March 26, 4th Sunday in Lent

Emmaus Road  Monday, March 20, 7:00 p.m.

Emmaus Road continues its reading of  Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ.   This is a book that explores the thought, theology, and spirituality of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest of the 20^th Century who was also a paleontologist who made major discoveries of early humans who sought to  sought to integrate the discoveries of science with the deepest things of the Christian faith. 

 Fr. Bob has made copies of the Chapter 3, to tide us over until the books arrive.   Copies will be available on Sunday

 Reading for Monday:  Chapter 3, Part 2

Outreach Committee:   Sunday April 2,  9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

The Outreach Committee will meet between the two services on Sunday April 2.   They will meet in the Parish Hall Living Room.  They are continuing their discussion reflecting on past as well as current Outreach activities and considering what we might do going forward.   Anyone in the parish interested in our Outreach ministries is welcome to attend and participate.

Easter Sign Ups

Sundays for the remainder of Lent,  the sign up sheets for the various Easter Activities will be on the table outside Church.   These will be sign ups for:

Church Decorations for Easter

Reflective Dinners in Holy Week

Holy Saturday Preparations

Easter Day, Easter Breakfast

Thinking Ahead:  Holy Week and Easter:   March 9-16

We begin to prepare for Holy Week and Easter and all the activities that will take place during that time.   Over the next weeks there will be articles about each of the days and activities.  Today we reflect on Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday

But before that, more on The Reflective Dinners in Holy Week

For the Meals on the Three Nights:  An offer from Chris Askew

The Potato Leek Soup is my most requested recipe and a party staple around our house.  It’s a simple but hearty soup blending potatoes and butter-softened leeks in broth with just a hint of curry.  Served with brown bread and butter.  It’s a throwback to my Berkeley days when impoverished students could get a big life-sustaining bowl of soup like this and a hunk of bread for fifty cents at the soup kitchen on the corner of Dwight and Telegraph.  (Remember that place?  NW corner.  I forget its name.  Or did you ever have occasion to go that far south of campus in search of a cheap meal?  I lived just up the street, on the ABSW grounds.)   

I’ll provide the soup and the bread.  I think we still have plenty of butter.

So, for the Reflective Dinners, Chris will do the main course the three nights.   We need others to pitch in with Appetizers, Salads, Drinks, and Desserts.

See the Sign Up Sheets Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday (Color coded so you can see which evening) on the table outside Church on Sunday

Palm Sunday

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. 

Maundy Thursday

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 20^th 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. 

Food For Thought

We have three articles this week which raise the question, Does Secularism Really Work?

1.  From The Atlantic,  Breaking Faith.  Some predicted that with the waning of the influence of the religious right, due in large part to the rapidly increasing number of people in the United States who claim no religious affiliation, that the intensity of the culture wars of the last two decades would subside.  However, the culture war is in full swing but this time being carried on by partisans on opposite poles of the political spectrum, but at the same time having in common no religious affiliation or commitment.   It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

2.  From The Wall Street Journal,  The Soul of Citigroup.   This is an article about Dr. David Miller, an on-call ethicist the bank consults on weighty questions of right and wrong, supplementing its armies of lawyers and compliance officers.  Can a big bank have a conscience?  Citigroup hired one.

3.  From The New York Times,  The Unifying American Story.  Columnist David Brooks looks at how the story of the Exodus has given shape to America’s self identity, and what happens when we find ourselves without a story.