The "Latin Mass": Hi Motu!

What a total yawn.

The most striking feature of the secular media accounts I have read is the use of the term "Latin Mass" and the general references to the Mass being in the vernacular, or local, languages since Vatican II.

The post conciliar Roman Mass is now nearly forty years old. Both it and the Mass it replaced are "Latin Masses". There are two differences. The old Mass was said only in Latin, for which it is called the "Latin Mass". Which obscures the fact that the new Mass was written in Latin too, and can be said that way, and in a few places actually is. But the vast, overwhelming majority of the world's Catholics hear that Mass not in Latin but in translations of it in their own languages. So you have one rite of Mass only said in Latin, and another hardly ever said in Latin, and the obscured fact is the term "Latin Mass" really could refer to either the old rite or the new rite said in its original language. "Latin Mass" in the latter sense is probably as rare as "Latin Mass" in the former. One wonders, what of "Latin Mass" as in the new Mass, novus ordo missae, said in Latin, and related to that, the forthcoming new English translation of the Latin novus ordo replacing the deficient ones used the last few decades. The English speaking Catholic worship world has a change coming that will be noticed by millions more than whatever celebrations of the old Mass there may be, namely, the "new" English Mass replacing the "old" English Mass, and both translations of the same Latin "new" Mass!

Which leads to the second difference. One could get the idea that the "new" Mass is simply the "old" Mass but translated into English with some simplifications and the altar turned around. It isn't, and that, not language, is what the "traditionalist" controversy in the Roman Catholic Church is really all about. The "new" Mass, the novus ordo, is exactly that -- a new rite of Mass, not a revision of the old one like the 1962 texts that will be used for the "old" Mass were. The differences between the new Mass promulgated after Vatican II and the previous Mass are the heart of the "traditionalist" protest. If it were about the Latin, that would be addressed simply by more frequent celebration of the New Mass in the language in which it was written, Latin. To a traditionalist, the New Mass embodies the same betrayal of Catholic teaching regardless of language, in the vernacular or in Latin. They have held to the Old Mass not at all because of a sentimental attachment to Latin, though no doubt there are those who do, but because of an attachment to teaching embodied in the Old Mass that is not embodied, or one could say politely, that they do not see embodied, in the New Mass.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent found no objection per se to the use of vernacular languages, saying only that because of the association of the vernacular with Protestantism it might appear to legitimise Protestant theology to worship in the vernacular as they do. So while it's less than clear in the media accounts -- let alone the "faithful" -- the Motu Proprio changes absolutely nothing. Latin has nothing to do with it. The New Mass is still the ordinary rite, the one that, apart from specific requests here and there, will be used by the vast majority of Catholics, soon in some better translations, and any use of the Old Mass under the Motu Proprio acknowledges the New Mass as the ordinary use of the Roman Rite and as true and valid liturgy of the Roman Rite -- something that a "traditional" Catholic cannot acknowledge.

The classic statement of this can be found on the sidebar "The Tiber, for Swimmers et al." entitled "A Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass". You can either impress your Catholic friends or produce looks of total incomprehension in them by calling it the Ottaviani Intervention.

So as the Bard says, once again sound and fury, signifying nothing.

But, as the novus ordo and its lectionary and calendar have become the common heritage of liturgical Western churches it sure can look like something! Well guess what, we had a Reformation a few hundred years back and confessional Lutherans would do well to stand in THAT heritage and not in the new heritage of churches apart its Confessions -- unless we want to be part of that too.

The Fifth Sunday after the Feast of the Holy Trinity (5. Sonntag nach Trinitatis), A.D. 2007.

The Seven Wonders of the World

We now have a new list of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was released in Lisbon, and the effort was begun in 1999 by Swiss businessman and adventurer Bernard Weber. Somewhere between 90 and 100 million votes were cast by Internet and cellphone, a twenty-first century production indeed. Here they are:

The Great Wall of China.
Petra, Jordan.
Statue of Christ the Redeemer, Brazil.
Machu Picchu, Peru.
Chichen Itza pyramid, Mexico.
The Colosseum, Rome.
Taj Mahal, India.

