Holy Week Heads Up:
A short description of the events in Holy Week and why we do them.
Palm Sunday
March 29, 7:45 & 10:15 a.m.
Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday which marks the beginning of Jesus journey to his death on Calvary and his resurrection on the Third Day. On Palm Sunday we focus on two events, Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem, followed by an account of his Passion and death in one of the synoptic Gospels which rotate each year among Matthew, Mark and Luke
Each of the Gospels gives a somewhat different view of the Passion. St. Mark gives a graphic picture of Jesus’ utter abandonment by both his disciples and God. We experience the Passion as complete dereliction, destruction, and loss. St. Matthew fills out St. Mark’s narrative adding all kinds of dramatic touches. For example, it is St. Matthew who tells us of Pilate’s wife warning him to let Jesus go because of her troubled dream about him. In St. Luke, Jesus’ agony in the Garden is portrayed as the stress and anxiety of an athlete about to begin his contest. This is the account where Jesus promises paradise to the thief and says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Because we now use all three Gospels, our sense of the Passion is both expanded and deepened.
We begin the liturgy outside. This is to commemorate the entry into Jerusalem. As we stand in a circle, we hear the story of Jesus riding on the donkey and the people spreading garments and palms along his way. They hail him as the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Of course it will be but a matter of days before they forget all this and turn on him. We bless some crosses that are made of palm branches and then pass them out and then process as a group into the Church.
Once we are inside the story turns, the atmosphere changes as we now plunge into the story of the Passion. The liturgical color is red to symbolize both Jesus blood, and his passionate love for us, that leads him to lay down his life.
The liturgy proceeds as normally, and we end with the hymn Ride on, Ride on in Majesty.
Palm Sunday is a very important day. For many people who don’t participate in the rest of Holy Week, it may be the only time they hear the story of the Christ’s death and reflect on it. In the end, things come full circle in that the palm crosses left over from the liturgy are gathered and stored. Next year they will be burned to become the ashes used on Ash Wednesday.
Reflective Dinners in Holy Week:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 6:00 p.m. Parish Hall
The Reflective Dinners in Holy Week are a tradition unique to Church of the Angels. They had their beginning as an outcome of one of my annual 8 day retreats many years ago. In that time I made my annual retreats at the Camaldolese Hermitage south of Big Sur, and my favorite part of the day was at the end of the Evening Prayer Liturgy. We would go from the monastic choir into the Rotunda where they celebrated the Eucharist. We would stand along the outside wall, and then one of the monks would bring out the Sacrament from the Tabernacle and place it on the Altar with a single candle. Then we would all sit or kneel in silence for a half hour. Inside the Rotunda it was absolutely silent. We stayed that way until one of the monks range a Tibetan Singing Bowl, and then we would prostrate ourselves. The bowl would be rung again and we’d stand and a monk would take the Sacrament back to the Tabernacle in an adjoining Chapel.
As I said, this was my favorite part of the day. During the silence various things would emerge in my mind. At one point many years ago an idea emerged, “What if we combined The Song of Solomon with the Gospel of John during Holy Week? Later the idea of three evenings took shape. I came home and asked Phil Holmes if he would take on the meditations and he did, and so the Reflective Dinners were born.
Standing behind all this is St. John’s account of the Last Supper. It begins with Jesus washing the disciples feet in Chapter 13. Then in Chapter’s 14, 15, and 16, Jesus talks with his disciples about what their life in the world will be on the other side of his Resurrection. The Last Supper concludes with Jesus High Priestly Prayer in Chapter 17 where he prays for his disciples. The key to understanding all this is to realize that Jesus is not speaking to those original disciples only, but that he is talking to disciples in all times and all places until the Parousia. His description of Post Resurrection life to them, has resonance with our lives as disciples now. He gives the clue when he says “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” In other words the truth of Christ and what he means will unfold and deepen over the whole course of our lives and in fact the whole course of human history. So, the Reflective Dinners in Holy Week bring us into this same place where Jesus speaks with us about our lives in him now and always.
