Month: April 2011

“What mean ye by this service?”

Holy Saturday is the quietest and most peaceful of all the days of the Christian year. Why? Because all the noise and nonsense of our fallen and broken humanity has had its way, right to the bitter end. God has put himself into our hands and we have done our worst. Christ is dead. Christ now lies buried in a borrowed grave. In one way, we are a spent force.

But it is the quietest and most peaceful day for another reason. “It is finished,” Christ said on the Cross in what is the penultimate word of the Crucified. His last word, too, signifies the fuller meaning of that sense of completion. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” But what is finished? What is in his spirit that is placed into the hands of his Father? Simply all that belongs to human redemption. It is all accomplished. There is peace between God and man.

Holy Saturday is paradise restored. It recalls the original harmony between God and man and between nature and God. That, too, is part of the peace and quiet of this day. But that sense of paradise restored is only part of the meaning of this day. Paradise in the biblical and theological understanding is not our homeland, not our end. Our end is with God in the glory of heaven. That is something more and greater than Paradise. It is, perhaps, Paradise plus! For we cannot return to Eden.

We cannot undo the effects of the fall, the effects of sin and folly. The purpose of Holy Week, after all, was to make us more fully aware of sin so as to understand better Christ’s overcoming of sin. Sin and love have been fully on display throughout the pageant of Holy Week. I hope that we have learned something about our selves and about God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. The purpose has not been for us to forget our sins and their disastrous and deadly consequences. No. The purpose has been to see the divine work of human redemption transforming our sins into his righteousness and truth.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

This has been the question that has framed our Holy Week meditations. It reaches its climax in this service on this day which we are privileged to call Good Friday. Christ is crucified. Christ is dead. What, indeed, do we mean by this service?

Simply put, we behold him who we have pierced, as Zechariah prophesied and as we hear at the end of the Passion according to John. We behold Christ Crucified and dead on the Cross. That is the most basic answer to the question. But like so many questions, it only opens us out to more and more questions. Why is Christ crucified? What does it mean? Who crucified Christ? The questions are as disturbing as the answers.

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” So goes the old spiritual. The question is not merely rhetorical. Of course, in a literal sense we weren’t there. The crucifixion was long ago and far away. And yet, in a metaphorical sense, the sense of the hymn itself, and theologically, we are there. And even more, we are they who crucified our Lord.

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“What mean ye by this service”

Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the most intense part of the Passion of Christ. It is the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days which concentrate our attention on the Passion of Christ and on the forms of our participation in his Passion.

The word “maundy” is the englishing of the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment. It refers explicitly to Christ’s words in John’s Gospel, “a new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” A new commandment? How so? Because of what transpires in this week of the Passover. Christ unites the love of God and the love of one another. That is the love that is on display in the Passion of Christ. And that is the love which is set before us on this night, this “very night that he was betrayed.”

“What mean ye by this service?” Maundy Thursday is especially the night of services. There is the ritual of the pedilavium in which Christ washes the feet of his disciples. It is the powerful illustration of service that dovetails with the theme of sacrifice. That is the actual occasion for Christ’s new commandment to “love one another, even as I have loved you.” There are the customs and traditions of royal offerings, called Maundy purses or Maundy coins, given as a form of charity. There is the tradition of stripping the altar, an image of the desolation of Christ as a result of human sin. But at the heart of it all is the institution of the Holy Communion at the Last Supper.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

Tenebrae is a Latin word meaning shadows or darkness. In the pageant of Holy Week, the service of Tenebrae anticipates aspects of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday that bring us to the celebration of Easter.

It signals a greater degree of intensity and a more inward emphasis. So much of the violence of Holy Week, the violence of hatred and anger that lurks in our fallen hearts, is expressed outwardly. But on the Wednesday in Holy Week there is a more inward turn. This greater degree of inwardness is expressed in the psalms and readings of Tenebrae as we enter more fully into Christ’s passion. It is also an important feature of the Passion Gospel which is read on this day. On Wednesday in Holy Week, we read the Beginning of the Passion according to St. Luke.

The purpose and intent of Holy Week, especially in our Anglican understanding and practice, is to immerse ourselves in the fullness of the Scriptural witness to the Passion of Christ. That is why all four passion accounts from the four canonical gospels are read throughout Holy Week. On Palm Sunday, we read the Passion according to St. Matthew. On Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, we read the Passion according to St. Mark. Today, on Wednesday in Holy Week, we begin reading the Passion according to St. Luke which we will conclude on Maundy Thursday. On Good Friday, the Passion according to St. John will be read. It is the complete packet of the Passion.

Each gospel account of the Passion provides a different perspective and has a distinct emphasis. Are there inconsistencies in terms of the details? Yes. Are there any major discrepancies that have any bearing on the basic and fundamental teaching about the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ? No.  To appreciate the differences is to grasp the deeper and creedal unity of the Christian understanding.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

This question, which frames our reflections during Holy Week, takes on a disturbing quality of intensity on Tuesday in Holy Week. Why? Because it is not a pretty picture of ourselves at all. What is our service in the continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark? Well, it is simply more and more of the ugly spectacle of betrayal and hatred, of mockery and violence.

“What mean ye by this service?” What we see and hear is Pontius Pilate’s unwilling and unjust surrender of Jesus to the will of the crowd, being “willing to content the people.” That is itself an indictment of human justice. What we see and hear is the motivating principle that places Jesus in our hands. It is the “envy” of the Chief Priests. Envy is the most destructive of all the deadly sins. And the most ugly. It is about hatred. That theme, too, is more than amply explored in the First Lesson for Evening Prayer from the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon and then even more directly stated in the Second Lesson from the Gospel according to St. John. “He who hates me hates my Father also.”

And that is all part of the spectacle of this holy week. What is on display is the human capacity to hate the good or to be more specific and more horrific, to hate God. Ultimately, our hatred of God is what is visited upon Jesus. This is the darkness at the heart of the Passion.

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