Among the also rans: Eiffel Tower, Paris; Easter Island, Pacific Ocean; The Statue of Libery, New York; the Acropolis, Greece; the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow; the Sydney Opera House, Australia; Stonehenge, England; the Angkor, Cambodia; the Alhambra, Spain; Hagia Sophia, Turkey; Kiyomizu Temple, Japan; Timbuktu, Mali; Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany.

What about the old Seven Wonders of the World. That was a list compiled by the ancient Greeks. Here it is:

The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia.
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.
The Colossus of Rhodes.
Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Of these, only the pyramids still exist. They were given an honourary status along with the seven new wonders. That only seems right. They're still here, and still a true wonder of the world. How do you not become a wonder of the world, especially when you add to it surviving the other original six?

What's of Lutheran interest about this? It doesn't hurt to know a little something about the world into which we are sent and into which He came, kind of like St Paul at the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34).

The catholic mass, The Catholic Mass, dynamic worship

Recently there's been in the world of my experience a lot about the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, or whatever of its other names you wish. The Roman Church on the one hand is about to issue new translations of its novus ordo missae (The New Order of Mass -- the Vatican II Mass in Latin which replaced the previous Mass in Latin following the Council of Trent) which, given the quality of the translations that have been used for several decades now since Vatican II, might be called the first translations. On the other hand the Moto Proprio of Benedict XVI is about to relax the hoops one must go through to say Mass in the Trent Rite, the only one known to the overwhelming majority of Catholics between the 16th and 20th centuries. Which in turn has brought forth a number of postings on Lutheran sites about our understanding of, yes, the mass, a term from which our Confessions not only do not shrink but describe us as vigourously upholding and defending. And part of that was one of my periodic forays onto the blog of David Schuetz, whom I first encountered on one of my favourite Lutheran blogs -- an Australian convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism, of course that being Catholicism as it is now, which when I was a Catholic I would contend is barely Catholicism at all, which is the message I carried there, not Lutheranism. And of course there's the "worship wars" and all the noise about contemporary worship.

In October 1520 Luther wrote a theological treatise -- in Latin therefore, rather than German -- on the sacramental system of the Catholic Church as distinct from the sacraments of Christ's institution. It is called The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. A good bit of it is given over to the mass. Luther sets out three "captivities": the first is communion in one kind only for the laity, meaning only the host; the second is transubstantiation as not just a way of understanding or explaining the Eucharist using Aristotelian terms but a doctrine; the third is the idea of the mass as a sacrifice.

On this third captivity he writes:

The third captivity of this sacrament is by far the most wicked of all, in consequence of which there is no opinion more generally held of more firmly believed in the church today than this, that the mass is a good work and a sacrifice. And this abuse has brought an endless host of other abuses in its train, so that the faith of this sacrament has become utterly extinct and the holy sacrament has been turned into mere merchandise, a market, and a profit-making business. Hence participations, brotherhoods, intercessions, merits, anniversaries, memorial days and the like wares are bought and sold, traded and bartered, in the church.
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Let this stand, therefore, as our first and infallible proposition -- the mass or Sacrament of the Altar is Christ's testament, which he left behind him at his death to be distributed among his believers.
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A testament, as everyone knows, is a promise made by one about to die, in which he designates his bequest and appoints his heirs. A testament, therefore, involves first, the death of the testator, and second, the promise of an inheritance and the naming of the heir.
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You see, therefore, that what we call the mass is a promise of the forgiveness of sins made to us by God, and such a promise as has been confirmed by the death of the Son of God. For the only difference between a promise and a testament is that the testament involves the death of the one who makes it.
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If the mass is a promise, as has been said, then access to it is to be gained, not with any works, or powers, or merits of one's own, but by faith alone.
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According to its substance, therefore, the mass is nothing but the aforesaid words of Christ: "Take and eat etc.", as if he were saying: "Behold, O sinful and condemned man, out of the pure and unmerited love with which I love you, and by the will of the Father of mercies, apart from any merit or desire of yours, I promise you in these words the forgiveness of all your sins and life everlasting. And that you may be absolutely certain of this irrevocable promise of mine, I shall give my body and pour out my blood, confirming this promise by my very death, and leaving you my body and blood as a sign and memorial of this same promise. As often as you partake of them, remember me, proclaim and praise my love and bounty toward you, and give thanks."
From this you will see that nothing else is needed for a worthy holding of mass than a faith that relies confidently on this promise, believes Christ to be true in these words of his, and does not doubt that these infinite blessings have been bestowed upon it. Hard on this faith there follows, of itself, a most sweet stirring of the heart, whereby the spirit of man is enlarged and enriched (that is love, given by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ), so that he is drawn to Christ, that gracious and bounteous testator, and made a thoroughly new and different man. Who would not shed tears of gladness, indeed, almost faint for joy in Christ, if he believed with unshaken faith that this inestimable promise of Christ belonged to him? How could he help loving so great a benefactor, who of his own accord offers, promises, and grants such great riches and this eternal inheritance to one who is unworthy and deserving of something far different?
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Actually, during the mass, we should do nothing with greater zeal (indeed, it demands all our zeal) than to set before our eyes, meditate upon, and ponder these words, these promises of Christ -- for they truly constitute the mass itself -- in order to exercise, nourish, increase, and strengthen our faith in them by this daily remembrance. For this is what he commands, when he says: Do this in remembrance of me.

