The Fifty Days of Easter

Well, another season of meditations is completed! Thanks to all who wrote, and especially those who wrote for the first time this Lent. I believe that the process not only of reading the meditations written by others but of reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting Holy Scripture in order to write a meditation deepens our faith along the way in the journey.

Now the Fifty Days of Easter lie before us. I hope that many of you will continue to use the Daily Office Lectionary as the Easter Season continues to unfold. One of the great gifts of being part of a liturgical tradition is that there are resources to connect you to the prayers of others beyond our parish even when Lent comes to an end. One excellent place to begin is with Forward Day by Day - click on the link to go to the on-line resources or pick up one of the little booklets from the tract rack at church that is located in the narthex (lobby).

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia, alleluia! Let us now allow that truth to shine forth in our lives as we become, by God's mercy, more and more an Easter people.

Rich Simpson
Rector

Easter Meditation, Sunday April 8, 2012

The Paschal Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

If any be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour. And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering. Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day. Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away. Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen. O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen. About St. John Chrysostom: St. John Chrysostom ("The Golden Tongue") was born at Antioch in about the year 347 into the family of a military-commander, spent his early years studying under the finest philosophers and rhetoricians and was ordained a deacon in the year 381 by the bishop of Antioch Saint Meletios. In 386 St. John was ordained a priest by the bishop of Antioch, Flavian.Over time, his fame as a holy preacher grew, and in the year 397 with the demise of Archbishop Nektarios of Constantinople - successor to Sainted Gregory the Theologian - Saint John Chrysostom was summoned from Antioch for to be the new Archbishop of Constantinople.Exiled in 404 and after a long illness because of the exile, he was transferred to Pitius in Abkhazia where he received the Holy Eucharist, and said, "Glory to God for everything!", falling asleep in the Lord on 14 September 407.

Holy Saturday, April 7, 2012

I have a confession to make.  Patience isn’t a gift of mine.  In fact, it is something I struggle with quite a bit.  I have spent much time in prayer asking God to give me the gift of patience.  Instead, God has given me opportunities to practice patience – many, many opportunities.  As a nod to this ongoing struggle, a plaque sits in my kitchen that reads, “Oh Lord, give me patience . . .  right now!” 

Living in a world where food, products, information, and communication are often available to us right now, we can want everything in our lives to be obtained and resolved in a similar way.  Unfortunately, not everything in life can be obtained as easily.  We have to wait for that perfect new job opportunity to open up as we toil day to day in a job we can’t stand, or worse, as we struggle through day after day of unemployment.  We have to do the difficult and time consuming work of reconciliation to heal relationships that have fractured.  We have to suffer through months of tortuous chemotherapy to find healing from cancer.  We have to wait for the darkness of grief to lift as we mourn the death of a loved one. 

Waiting like this can be difficult and can really test our patience.  Waiting like this can lead us to question where God is in the midst of it as we look for God to act quickly to bring about the resolution we envision, but we find it doesn’t come as we think it should. I see Psalm 27 speaking to this same struggle as David, to whom it is attributed, begins by affirming his faith in God even in the midst of attack by his enemies.  However, David’s tone changes about midway through as he begins to call out to God to answer him and not to give him up to the will of his enemies. It seems that things aren’t quite going David’s way anymore and so he begins to doubt God’s presence with him. Something changes again though and as the psalm ends we find that somehow his faith in God’s presence is once again restored as David proclaims, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”  (Psalm 27:13-14)

Wait for the Lord?  Easier said than done for this impatient gal!  However, as David once again comes to see God’s presence with him in the midst of his plight, this psalm reminds me that God is present with me when all seems lost too.  The psalm reminds me that when a situation isn’t resolving as quickly or neatly as I think it should, then that is the time I need to stop, wait, and look around because God is at work, just maybe not in the way I might expect or think to look for God. 

Today is Holy Saturday, the day we as the Church celebrate the Great Vigil of Easter.  It is my favorite worship service of the year.  Perhaps because of my impatience and that it takes us through our history as God’s people in one neat liturgy. Or maybe it is because the service takes us from darkness to light, from a place of lost hope on Good Friday to a place of new hope at first light on Easter morning, from a place where it seems God is absent to a place where we see God was at work all along, from a place of death to a place of new life.  Psalm 27, like the Easter Vigil, reminds me that no matter what difficult situation I find myself in I need to stop, look, and wait because all isn’t as it may seem. God is at work.  Darkness will give way to light.  Death and despair will not win.  Easter is coming.

 (Karen Safstrom - Associate Rector) 

Good Friday, April 6, 2012

Isaiah 52:13-58, Hebrews 10:16-25, John 18:1- 19:42 

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of   Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.  (John 19: 38-40)

In the early 1970’s when my mother was struggling for one and a half years with bone cancer, I lived an hour away from her and spent every weekend at home. At the end I visited her daily in the cancer hospital near our family home. Many of the details of those days are still vivid. 