To make this happen, we set it up in a special way. We set up the Parish Hall with tables and chairs forming a U and we sit around the outside. The tables have many, many of the IKEA Tea Lights that we use at Pentecost as well as other candles. As we gather, depending on the time of year, the light in the Parish Hall dims with the setting of the sun and the candles glow brighter. A team prepares a simple meal, usually soup or casserole, salad, bread, wine, and a desert. Once the meal has been served, a parishioner reads to us as we eat in silence. Over the years many parishioners have presented Christian authors from across the centuries all talking about the Christian life, what it means, and how it is lived. When finished, usually when we’re about done with the meal, I read one of the Chapters from St. John’s account of the Last Supper, one chapter each evening. At the conclusion of that, I read 1/3 of the High Priestly Prayer. Then we do Eucharist together around the table using bread and wine from the meal. We share the Sacrament among each other. We finish with the Blessing.
After this there is desert and conversation. Then we clean up and prepare for the next evening.
Our presenter this year will be Kelly Brandt who will be reading from Abiding, The Archbishop of Canterbury's LENT BOOK 2013 by Ben Quash
"This is a reflection on where to find our centre of gravity. Ben Quash diagnoses with great sensitivity the different ways in which we can misunderstand our need for continuity and security - by resorting to inflexible habits or expectations in a world where things naturally change." +Rowan Cantuar
The Reflective Dinners are a wonderful event. Some people come to all three, some make one or two. It doesn’t matter, there is much to be gained either way. Once again this year we look forward to a rich experience during the first three nights in Holy Week. If you’ve never been to a Reflective Dinner, you might want to try it, and see for yourself.
Maundy Thursday
April 2, 7:00 p.m.
Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Paschal Triduum, otherwise known as the Three Great Days of Jesus crucified, buried, and risen. The of “Maundy” comes from the word Mandatum which means commandment. According to the Gospel of John, at the Last Supper, Jesus, after washing the disciples’ feet gives them the “new commandment” that they should love one another as he has loved them.
Maundy Thursday commemorates the last meal Jesus had with his disciples prior to his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. The Gospels differ on whether the meal was a celebration of the Jewish Passover, which is what the synoptic Gospels hold, or was a special ceremonial meal prior to the Passover as held by the Gospel of John. In either event, at the end of the meal, Jesus does something completely new. He bestows upon his disciples a means whereby he will always remain present to them. Jesus takes the bread, gives thanks, blesses it, and distributes it to them and says, “This is my Body.” Afterward he takes the cup of wine and distributes it to them and says, “This is my Blood.” He tells them to “do this in remembrance of me.”
In this context, the word “remember” does not mean to recall an event that is simply in the past and is no more. The biblical sense of remember means to make present. When the Jewish Seder is done, it is not that the participants think of something that happened a long time ago. Instead, the event that liberated them from slavery and made them God’s own people is a present and contemporary reality. It is not then, but now. The same is true in the Eucharist. You might say with both the Passover and the Last Supper, the events themselves and what they accomplish are simply too big for the chronological time they occurred. You might say that both the Passover and the Eucharist, tear the events from their place in chronological time and bring them into ours.
One of the 20th Century’s foremost scholars of Christian Liturgy, Dom Gregory Dix wrote about Jesus words to “Do this is remembrance of me.” He said, “Of all the things that God every told people to do, this is the one thing we’ve carried out most faithfully.” He then went on to describe all the times and places, and events in which we celebrate the Eucharist, “doing this in remembrance of me.” It happens every Sunday of course, but also at baptisms, weddings, and funerals. It happens in grand cathedrals and humble shanty chapels. It happens on ships, it happens on battlefields, it happened in Dachau and the Gulag. It happened on the slab which was all that was left of an Episcopal Church after Hurricane Katrina hit Gulfport Mississippi. Dix concludes by asking, “Has any commandment of Christ been as faithfully carried out as ‘Do this in remembrance of me?’”