When I read these words, which was during Bible Information Class as some outside reading, I knew I would become a Lutheran. Or more accurately, I knew I was Lutheran, for here was stated cleanly and clearly what everywhere else is either hemmed and hawed or denied, either clouded over with notions of what we or I are doing obscuring the promise given to us and me, or replaced with our or my efforts to offer dynamic worship to produce the very thing for which he gave us the Eucharist.

(Quotations from Three Treatises. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970. Red highlighting mine.)

A Small Milestone

I was recently asked to, and approved by the voters to, serve on my parish's Stewardship Committee. We had our first meeting last night. I joined LCMS and my parish last year, though we had been attending for a year or so before that instead of our WELS parish. So it was really good to be asked to serve and be able to serve in the life of our parish. And really good to go and do it.

There are a few passages in Luther's works which really stand out for me. One of them is in "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation", where in the context of canonising saints, setting up shrines and having pilgimages, he says:

And let every man stay in his own parish; there he will find more than in all the shrines even if they were all rolled into one. In your own parish you will find baptism, the sacrament, preaching, and your neighbour, and these things are greater than all the saints in heaven, for all of them were made saints by God's word and sacrament.

What a beautiful gift to participate in that!

(The text is from Three Treatises. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970. p. 77. I guess a little income from pilgrimages to a shrine to our first pastor of blessed memory to boost receipts is out of the question, huh.)

Pentecost / Shavuot / Pfingstfest 2007

So why does the "birthday of the church" have the Greek prefix for fifty in it?

Because it wasn't originally the birthday of the church, but an observance commanded by God in the Law of Moses which is to be held fifty days after the second day of Passover, and each day is formally counted.

The counting is called the Counting of the Omer. What's an omer? Omer are the sheaves of a harvested crop. During the days of the physical Temple, the priests would offer newly harvested barley on the second day of Passover, which represents the start of the seven week harvest season. Which is why Pentecost is also called the Feast of Weeks. In the Law, Shavuot is called Hag ha-Katzir, the Holiday of Harvest's End.

Ah, so we have a harvest festival, taking its place among the various harvest festivals in world culture and religion. Well, yes and no. Yes, it's another harvest festival, another instance of a human cause for celebrating a human milestone, the end of the harvest, particularly in a pre-industrial society. But there's something a little different about this one. The Talmud (What's a Talmud? Ancient rabbinical writings -- for more, look it up, Wikipedia is linked to the right of the page) says it was on the 6th of Sivan (a month in the Jewish lunar calendar) which is the first night of Shavuot that God gave the Ten Words, better known among Gentiles as the Ten Commandments. Consequently, a popular observance has been an all night Bible study at home or in the synagogue, breaking for morning service, called shakharit, the ancestor of our, well, morning service. This all nighter is called tikkun. Traditionally only dairy foods are eaten on Shavuot, and while no-one knows why for sure, the thinking is that on the first Shavuot they had slaughtered all these animals for food but after the Law was given found out they were not kosher so they only ate dairy foods. In the liturgy of the synagogue, the readings for the service for the first day of Shavuot are: Torah portion Exodus 19:1 - 20:23 and Numbers 28:26-31; haftorah Ezechiel 1:1-28 and 3:12. (Sorry, grew up pre Vatican II RC, so those Greek Septuagint derived spellings for OT names kind of persist!) In case you're a little rusty, this is the Exodus account (actually the first of two Exodus accounts, the other being Chapter 34, and there's another in Deuteronomy) of the giving of the Law, specifically the Ten Words, and Ezechiel's account of the chariot of fire -- you know, the flying saucer.

