Christ Church

The collect for today, Easter-Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) :

ALMIGHTY God, who through thine only begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Colossians 3:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 20:1-10

Artwork: Sandro Botticelli, The Resurrection, c. 1490. Tempera on canvas, Private collection (formerly at Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick.)

“What mean ye by this service?”

We gather at the grave of Christ in silence. It is the quietest of times, the most peaceful day of the year in a way. All is done. “It is finished.” To be sure. All that belongs to the reconciliation between God and man is accomplished on the Cross. Today marks the peace of Paradise, as it were.

And yet the readings for Holy Saturday suggest something more that belongs to the radical nature of Christ’s sacrifice, to the radical nature of God’s desire to be reconciled with our humanity and world. Holy Saturday marks the creedal mystery of the Descent into Hell. What does that mean? It means the fullest possible extent of God’s desire to be reconciled with the whole of our sinful humanity.

Drawing upon imagery from Zechariah, our readings from 1st Peter this morning point to the idea of Christ going and preaching to the spirits in prison, in the darkness of Sheol. The work of human redemption extends far beyond our assurances about ourselves, far beyond the narrow limits of our world-view. The great icons of the Resurrection in Eastern Orthodoxy envision for us something of the great mystery of this day. Christ is depicted as drawing Adam and Eve and a train of others out of the grave, out of the pit of darkness. Such is reconciliation writ large, we might say.

At the very least, our gathering at the grave of Christ allows for the possibilities of something more. Of hope. Ultimately the reconciling grace of Christ for the whole of the world, for the whole of our humanity – such after all is its universal scope without which it is nothing – moves us to watch and wait expectantly.  It will lead us to the vigil of Easter and to the radical outcome of that reconciling love in the Resurrection. Already in John’s Gospel we are made aware of that idea and the plans taken by the Chief Priests and the Pharisees who petition Pilate for a watch and a stone. Such is the fearfulness of our humanity in the limitations of our imagination and our reason. Such too is our folly in thinking that we can ultimately contain and restrict the will and actions of God. Already in the quiet mystery of Holy Saturday, Christ, the Word and Son of the Father, shows us that his reconciling sacrifice on the Cross is always something active and alive, and something, too, which speaks to the whole of our humanity. There is, we might say, the constant doing of what is done.

We watch and wait at the borrowed tomb of Christ, the tomb borrowed from Joseph of Arimathea. We watch and wait upon the Christ who “borrowed a body that he might borrow a death” (Athanasius), our death. That changes everything.

“What mean ye by this service?”

Fr. David Curry
Holy Saturday 2019
Matins & Ante-Communion

The collect for today, Easter Even, or Holy Saturday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that, through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:17-22
The Gospel: St. Matthew 27:57-66

Artwork: Viktor Vasetsnov, The Deposition, 1901. Oil on canvas, Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts.

“What mean ye by this service?”

It is called Good Friday? Why, we might ask? In so doing, we are really asking, “what mean ye by this service?” How is this good? The Passion of Christ reaches its fullest and inexhaustible intensity in the Crucifixion of Christ. And while we can only contemplate Christ’s Crucifixion because of the Resurrection, itself the fruit of the Passion, it is equally the case that without Good Friday, Easter has no meaning. There is a profound good that belongs to what we contemplate on this day.

We contemplate the real horror and meaning of human sin. There is lots of violence and nastiness, selfishness and self-regard, narcissism and nihilism, not to mention sheer stupidity and stubbornness, to go around in our world and day, more than we can take in and deal with, and yet this day shows us the greater evil which moves in all of the disorders of human hearts and minds since the beginning of time and even to the end of time. What is that? Simply our attempt to kill God.

That is the radical meaning of Christ’s Crucifixion. God in Christ gives himself into our hands so that we can do with him what we will. We have our way. It is not a pretty picture. Yet this is the real meaning of having our way, the real meaning of our vaunted claims to autonomy, the real meaning of all our assertions of control. It is not only destructive of one another through our domination and control of one another whether in passive aggressive ways so finely tuned or in the more brutal forms of active aggression. No. Good Friday bids us plumb the depths of satanic evil that is potential and real in all our hearts. Christ crucified shows us exactly the deep and radical meaning of sin. It is the attempt to eradicate altogether the very principle of our being and knowing and loving, the very principle of the being and knowing of all things – God. We who depend upon God for our every breath and thought and word and deed deny him and seek to annihilate him from the horizons of our minds.

It is utter folly, a delusion, a contradiction. Yet to confront this and to see this made visible before us is the only way in which we might discover the real truth and dignity of our humanity. We “look upon him whom [we] have pierced,” as our liturgy reminds us, drawing upon the words of Zechariah recalled by John. The point, as Lancelot Andrewes teaches, is that we in turn should be pierced; in other words, convicted in our consciences about the radical meaning of all sin. We pierce God. We kill God. To say that seems quite astounding but it is the deep logic of the Christian faith without which we cannot understand the radical nature of the Resurrection. What is the good of this day? It is Christ’s death. His death for us is freely embraced and endured for the sake of our being made new. And so we are broken-hearted in order to be made new.

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The collects for today, Good Friday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before thee for all estates of men in thy holy Church, that every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may truly and godly serve thee; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 10:1-25
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint John
The Gospel: St. John 18:33-19:37

Artwork: Taddeo Gaddi, Crucifixion, c. 1360. Fresco, Sacristy, Santa Croce, Florence.

“What mean ye by this service?”

You may be forgiven for wondering, ‘which service?’ For Maundy Thursday is really a great jumble of services, a collection of rituals. There is the rite of the washing of the feet; there is the rite of the royal mandatum, a gift of money to the poor; there is the Judas Cup ceremony at Durham Cathedral; there is the institution of the Holy Eucharist in the Upper Room with his disciples “on the night,” this very night, “in which he was betrayed”; there is the stripping of the altar; there is the watch in remembrance of Christ’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane. “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” “What mean ye by these services?”we have to ask.