So Maundy Thursday commemorates the institution of the Eucharist. A corollary of that is that Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Christian priesthood.
There is also something else. Jesus washes the disciples feet. St. Peter is scandalized. But Jesus says to him that unless you let me love you in this way, you have no part in me.
As part of the liturgy, I remove the vestments and wash the feet of those parishioners who are willing. It is a profound moment for me and I’m sure for them.
Finally, after Communion, we begin the process of stripping the altar as Jesus and his disciples leave the upper room and go the Garden of Gethsemane. The choir chants Psalm 22 and as the members of the Altar Guild empty out the Sanctuary, the lights in the Church grow dimmer and dimmer. The Sacrament has been placed on the site altar which is surrounded with flowers. This is called the Altar of Repose. The Sacrament will remain there until it is consumed on Good Friday.
The last thing that happens is that the Altar Cross is draped in black. The light on the Resurrection window is turned off. The choir leaves their robes behind and walks out of the Church in silence.
Maundy Thursday is an incredibly powerful liturgy. It really is not to be missed.
Good Friday
April 3, 12:00 noon
Good Friday is the day that Jesus died on the Cross. That being the case, some wonder why the day is called “good.” The name really derived from God as in “God’s Friday.” As is to be expected the liturgy for this day is very somber.
One might also ask, why are we revisiting this a second time? Didn’t we hear about Christ’s Passion on Palm Sunday? We did indeed. But while both days mark the same event, each day presents the Passion in a very different way. On Palm Sunday we hear the Passion of Christ from one of the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) in a order that rotates every three years. On Good Friday the we always hear the Passion of Christ from the Gospel of John.
The Passion as depicted in the synoptic Gospels portrays Jesus as the victim of the events. This is most graphic in the Gospel of St. Mark, and less so in the Gospel of St. Luke. However in St. John’s Passion, Jesus is not the victim, but rather directs the whole action from beginning to end. That is because for St. John, Jesus crucifixion is his glorification, his exaltation. In the 12th Chapter of his Gospel, St. John quotes Jesus as saying, “When I am lifted up, I will draw all to myself.”
As the Passion unfolds, Jesus is master of the action. When they come to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asks who they seek. When they say, “Jesus of Nazareth,” they are thrown off their feet. Jesus makes sure that his disciples are released. Later in the interrogation, it is Jesus who takes charge calling first the High Priest, then most powerfully, Pontius Pilate to account, exposing their falsehood for all to see. In his crucifixion, Jesus commends his mother to the care of the Beloved Disciple, and his last words are, “It is accomplished.” His side is pierced by the spear and out flows blood and water. The Gospel writer is firm that this is the truth. The early Church theologians saw this outflow of blood and water as the setting forth of the Spirit and the baptism of the whole world, in fact the whole cosmos. For St. John, the moment of Jesus’ death is the moment of his ultimate triumph.
Good Friday services are done in many ways. In some places it has been a long practice to have a service from 12 to 3 to mark the time Jesus was on the cross. Often the service has a meditations on Jesus’ last seven words. At Church of the Angels we follow the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer. Out liturgy begins at 12:00 and usually ends by 1:45 p.m
The liturgy is in several parts. The first part is the Liturgy of the Word. This involves the reading of the Suffering Servant from Isaiah, a long passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Passion of St. John. This is followed by the homily. The homily is followed by a period of silence, then as set of prayers called The Solemn Collects. On Good Friday we make a special effort to concentrate our prayer on the needs of the world for which Christ died. The Solemn Collects are quite profound. There may be a traditional choir anthem called The Reproaches. The Reproaches are a dialogue between God and his people where God enumerates all that he has done for us in Salvation History only to be met by our response of the different acts that make up the Passion. There are other musical anthems that are also used instead of The Reproaches. A concern among some people is the anti-Semitic tone of both the Gospel and The Reproaches. However, anyone paying attention to the Liturgy will soon discover that the cause of Christ’s death is not just the Jews, but all of humankind.