This is the feast that Acts 2:1 (in the Epistle for Pentecost, which even the Vatican II three year lectionary couldn't overturn) refers to when it speaks of Pentecost arriving, and why there were men from all over everywhere in Jerusalem for it. It's to celebrate the giving of the Law, the whole reason why there was a Passover and a deliverance, the most important event in Judaism. And like Passover just had been, it was about to be transformed!

For God himself had become Man in Jesus Christ, suffered the condemnation for our sins in his death, and then rose again. Now, if this were all to the story, why didn't he just stick around, proof positive that he had risen? If the whole point were "All you need is Jesus", "I am saved because Jesus died for my sins and rose again", "Jesus first, as long as you believe that the rest isn't that important", then what would make that point better, what would make that point more irrefutable, than if he had stayed right here, so you could see him, talk to him face to face, hear him teach, and say to those who don't believe "Look, there he is right there, go ask him yourself".

But it didn't happen that way, because that is not the whole point and not all to the story. Just as the Passover and exodus from bondage in Egypt had been not for its own sake but in order to gather with God so he could give his people his Law, so the Passover of the full paschal lamb Jesus had been not for its own sake but in order to gather with God so he could give his people his Spirit! Just as God had commanded the counting of the Omer, the fifty days connecting Pesach, Pascha, and Shavuoth, Pentecost, so now God himself counts the Omer from the Pascha of the Lamb he provided, his Son, to the Shavouth or Pentecost so that on the very day where his people once celebrated only the giving of the Law, they still celebrate that and added to it is the giving of the Spirit!

And what happened as a result of that? His Apostles, men who knew all you need is Jesus, men who knew for a physical fact that Jesus had died and risen again, men who knew Jesus is first, men who had all that and like any men on that basis alone were scared and afraid and huddled around each other in the comfort of others who had all that, tending to their prayers and the internal matters of their little band, did something utterly amazing on this day of celebrating the giving of the Law -- they gave the Law, and the Gospel. Not only that, each one there heard it in his own language, addressed directly to him!

And what did the people do? Same as the Apostles had done when the women told them the tomb was empty and he had risen. They didn't believe them. Some thought this is just a foolish wishful story, others sought to figure out what this means, others thought they're just crazy, probably drunk, out of their minds. That's what happened first. Pretty much what still happens when people hear the mighty works of God told to them -- when WE hear the mighty works of God told to US. It's a really nice story stemming from our deepest wishes; let's talk about this and dialogue as to what it all means; those guys are crazy. That's what happened first. The rest didn't happen until something else happened.

Peter then stood with his brothers in the Office of Holy Ministry and laid it right out for them, clean and clear. This is what Joel and David had spoken about, Jesus delivered by the plan of God to us whom we in our sinfulness abandoned the Law and in turn delivered him to the power and law of the world to be killed, Jesus delivered by the power of God from the power of death and our sinfulness which inflicted that on him, Jesus risen again and now placed on the throne of David at the right hand of God, Jesus having been given the promise of the Spirit so that now you see and hear this: Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

That's the Law. And when they heard the Law, given now for the first time in its fulfillment on this day of celebrating the giving of the Law long ago, they were cut to the heart. People by nature want a religion of works, stuff they can do to make it all right, stuff they can do to feel OK with God, with each other, and within themselves. And the world offers all sorts of versions of that. Some of them go by the name Christianity. And the feelings and purpose they impart are utterly false. God himself has shown us in the Law exactly the stuff he wants us to do, and we showed ourselves absolutely incapable of it by our own reason and strength, to the extent that we handed his prophets and finally the One he sent over to the power of our own ideas and law to be killed and still reject their message to this day. So much for a religion of works. We can't do it even when God himself shows us exactly how, no matter how hard we try in madness driven living. What's worse, just like those on this Pentecost, we don't get it even when the mighty works of God are directly addressed to us even with wondrous signs, preferring instead to think it over or think they're just nuts!