 

Nellie, my mother’s closest friend, told me that she had been a patient in that hospital years before when it was built to care for tuberculosis patients. She remembered my mother’s visiting her daily, taking a bus because my father needed the one car for work. 

 

When I visited my mother for her first stay there, she told me that all food tasted metallic because of her medications and treatments. I would talk with her about what I could bring that she might be able to enjoy. Her favorite fruit flavored jelly candies tasted metallic, even the vanilla milkshake did, and finally she told me there was no use trying different foods anymore. My presence was what she wanted and was what I could offer her.

 

The details in the Good Friday Passion account from John have become vividly familiar too, and always I am engaged by the details John gives us. Peter warms himself at a charcoal fire, trying to protect himself from the cold night air. At he was willing to risk being near Jesus, but then Peter was recognized. Then he might have felt the chill that comes with fear.

 

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus step forward, one to ask Pilate if he can take away the body of Jesus, the other bringing one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for the anointing of Jesus’ body in preparation for burial. These two people, initially cautious and self-protective, now dare to do these things though earlier Joseph wanted to keep his following of Jesus a secret and Nicodemus came to Jesus in the cloak of night. Here they seem more emboldened.

 

When we hear the Passion read on this day, with all its familiar and poignant details,

we carry within our bodies, minds, and hearts the details of our own suffering or the afflictions carried by those we love. In church on Good Friday we sit alongside other people who also carry their own stories of suffering. The details of our stories may be unique, but our shared humanity binds us to one another and to the God who humbled self to be clothed in our frail flesh. Some days we may feel separate from one another, and at times even distant from God, but on this day it is hard not to feel at one.

 

(Janice Schuyler) 

Maundy Thursday, April 5, 2012

Today is my favorite day of the liturgical year.  It’s not that the anticipation of Advent and the magic of Christmas Eve escape me, or that I don’t appreciate the solemnity of Good Friday, the mystery of the Vigil, and the joy of Easter morning, it’s just that there is no day in our liturgical calendar on which I more fully feel the love of Jesus Christ than on Maundy Thursday.  

 

It’s his last night in the neighborhood and he spends it with his friends. He shares a meal, he washes feet and he prays to his father to protect and guide them when he’s gone.  And because his mission is now their mission too, he reminds them to love one another and to do so like he does.  It’s on this first day of the Triduum that we are given the clearest example of how he longs for us to live and love.
 

The night begins as Jesus sends his disciples ahead to prepare a room so that they might celebrate the Passover meal together.  When they gather, he says the words that have become so very familiar to us, maybe even too familiar: “Take; this is my body”.   With these words the disciples, those of the first and of the twenty-first century, are invited in to share in the body of Christ; to become part of Christ’s body.

 

Paul warns the Corinthians not to let these words become too familiar or too trite, but to examine themselves before they partake of the Holy meal. For me, it’s not so much that the the words lose their meaning as it is that they are beyond my comprehension. I’ve heard and read the mystery of the Eucharist explained in many ways and by many brilliant minds, but all the talk of transubstantiation and consubstantiation just leaves me with a headache. Recently though, I found the following poem by the eleventh-century Greek Orthodox spiritual master, Symeon the Theologian:

We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

I think this is a pretty good summary of what Jesus was trying to show and tell us on the first Maundy Thursday.

(Robin Carlo)

Wednesday in Holy Week - April 4, 2012

Psalm 55; Psalm 74; Lam. 2:1-9; 2 Cor. 1:23-2:11; Mark 12:1-11

Lamentations

⁵The Lord has become like an enemy; he has destroyed Israel; He has destroyed all its palaces, laid in ruins its strongholds, and multiplied in daughter Judah mourning and lamentation. (Lamentations 2:5)

In today’s reading from Lamentations, God has left a whole kingdom in mourning and lamentation. Why would we want to dwell on this kind of God? Wouldn’t it be better to just move on the many positive reminders of God’s love found in the Old Testament?

Each year, members of our church travel to war-torn El Salvador as partners of the Episcopal diocese there. After the first group came back, I was curious to hear about the project that our church was working on. “What did you do there?” I asked the travelers.

“We toured with our El Salvadoran brothers and sisters. We saw the sites of massacres. We listened to their stories. We worshipped with them.”

“Yes,” I would reply impatiently. “But what did you DO? What did you WORK on?”

“Well, we journeyed with them through their horrible histories,” was their puzzling reply. Honestly, I like to get things done, so this answer never quite satisfied me.

