[Oe List ...] 1/04/13, Spong: Living Holy Week and Easter as Part of a Community of Faith

Fri Apr 5 19:57:36 PDT 2013

     HOMEPAGE        MY PROFILE        ESSAY ARCHIVE       MESSAGE BOARDS       CALENDAR

	Re-Living Holy Week and Easter as Part of a Community of Faith
	Holy Week, including Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were especially meaningful to me this year. So was the celebration of Easter. In this column today I would like to be very personal and tell you just why that was so in 2013.
	I know it is difficult for someone outside the office of the bishop to embrace either the bishop’s life or the bishop’s experience. This is not because it is somehow elitist or particularly demanding, but simply because it is different. In the life of a parish priest and the congregation that he or she serves, there is an ongoing community, in which the liturgical flow of the church’s life is lived out together. There is first the season of Advent, a time of both preparation and anticipation, which culminates in the celebration of Christmas, a festival time that in some medieval nations lasted for twelve days, producing the carol we know as the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Then in the late winter, one enters the penitential season known as Lent, with its hymns referring to the biblical narrative of Jesus fasting in the wilderness for “forty days and forty nights.” During that time according to the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) he was being tempted. In medieval times this forty day period always coincided with the time of the year when there were no fresh fruits and vegetables and thus very little food to eat. Recall that they did not have storage facilities and freezers nor were they able to import fresh food supplies from the Southern Hemisphere. The standard diet was thus only some form of gruel. This meant that the culture imposed on the people, rather involuntarily, a time of fasting. The church, in its wisdom, simply decided to turn the inevitable Lenten fast from a necessity into a virtue that encouraged self-deprivation. The vestigial modern form of this is seen in the habit of “giving up something for Lent.” As a child it was suggested that for Lent I give up candy or perhaps the Saturday morning trip to the cinema to see a serialized western, probably accompanied by a Looney Tunes cartoon. The coins saved by these acts of sacrifice were to be placed into a “mite box” and presented in a worship service on Easter Day. These activities and symbols burned a particular meaning for Lent into my consciousness.
	Lent culminated in Holy Week, which opened with Palm Sunday, when various processions were acted out, sometimes even led by a donkey! We walked with palm branches and sometimes with a palm cross, recalling what we referred to as “Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem,” a procession that would lead ultimately to his crucifixion.
	Then came Maundy Thursday, observing the institution of the Eucharist, called the Last Supper, and now including the ritual of washing one another’s feet, a note traced directly to the Fourth Gospel. That liturgical service ended with the “Stripping of the Altar,” which left the sanctuaries of our churches bare and deathlike. In some traditions, that stripping ceremony ended with the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist being placed into the ambry, before which burned a candle to inform us that, although Jesus might be approaching death, his body and blood were available to us in a living way. Worshippers would then organize to keep watch through the night to be with Jesus as met his accusers and appeared before Caiaphas, Pilate and even Herod. All of which led toward the moment of the crucifixion.
	A service on Good Friday from noon until 3:00 pm. would mark the three hours of darkness when the sun was said to have turned dark. That was the gospel writer’s way of saying that the death of Jesus was the time when the light of the world was symbolically extinguished. It was a darkness that was said to have covered the whole world, only ending when Jesus “bowed his head and gave up the ghost.” Saturday of that week was the day in which the tomb was said to have held the body of Jesus in death while the world waited in quiet expectation for the promised resurrection.
	The celebration of Easter and the resurrection began when night fell on Saturday since the Jews counted the passing of the days from sundown to sundown, not from midnight to midnight. So, when darkness fell on Saturday, the fires were lit to mark the fact that the darkness of death had been thrown back by the light of the resurrection. This Saturday night “First Eucharist of Easter” was then followed by sunrise services at Easter’s dawn and then by later morning services featuring full churches, exquisite music and such favorite seasonal hymns as “Welcome, Happy Morning,” “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” “Hail Thee Festival Day” and “The Strife is O’er, the Battle Done.” It is altogether a rather dramatic time of mood changes and it culminates in a restoration of normalcy when Easter fades after its “great forty days” into the climax of the Ascension and Pentecost. Only then do the members of the congregation begin to live into the meaning of their faith until the last week of the church year arrives and Advent starts the liturgical cycle all over again.
	When a priest becomes a bishop, he or she is lifted out of this liturgical flow of congregational life and becomes a perpetual visitor in congregations in which he or she is an inserted Episcopal functionary and not a regular participant, so any sense of the church year fades in his or her life. If the bishop is doing confirmations on Sundays, then each Sunday becomes a little Pentecost or Whitsunday. The hangings are red for the Holy Spirit and the hymns are about the Holy Spirit: “Come down, O Love divine” and “Breathe on me, breath of God” or about commitment like “I bind unto myself this day.” Liturgically and devotionally the worship life of a bishop becomes quite sterile and rather boring.
	This year, however, it was different. I invested myself deeply in my two favorite churches. I spent almost all of Lent at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, New Jersey, my own parish church, where on the Sundays in Lent I taught the adult class on the subject of the biblical prophets. We also attended the parish’s Lenten program, which featured a series of motion pictures and afterwards were led in discussion either by the star or the producer and director of the motion picture. It was a provocative, not always comfortable, format for many. I also preached at this church on two Sundays in Lent on whether or not a modern, well-educated citizen of the 21st century could still believe with integrity in life after death. So the themes of Easter were anticipated and engaged.
	At the invitation of its current rector, Wallace Adams-Riley I then spent Holy Week in the parish I served in Richmond, Virginia, for seven years before being elected bishop in 1976. From Palm Sunday through Good Friday I walked with this congregation that I know and love so well, through the last week of Jesus’ life as that week was described in the Gospel of John. On Palm Sunday, I laid out before them the parameters of John’s gospel, seeking to isolate it from the other gospels to avoid that process of gospel homogenization, which inevitably occurs. On Maundy Thursday, I looked at John’s story of the Last Supper, which focuses on two biblical characters: Peter, who is still struggling to make sense out of Jesus, and the nameless “Beloved Disciple,” a character found only in John and one who seems to symbolize the ideal believer.
	On Good Friday in this center-city church, we then observed the traditional three hours from noon to 3:00 p.m., but not in the traditional way. The three hours were organized into six thirty minute segments, so that people could come and go as their schedules required. “The Seven Last Words” were never mentioned since Jesus, in all probability, never spoke any of them and they represent a forced and inauthentic observance of Good Friday. Instead we walked together through the narrative of Jesus’ passion, as only John has described it. We also brought the unfolding history of that particular church into our awareness. During the service the former Governor of Virginia, who served the state of Virginia for four of the years that I was rector of that church, read the opening lesson. He, A. Linwood Holton, became governor during the difficult and tension-filled days of desegregation and court-ordered busing to achieve racial balance. Deep fears marked this capitol of the old Confederacy at that time. Governor Holton, a Republican, never wavered in his commitment to racial justice and he absorbed the hostility of the fearful whites who resisted black progress. On one occasion during the height of that conflict at a public rally against desegregation held at the State Capitol, one member of the Richmond City Council, a man named Howard Carwile, actually called for the “Euthanasia” of Governor Holton. Most people outside the south never realized the level of hostility that marked that era. The second lesson was read by one of the first black women to be elected to the city council. Her name is Willie Dell and she was a strong advocate for black justice in the 70’s. The third lesson was read by the former first lady of Virginia, Anne Holton, daughter of Linwood and wife of Timothy Kaine, who is now the junior senator from Virginia. The excitement was palpable. The fourth and fifth lessons were read by two gifted professional women who serve in positions today that would have been prohibited to their mothers and grandmothers. They are in their very persons signs of a changing world. So was the last reader, the current Senior Warden of St. Paul’s, and the first African-American to be the lay head of that church, which once called itself “The Cathedral of the Confederacy.” It was a liturgical celebration of death and resurrection.
	When Good Friday was over, we returned to our parish church in Morristown to celebrate Easter. It was magnificent worship, featuring spectacular music from our choir directed by Darryl Roland, and inspired preaching by our talented rector Janet Broderick. St. Peter’s church was bathed with Easter lilies to announce the arrival of spring, life and resurrection.
	It was a powerful time for me. I could not resist re-living it with my readers one more time before the life of the world draws us once more into the flow of history.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