Pentecost came to-gether not in the signs and wonders, which can still leave us in unbelief, but when Peter and his brothers in the Office of Holy Ministry laid it out clean and clear. It still does. It was then, when Peter had given the Law in its horrible consequences, that they, we, thought not about what it all means, not let's think this over, not maybe there's some good ideas here, not maybe these guys are nuts, but instead were cut to the heart by the fruitlessness of their, our, own reason and strength, and asked Peter and his brothers, Men and brethren, what shall we do? It was then and only then that they could tell them the Good News, the Gospel.

Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

What happened then? Same thing that happens now. They that gladly received his word were baptised, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

Guess what! There's an emerging church all right. Not just lately, not out of some marketing scheme supposedly crafted to the taste of the times, but ever since the outpouring of the Spirit on that Pentecost whose historical happening we celebrate every feast of Pentecost.

We may not be in Jerusalem, the Temple is not physically there to go to in one accord, and Peter and the other Apostles are not personally our preachers. And it makes not the slightest difference. The taste of our or any time has no taste for the Gospel and it is worthless to pander to it thinking that will produce a taste for the Gospel. That will produce only what it always produces -- a religion of works, stuff to do to catch the God buzz in a quest after one's own feeling better, on the surface all about Jesus or God but really all about me, or a lot of discussion about what it all means, or a rejection of it as wishful thinking at best and lunacy at worst.

What produces a taste for the Gospel is the Law. That's why the Spirit was given to proclaim the Gospel on the feast celebrating the giving of the Law! And we have the reality of Pentecost before us no less than they. The Temple is in ruins and Peter and the Apostles are gone. So how's that, how is Pentecost not just another thing you read in a book that supposedly comes from God, maybe it does. maybe it doesn't. Because the true Temple Jesus has been raised again on the third day, and has taken his place with the Father, and has sent his Spirit as he promised. And that Spirit speaks the same message to us as it did that day in unbroken continuity and succession, not that Peter and the Apostles are still physically here, not that other men are still here in a succession of corporate hierarchy, not in those who produce signs and wonders or miracles of church growth and attendance in his name, but that the clean and clear laying out of Law and Gospel as was heard that Pentecost continues to be heard in the faithful preaching of those in the Office of Holy Ministry unto the ends of the earth despite sin, the world and the gates of hell itself.

And when this happens, the same thing follows as did then. Those who receive this proclamation of Law and Gospel are baptised, they continue steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching handed on in the church, especially in those books upon which the church has said you can absolutely rely as the inspired word of God without error, the Bible, and in preaching by those called to do so of that Word, they continue steadfastly in fellowship and community and gathering with each other, they continue steadfastly in the breaking of the bread, the mass, the church's liturgy, wherein Jesus was only fully discerned for who and what he is even when he was bodily here for forty days after he rose, and they continue steadfastly in prayer.

That is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and every bit of it is as available here and now as it was on that day we read about in Acts, in the Epistle or Christian haftorah for Pentecost, every bit of what was pointed to in Ezechiel's chariot of fire we read about in the original Pentecost haftorah. Pentecost comes to-gether, despite all our vain and sinful efforts to make it happen in some other way more to our liking, the same now as then as ever. Accept no substitute! There is no substitute, even if it claims his name or produces signs and wonders and warm feelings in his name, as true and false teachers and even Satan himself alike can do!

Pentecost is about the one thing they cannot produce and only the true Sprit of God can. As the Little Catechism explains:

I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Christian church; the communion of Saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.

What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian church He daily and richly forgives all sins to me and all believers, and will at the Last Day raise up me and all the dead, and give unto me and all believers in Christ eternal life.

This is most certainly true.

Eostre / Pascha / Counting the Omer 2007

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!

Easter Vigil and Pascha 2007

I originally planned a study of the Easter Vigil and then an Easter posting, but the press of life beyond blogging just didn't leave the time, this year.