After this comes the Veneration of the Cross where the black veil is removed, and then we conclude with the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified. We move the Sacrament from the Altar of Repose to the main Altar. We recite the Confession, hear the Absolution, recite the Lord’s Prayer and make our Communion from the bread and wine consecrated at the Liturgy on Maundy Thursday.
When the Sacrament has been consumed, all the candles are extinguished. The Tabernacle door is opened because it is now empty. There is no longer the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament anywhere. On those times when in the Eastern Orthodox and Western Church calendars, Easter falls on the same day, this means that after Good Friday there is no Eucharist celebrated anywhere in the whole world. I lay down the candles sticks and turn over all the communion vessels leaving them in a wreaked pile on the Altar. It recalls that hymn “In the Cross of Christ I glory, towering over the wreaks of time.” There is a final prayer and we go out.
We are left with the wreckage on the Altar and the Cross in shining splendor over it. It is the radical paradox of the death that brings life to the whole world. The sacrifice that unites God and all things always and forever.
You might say that it is accomplished, but not finished. It will be from here that at the Great Vigil of Easter we begin the journey back from darkness to light, from death to life with no death at all.
The Great Vigil of Easter
Easter Morning, April 5, 5:30 a.m.
The climax of the Paschal Triduum, or the Three Great Days, is the Great Vigil of Easter. In this liturgy we begin from where we left off on Good Friday with the darkness and desolation of Christ’s death. Then out of nowhere comes the New Fire, then an ancient chant going back to earliest days of the Church, then a recapitulation of the entire story of salvation, to the cry Christ is Risen! We share in that Risen life through the Sacrament of Baptism and the First Eucharist of Easter. It is a challenge to begin in the darkness before dawn. One can really understand the sentiment, “Wake me when it’s over.” That’s in a sense what happens when after the Good Friday Liturgy we come to the Eucharist on Easter Day at 10:15. What happens in the Easter Vigil is that we move through the Paschal Mystery to it’s triumph. We participate in the actual journey from darkness to light, from death to Risen Life. That is what makes the liturgy so wonderful and so powerful.
The Great Vigil of Easter was restored to the Book of Common Prayer in 1979. It had fallen out of use in most of the Western Church. The Eastern Church never lost it. The Great Vigil of Easter is the center of the Christian Year. Everything leads to it and flows from it. It is the most complete telling of the Christian story.
At Church of the Angles, we have done the Vigil in such a way that it is the center rather than just one more service in Holy Week. We are blessed to have a building that lends itself to the profound drama the Liturgy enacts. We are blessed to usually have good weather for Easter.
We will begin the Liturgy at 5:30 a.m. Easter Morning. People will gather and find their places in the Church under conditions of very low light. When everyone is in place the remaining light will go out and we will sit together in pitch darkness. That is after all the state of being bereft of God. I will give the collect and proclaim the Passover of the Lord, whereby hearing his word and celebrating his Sacraments we share in his victory over death.
A young person will come with me and begin the arduous task of lighting the fire. They use a flint and steel, the sparks flying and trying to land and catch. It raises the question for us, will the light come? Or is darkness all there will be? It rests on the shoulders of the youngest one. For you in the congregation you see the sparks come out of nowhere. Easter is new creation. We witness the ignition of a new Big Bang. Then the fire comes.
A hymn called The Exultet, is chanted. This is one of the most ancient hymns of the Church and it sings the praise of the light as the sign of the Risen Christ. “This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and Man is reconciled to God.”
Once the Exsultet is sung we begin a long period of readings from the Old Testament. There are nine readings in all and between them there are either choir anthems or congregational hymns. It is in the Easter Vigil that we all learn how to read the Scripture. The Bible is about what God does for humankind in Christ. We see everything that leads to that. We “hear the record of God’s might acts in history, how he saved his people in ages past and we pray that he will bring all of us to the fullness of redemption.”