And yet the connecting thread of meaning is clear. It has altogether to do with the power of the concept of sacrifice, a concept so much misunderstood that it now belongs less to its profound religious and spiritual sensibilities and more to the pathologies of the therapeutic culture. Sacrifice here is not about calling attention to oneself, about victimhood; it is entirely about the giving of oneself for the sake of others. Such is love. Such is true agency. Such is true love. Love is not love if it is not sacrificial love. It is entirely about putting oneself freely and utterly on the line, not counting the cost. It is love without calculation. It is simply love.

“What mean ye by this service?” This is our text throughout Holy Week. It concentrates for us the purpose of our rather intense and demanding Holy Week observances. Nothing could be more counter-culture. The places are few and far between that undertake such a demanding regime. And yet, it really all begins with Maundy Thursday, the day of the new commandment, novum mandatum. Maundy is simply the englishing of the Latin word, mandatum, which means commandment. A new commandment. That is the unifying theme. The new commandment is “that you love one another as I have loved you.” That is our vocation and challenge: that our loves should be nothing less and nothing more than God’s love moving in us. That new commandment is simply service as sacrifice. And that is what unites the diverse services of this holy day.

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The collects for today, Thursday in Holy Week, commonly called Maundy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also he made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O GOD, who in a wonderful sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy passion: Grant us so to reverence the holy mysteries of thy Body and Blood, that we may ever know within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption; who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:23-29
The Continuation of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke
The Gospel: St. Luke 23:1-49

Artwork: Paolo Veronese, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, 1583-84. Oil on canvas, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

What mean ye by this service?

Tenebrae means darkness or shadows. It underscores an important feature of our Holy Week observances. They are not about a linear sequence of events. We immerse ourselves in the Passion of Christ in all four accounts of the Passion along with the kinds of scriptural commentary that passages from the Old Testament and the New Testament provide. It is really all a kind of circling around the meaning of the Passion in and through the complex of perspectives that are part of its fundamental and doctrinal unity. Thus the ancient Medieval services of Tenebrae are anticipatory of the events of the Triduum Sacrum. The services of Tenebrae anticipate the Mattin services of each following day: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Tenebrae, then, is a kind of shadowing forth of what we already know but know only in the shadows and the darkness of our minds. We know the story of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection but only partially, only ”in a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13..13), as it were. Thus Tenebrae reminds us of what the veiled cross signifies, namely, the limitations and incompleteness of our understanding. And yet, Tenebrae is about the passion of our quest to know and to understand more fully the radical meaning of Christ’s passion as the pageant of divine love.

Tenebrae anticipates. We participate in the intensity of the Passion by anticipation. Tonight we read the Matins and Lauds of Maundy Thursday. Our modern Tenebrae services are usually restricted to the Wednesday of Holy Week. But it all belongs to the meaning of the services of this week. We anticipate the Triduum Sacrum, the three Holy Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. We do so by our attention to the psalm offices of Matins and Lauds and to the readings which illumine and belong to the deepening of our understanding about Christ’s Passion.

We can only do this in the light of the Resurrection. That is, after all, how all of the accounts of the Passion and by extension the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament have come down to us along with the Creeds that encapsulate the essentials of the Christian faith. We immerse ourselves in the challenge of trying to understand the radical nature of God’s love for us revealed in Christ’s sacrifice.

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What mean ye by this service?

The question comes from the Book of Exodus just after the story of the Passover, the story of the Hebrews being spared the death of the first born of man and beast by daubing the lintels of their doors with the blood of the lamb. It is a sign signifying their relation to the God of their deliverance from slavery and bondage. It becomes the defining event for the people of Israel and one which is remembered ritually. The basic Jewish insight about the sovereign will of God as the defining principle of all reality shapes as well the Christian and Islamic understanding. It informs especially Holy Week, the week of the Passion of Christ and our participation in that Passion.

In the traditional Anglican pattern, we immerse ourselves completely in the reading of all four accounts of the Passion beginning on Palm Sunday with Matthew, then on the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week with Mark, then Luke on Wednesday and Thursday, and John on Good Friday. There is an intensity to these readings because we are in the Passion. We find ourselves in the crowds, among the disciples, and amid the authorities both Jewish and Roman. We are with Peter as weeps recalling the words and the tender look of Christ upon him in his betrayal of Christ. We are with the twelve in the Upper Room on the night in which he was betrayed. As Palm Sunday makes so graphically clear, we are those who shout “Hosanna to the Son of David” only to turn about and cry “Let him be crucified,” “Let him be crucified”! Such are the contradictions within our own souls. We confront ourselves in all of our disorder and disarray in the events of Holy Week.

If we have hearts, they shall be broken, for only so shall we be made whole. Holy Week is one long continuous service. We need to become aware of our brokenness in order to participate in the redemption of our humanity. Only so can we go from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” and then to the great “Alleluias” of Easter. God and God alone can make something good out of our evil. That is the meaning of Holy Week. Our hearts are broken, too, at the sad spectacle of the great Cathedral Church of Notre Dame de Paris on fire and now smoldering in ruins. And yet there is some comfort in the powerful image of the Cross at Notre Dame shining forth amid the smoke and the devastations of the fire, a presence signifying hope and redemption and restoration.

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The collect for today, Wednesday in Holy Week, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 9:15-28
The Beginning of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to St. Luke
The Gospel: St. Luke 22:1-71

Artwork: Nicolaus Knüpfer, Christ before Herod Antipas, First half of 17th century. Oil on panel, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.