Happily, there is an excellent discussion about the Great Vigil on Gottesblog http://gottesblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/training-for-great-vigil.html

And, there are excellent Pascha sermons available by clicking on Father Hollywood or Weedon's Blog under the "Lutheran Blogs" list to the right on this page. Of course, IMHO you won't come away empty handed by clicking on any of the links listed to the right.

I more or less stuck to my original plan by finishing this series with some thoughts on Paschaltide as well as Pascha itself.

Some Thoughts in the Darkness / Tenebrae

Being born in 1950, I was a youngster in the pre Vatican II Roman Catholic church, and was a teenager during the years of Vatican II, and was a young adult in the aftermath. I served as what we used to call an altar boy at both the pre and post conciliar Roman versions of the services I have been describing in these Holy Week posts. 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, and they'll probably walk right in (that's a Catholic thing: a person of solid Christian faith and leading a good solid Christian life is described as one who will "walk right in" to heaven without any time in Purgatory), but here below this is what happens when you try to be church apart from the Church he put there, tinkering around with the pieces of the former unity apart from their source and coming 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. Or in more ecclesiatical language, an ecclesial communion rather than a church per se, united though imperfectly with the Church of Christ by those aspects of it which it does not deny, but lacking some of what Christ gave his Church. (Hey Schuetz, you reading this?)

I mean, what's up with Tenebrae. Everybody knows -- well, if not everybody, dedicated altar boys 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.

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. I would later be taught, after the Revolution, er, Vatican II, in my Historical Jesus and Christ of Faith class that St Paul didn't really write Hebrews, but that's another story. 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") 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, but we'll get to that in the next post, 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 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. This year's in my parish was 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. Judging from the look on my nine year old, I was the teariest one singing Amazing Grace along with the "contemporary" group, old chanting, four part hymn singing Dad! Yeah it's all good bro. BAM! 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!

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 though (with its traditional Lamentations) instead of understanding worship in the New Covenant in its organic relationship to worship in the Old as applies to all the rest of it, here New Covenant worship actually anticipates what would happen in the worship of the Old after the New that did not accept it.

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's better be, because unless he is, we ought to call off the whole thing because he got what he deserved, not claiming to be Messiah which we thought was a man anyway, but 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, all going to the same good place therefore, and we're not but 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. Makes all the difference in the world. And just as he said, the generation that saw that had not passed away before the end of the world as previously known before the difference -- 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. In the evening of the 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 it just like the first. And we read it in 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 2007

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.

Maundy Thursday / Gruendonnerstag 2007

Maundy. 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, 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 to disappear until the Resurrection.

To emphasise that the lamb now goes to the slaughter for our sakes, not only do these things go away but the altar after mass 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 mandaturm for commandment, and so does the word maundy. This is the day of the new commandment, mandaturm or maundy Thursday! Hard to put Jesus any more first than to name the whole day after his new commandment! Than to do what he did and as he said in the Gospel for the day!

So the 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 he 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 like us 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 accpetance -- 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.

Palmarum/Palm Sunday 2007

"Who do you say that I am?"

The events we the church remember this day ask us this question 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 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, who led the people into the Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not, whose name is with the name Jesus a variant of the same name, was given the same triumphal accord. 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 to drive our lives rather than giving us the sacrifice that takes away our sin, whose religion is about not what he has done but what would we do as he did? 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.

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 and 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, but 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 -- and 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. And then he asks each of us, Who do YOU say that I am?

Holy Week 2007: Gospels

Holy Week, or Great Week as it is also called, concludes the preparation for Easter.

Interesting that the Gospels 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 and Good Friday both offer the Passion account of John, the one for the institution of the Eucharist and the other for the Crucifixion.

Separate posts for Spy Wednesday, Green Thursday and Lamentation Friday will be posted. Huh? Maundy was a strange enough term, what's up with spy, green and lamentation? What happened to Holy Thursday and Good Friday? Who goes to church on Tuesday or Wednesday of Holy Week and why waste a whole Gospel Passion account on it?