Question & Answer
Sam Green Eggs & Ham via the Internet, writes:
Question:
I wanted to thank you for your column some time ago on the raising of Lazarus. This clarified for me one of the most troubling parts of the Bible. About twenty years ago I bought a study Bible, which I was determined to read from cover to cover. While I thought the New Testament was beautiful and profound, I had numerous "Hey, wait a minute moments." If for instance I had attended a funeral and someone I hardly knew raised him from the dead, I'm sure the whole room would be hysterical. This person would be on every front page in the entire world and I’m sure having an audience with almost every world and religious leader. The fact that Jesus died alone on a cross made no sense to me. My question is - are there any study Bibles you can recommend?

Answer:
Dear Sam,

I gather Dr Seuss inspired your e-mail title and I’m glad my column on Lazarus inspired your comments.

Most volumes that call themselves a “study Bible” will inevitably be shallow and only skim the surface of the great issues of Bible study. In the Bible, not counting the Apocrypha, there are 66 separate books written by a wide variety of authors over a period of about 1,000 years and concluded about 2,000 years ago. No one study Bible can do justice to that huge scope of biblical material.

In the series of columns that I wrote a couple of years ago on the origins of the various books of the Bible and which Harper/Collins published in 2011 under the title: Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, I had to deal with that reality again and again. I chose in that book to give my readers a substantial but not an exhaustive analysis. Some books in the Old Testament I chose to treat minimally because I regard their message to be of little consequence. Among these books were Nahum, Haggai, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Joel and Habakkuk. When I got to the New Testament I grouped those books we call the Pastoral Epistles (I & II Timothy and Titus) and the General Epistles (I & II Peter, James and Jude) together and did one chapter on them all. Then I did the three epistles of John and the Book of Revelation in a single chapter. That way I managed to keep the length of the book at a manageable level. Even so it was over three hundred pages. I have a close friend (Elaine Pagels) who has written a learned study on the Book of Revelation. It will be I am sure, the definitive work on that enigmatic last book of the Bible. My book will introduce them to the complexity of that book while hers will take them deeply into it. They represent very different agendas, not contradictory, but complementary.

I work regularly in the library of Drew University. On any book in the Bible, I have access to numerous volumes written over the centuries on each book. I can read Origen in the third century on John; Luther in the16th century on John; Rudolf Bultmann and Raymond Brown in the last half of the 20th century on John. All are insightful. None is exhaustive. No study Bible can do more than introduce you to a particular book. That does not mean a study Bible is evil; it does mean that it is limited.

Use it all you wish, but don’t think that when you finish that study Bible you now know the Bible. It doesn’t work that way.

~John Shelby Spong

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