As we go through this long section of the Vigil, the window over the altar begins to be visible as daylight increases. You might say that it is dawning on us that the Resurrection which theme of the window is real. Scripture tells us that it took a long time for it to dawn on the disciples that Jesus was not dead.
If we are really lucky and the weather is good, by the time of the Great Alleluia, the sun will have come over the hill behind the Church and its light will flood in through the back windows.
Once again we will have baptisms. We’ve never been without one at the Easter Vigil. It fulfills what we will have heard in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. “Do you not know that those of you where baptized were baptized into his death?” We were buried with him in baptism so that as Jesus was raised from the dead by the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will be united with him in a Resurrection like his.
Finally we celebrate the first Eucharist of Easter. At the end we place the Sacrament in the Tabernacle and once again light the Sanctuary lamp which tells us that he is always here with us.
We come out to the Easter Egg hunt for all the children and have our wonderful Easter Breakfast on the patio behind the Parish Hall. How long is the service? Some people say, “it’s two and a half hours!” No, it’s only two hours and twenty five minutes. It is time well spent.
Easter Day
Sunday April 5, 10:15 a.m.
The stained glass window in the Sanctuary says it all. “He is not here. He is Risen.” Our window depicts the women at the tomb on Easter morning having come to finish what was left undone at Jesus’ burial. They wonder who will move the heavy stone that covers the entrance so they can enter the tomb and anoint Jesus’ body following the customs of that time for a proper internment. But the tomb is empty and he is not there. It will take a while to understand what “He is Risen” really means both for him and for them, and finally for all of us.
In a real sense Easter is not the end of the story but only the beginning. Easter Day itself commences the long period of time when the Risen Jesus appears to the disciples in various times and places, then the ending of the resurrection appearances in the event we call the Ascension, and finally the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which the disciples then and now are empowered with gifts to tell the whole world, what the window says to us each time we enter the church: “He is Risen.”
Easter Day is in a sense after the fact. No one sees the Resurrection take place. That’s true of the Easter Vigil as well. We go through that liturgy, but at what point the Resurrection actually happens the liturgy does not say.
So Easter Day sets the clock running on the great 50 days. In the Bible the number 40 means “a long time.” So the time it takes for us to grasped and transformed by the Christ’s resurrection is a long time, and even longer.
Heads Up For Holy Week and Easter: Easter Flower Sign Up
We continue taking sign ups for the Easter decorations in the Church. There will be a poster with pictures of the flower arrangements. There will be a place to sign up to give an arrangement and to list it as a memorial or thank offering, and an envelope to receive your check.
What we’ll need: Thanks to all who signed up for Easter Decorations on Sunday.
4 Window Arrangements at $45.00 each
Easter Lilies at $10.00 each.
You can sign up on Sunday, or if you email the Church Office.
Heads Up for Holy Week & Easter: Easter Breakfast
This Sunday we’ll begin the sign up process for the Easter Breakfast that Follows the Great Vigil of Easter.
Easter Breakfast 2015
Quiche and other breakfast foods
We need 20 quiches. In place of quiches, people are welcome to prepare other breakfast type dishes that can be heated and served on Easter morning. So please sign up for your favorite. You are encouraged to bring these to the Parish Hall on Holy Saturday
Kitchen Help
We need someone to take responsibility for getting things in the ovens Easter morning, and . help with putting the food out for the breakfast.
Fruit Czar/Czarina
We need someone to oversee the preparation of the fruit. We’d like to have such things as grapes, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, pineapple, etc. We need people to cut up the fruit and prepare it on Saturday to be put out with the breakfast on Easter.
Saturday Set Up
We need people to help with the setting up of tables and chairs on Holy Saturday
Drinks
We’ll set up coffee and there will be juice and milk. People are invited to contribute wine and champagne.