Thank You
Fr. Bob wants to thank everyone for their concerns, prayers, good wishes, and help during Tracy’s recent hospitalization. The doctors were able to re-set her heart rhythm and rate, but in the process discovered that she has a leaking valve. So she will have to have heart valve surgery some time after Easter.
Thank you to Pastor John Santoro for jumping with last week’s homily.
Need some help on Sunday
Kelly Brandt, who signed up for coffee hour for the 7:45 service this Sunday is unable to do this. Can someone jump in and take her place this Sunday?
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.
Music With the Angels: Sunday April 2, 4:00 p.m.
We welcome back Arthur Omura and his group. Arthur is not only an accomplished musician, but also and organ builder. Working with Manuel Rosales, Arthur did much of the work on the restoration of our Organ.
Program:
Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri Patientis Sanctissima, which is a set of cantatas, each one a meditation on the body of Christ.
Keiser's Laudate Pueri.
Emmaus Road Monday, April 3, 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 20th 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 4, to tide us over until the books arrive. Copies will be available on Sunday
Reading for Monday: Chapter 4, Part 1
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: April 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 Good Friday
But before that, more on The Reflective Dinners in Holy Week
Presentations at the Reflective Dinners
This year our presentations are being shared by two people.
Monday and Wednesday
Our presenter will be Kelly Brandt who will read selections from the writings of
St. Francis of Assisi
Tuesday
Our presenter will be Jim Stanley who will reflect on Music and Faith, with commentary and then music to illustrate the insight.
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
Good Friday
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.
Food For Thought
We have two articles that will encourage thought on one of the more difficult problems with which people of faith must wrestle: The problem of evil.
1. From the New York Times, After Great Pain, Where is God? This falls under the category of “Non-Moral Evil,” that is the evil things that happen to us. These are things like calamities, natural disasters, illness, and finally death. Where is the God we say is merciful, loving, all powerful, all good etc. in the midst of all this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/opinion/sunday/after-great-pain-where-is-god.html?_r=0
2. Again from the New York Times, Why Social Justice and Capitalism Don’t Mix. This is even more difficult than “Non Moral Evil,” because it is not just the evil we suffer, but the evil we perpetrate, despite our claims of moral uprightness. Remember Google’s motto, “Don’t Be Evil.” How well does that work? About as well as a response to the first article saying, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/opinion/thinx-what-a-startups-scandal-says-about-your-workplace.html