More to follow. For now, simply a time to understand how the liturgy does especially in this holy week what it does all year, present the Gospel revealed in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Judica 2007

On this Sunday the church reads Hebrews 9:11-15 for the epistle reading and John 8:46-59 for the gospel. Unless of course one divorces oneself from the ageless voice of the church and her preaching and follows 1970s Rome, when you won't hear this at all in any of the three years in the cycle. Modern versions of the traditional lectionary add an Old Testament reading to the Epistle and Gospel for the day, which is Genesis 22:1-14. This is the story of Abraham and Issac and the near sacrifice of the one by the other, consigned in the three year new Roman cycle to Lent 1, Year B -- kind of reads like a shipping parts list. Our practice of having a lectionary at all derives from the synagogue, where the lectionary is based on a reading of the Law (Torah) through the year, beginning after the Biblical New Year in the Fall, with a related reading from the Prophets (Haftorah) assigned to each Sabbath's Torah portion; special selections are made for the festivals established in the Law. This became a reading from the Gospels with a related reading from the Epistles.

Genesis 22:1-14 is called The Binding of Isaac, or the Akedah, in the synagogue worship. The story is read twice, once in its regular place as the Torah is read through the year, which is the fourth regular Sabbath, Vayyera, and also as the Torah portion for the second day of New Year's, Rosh Hoshannah, which is vitally connected to the Torah portion for the first day of New Year's, Genesis 21, and the associated prophetic reading (haftorah) 1 Samuel 1-2:10 ending with the Song of Hannah, the first Magnificat.

Jewish and Christian teachers alike hold forth the Akedah as a supreme example of obedience to the will of God. And so it is. And so remote it can seem when obedience to the will of God is asked of us. When obedience is asked to something that makes no sense to us, that can even seem so wrong to us that it cannot possibly be from God. When it seems to dash, as it did to Abraham, all the promises made and kept so far, only to come to this? When it seems that all the gifts of God were cruel hoaxes, one's heart shattered in the cold body of a dead spouse, in seeing a loved one adrift and struggling between God's wisdom and the world's madness, or in any of the thousands of other things that can come in life as if, we wonder, there is no God of the preachers.

Who of us would not rather cry with the Psalmist whose verses give us the name for this day?

Judica me Deus et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.
Judge me God, discern my cause against an unholy people: from the unjust and deceitful man deliver me.

Who of us does not cry with the Psalmist, how can this be, how can this happen, when bad things happen to good people indeed, where is God, why doesn't he stop this, why does he allow this; has he caused this?

Quia tu es Deus fortitudo mea: quare me repulisti et quare tristis incedo dum affligit me inimicus?
For thou O God art my strength: why hast thou repulsed me and why do I go about in sadness while the enemy afflicts me?

Is that it then? Suffer the loss of everything, even what and who is most dear, even what seemed to have been given by the very God who now seems to take it away? This is God? This is religion? Yet, isn't that exactly what the human idea of religion is in ordinary life apart from dire moments? We must do something to please God, to be right with God, and religion tells us what those works are, be they works to lead a good life, be a good person, offer worship -- whatever, here are the works you must do. In Abraham's time child sacrifice was not at all uncommon and the wonder might be not that a god would ask it, but prevent it. But before we congratulate ourselves on our enlightened modernity, let us ask was not the idea behind it the same idea behind our drive to find purpose in our works, that surely if I do these things everything will be OK with me and I will be OK with God? The truth is, we may have given up child sacrifice, but not the idea behind it.

The rabbis point out that the word God uses to tell Abraham to "offer" up Isaac is not the word used to signify the slaying of a sacrificial victim, and is more akin to "lift" him up, showing that God never had the intent to accept or even ask for human sacrifice. But did Abraham know this? It is not whether he did or didn't, but that he didn't ask the question! He didn't second guess God, he didn't open a theological seminar, he was simply willing to do it if that is what God wants without trying to settle it with God beforehand about the "if". In a word, faith -- and thereby offering on that mount that would become the Temple Mount the only thing that matters. So we can now pray:

Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam: ipsa me deduxerunt et adduxerunt in montem sanctum tuam et in tabernacula tua.
Emit thy light and thy truth: for they have led me and brought me to thy holy hill and thy dwelling place.

That faith in God is not our work either, it is his, it is his light and truth which have led and brought us to where we can now say:

Et introibo ad altari Dei: ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
And I will enter unto the altar of God: unto God who makes joyful my youth.

