it look like a jetliner cabin flying at night. I think we're all set, and didn't even see it coming!
Just in time for my older son to be down for a week with Type A influenza!
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