Confitebor tibi in cithara Deus Deus meus: quare tristis es anima mea et quare conturbas me?
I shall yet praise thee on the harp, O God my God: why is my soul in sadness and why dost thou trouble me?

God had indeed provided the Lamb for sacrifice, the Pashal Lamb who soon will celebrate the last seder of the old covenant and the first mass of the new, giving us until he comes again his pledge and testament, the body and blood, separate as the sacrificial victim he will then be, God sparing nothing, giving everything, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, passing over those with his blood no matter their sins, saving them from the destruction they merit and giving them life with him now and into eternity. The God who seems to ask everything of us is the God who in fact gives everything to us. It is he and not we who spares nothing and sacrifices everything. Child sacrifice is outrageous, and most especially so because it is the most outrageous way in which we think we serve God when in fact we thereby make ourselves our god by trusting in our works rather than his. How often we go unto his holy mount, his dwelling place, fearing the worst when he offers the best.

Spera in Deo quoniam adhuc confitebor illi: salutare vultus mei et Deus meus.
Trust in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the salvation of my countenance and my God.

The God who so loved us has so loved those whom we love too. He loves them far better than we do. He who spared nothing for us spared nothing for them too. Our love is imperfect, strewn with good and sometimes bad intentions, with actions that sometimes turn out to have been the right thing and sometimes not, with inaction that sometimes turns out to have been the right thing and sometimes not. Yet we can love, because he loved. We can act even knowing it will be imperfect, because we know he has acted perfectly. We can do good works, not in a bondage driven life to be saved or to save others or to please God, but in freedom because we are saved and God is pleased in Him in whose blood we are sprinkled. We need not fear what God will ask of us, even when our hearts are breaking, our souls filled with fear, and our eyes full of tears, because he will not ask us or those we love to be the sacrifice. Like Abraham we need to skip the ifs, trust in His word and do what it says. He will provide the lamb for us as he did for our father in faith Abraham; he has provided the Lamb, Agnus Dei, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world -- dona nobis pacem; give us peace.

In Gottes Namen.

Laetare 2007

Laetare Sunday in Lent (or Lent 4 if you prefer to worship as if Vatican II were in St Louis rather than Rome, and/or as if Rome still called the shots on worship) takes its name from the Introit for the day, as do most named Sundays. The Introit is taken from Isaiah 66:10-11 and Psalm 121:1 (unless you use Christian Worship which does away with Introits as effectively as any "praise" service).

Rejoice ye with Jerusalem and be glad with her: all ye that love her.
Rejoice for joy with her: all ye that mourn for her.
Ps. I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord.
Glory be etc.
(TLH, p.63)

Sometimes Laetare is seen as kind of a break from Lent. But why a break, why does the church in her liturgy offer rejoicing in a penitential season? Because we need one? Because we deserve one? Hardly.

We need salvation, and we deserve nothing. But God has dealt with us not according to what we deserve, but according to his unfailing love, and became one of us to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. Which we shall shortly celebrate in Holy Week and Easter. Which is such great news that it even breaks forth into the penitential time of preparation for it. That even as the events which it celebrates so completely broke the bonds of sin and death from which we can not free ourselves, so can the season of penitence to prepare for it not be without a recognition liturgically of the joy to which it leads. That is not a break from Lent. It is an essential part of it! It drives us forward to the Easter message without which Lent has no meaning or reason and degenerates into another futile attempt to impress God with our observances, be it fasting or loud praise.

For as the Epistle and Gospel for the day say, we are children not of the covenant of the slave woman but of the free, not of the covenant that shows us our sin, but that shows us our Saviour, and from what the world sees as simple products of it, our Lord will bless it, break it and give it to us with more than enough to go around!

So rejoice indeed! We who were barren can now bear fruit!

PS -- pastors, did you wear your rose vestments to-day?
PPS -- Dr Tighe, thank you so much for the book you so thoughtfully sent. Re earlier posts on another blog -- the station for Laetare as you well know is The Holy Cross in Jerusalem!

Getting Started

Welcome to "Past Elder".

"Under Construction" might be a better title for a while, as I get familiar with maintaining a blog and not just posting on some of the ones listed to the right.

Gotta start someplace!