But, today’s reading helps me to understand the wisdom of our El Salvadoran brothers and sisters. They know the importance of being with God not just in praise and thankfulness, but also in their deep sadness. Their honest interaction with God includes a naming of injustices done to them. Their lamentation of the murder of Archbishop Romero serves as a reminder of the injustice of the world, and as a framework for rebuilding their country.  I think the Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann sums up this process when he prays:

Teach us how to weep while we wait, 

And how to hope while we weep,

 And how to care while we hope. 

So, this week, I’m rethinking my ideas about texts of lamentation. I’d like to end with a prayer by St. Yared of Ethiopia.  (This saint, who died in 571, was a semi-legendary Ethiopian musician credited with inventing the sacred music tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.)

 As we continue through this Holy Week, may we remember both the lamentation and the hope offered in the cross.

Affirmation (St. Yared, Ethiopia) 

The cross is the way of the lost.

The cross is the staff of the lame.

The cross is the guide of the blind.

The cross is the strength of the weak.

The cross is the hope of the hopeless.

The cross is the freedom of the slaves.

The cross is the water of the seeds.

The cross is the consolation of the bonded labourers.

The cross is the source of those who seek water.

The cross is the cloth of the naked.

The cross is the healing of the broken.

The cross is the peace of the church.

 (Julie Mankowsky)

Tuesday in Holy Week - April 3, 2012

Psalm 6, 12; Psalm 94 ,Lam. 1:17-22; 2 Cor. 1:8-22; Mark 11:27-33 

 

 

Sunrise

I admit it, I often read the psalms quickly, eager to get to the narratives of the Old Testament or the parables and letters of the New. But I linger today because the words ring true. 

My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O Lord—how long? (6:3)

I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. (6:6)

I am a good sleeper, a very good sleeper. Ask my husband or daughter. I can fall asleep on a dime, anywhere, anytime. But I am apparently also a worrier, or let’s say I have an active brain (that sounds better, right?!). So those worries and bad dreams occasionally wake me. And I am numb with it, my soul struck with terror.

In The Poisonwood Bible, Adah – half her body paralyzed – describes this well. She recalls being stalked by a lion: “I cannot run on away on the muscular effects of adrenaline, but I could taste fear in the back of my throat and feel its despairing weight in my slack limbs. For some, I am told, this weighted-down helplessness comes in dreams.” 

This is the same feeling the Psalmist describes, and though it doesn’t happen often (thank God!), I too know it.

At another point in the story, Adah describes her younger sister, Ruth May, insisting, “God can’t see you when you’re asleep.”

When we feel that weighted-down helplessness – especially, I think, in the middle of the dark night – this is wilderness experience: fear, numbness, and abandonment. And we might wonder if Ruth May has a point, if God can’t see us (or even hides from us) when we’re sleeping. But another psalm assures us here:

If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. (139:8)

In the morning, the wilderness experience of fear and numbness disappears. What philosophers or poets sometimes describe as the “mini death” of sleep is replaced by the resurrection of the morning.

Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. (30:5)

I am an early riser and I love the morning!

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (118:24)

(CAM)

Monday in Holy Week - April 2, 2012

Text: 2nd Corinthians 1:1-7 (focus on vv 3-4)

 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all CONSOLATION, who consoles us in all our AFFLICTION…”

Our journey through the Lenten “desert” has brought us to this most painfully harsh, and yet hope-filled, week of the Christian year.

Please travel with me as we examine and apply two words from the above verses – “affliction” and “consolation”. We all know that “affliction” means pain, suffering, and distress. We would have to be numb and/or unconscious to have escaped affliction in our lives, whether personally or vicariously. In Holy Week we observe the historic death of Jesus in all its searing recorded reality.

The word “consolation” jumps out at me in this passage of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in sharp contrast to “affliction”. It means, of course, being consoled, comforted. I prefer “comfort” to “consolation” in this passage. I love the phrase “…the God of all comfort (the King James Version I grew up with).” Notice that Paul uses the word “comfort/consolation” ten times in five verses (3-7) of our text! And remember that he had already experienced an incredible amount of suffering and hostility which threatened his life following his conversion. The “comfort” he reveals comes from his fellowship with God.

When we realize that God is with us, as Paul did, that God has entered into our affliction, we are no longer alone in our suffering. Receiving a “pink slip” at work, getting a shocking diagnosis from our doctor, failing whatever challenge we faced, etc, etc. knocks the stuffing out of us! How can we recover?!

Paul knew the comforting, strengthening presence of God to lift him above despair, as Jesus knew the comforting assurance of His Father’s presence in His suffering on the Cross. You and I can go forward through the afflictions that confront us, comforted and strengthened by our relationship with God won by the hope-filled Easter victory.

Notice that Paul says to the Corinthians, in verse 6 – “If WE are afflicted, it is for YOUR comfort and salvation.” In other words, “PAY IT FORWARD”. As we are comforted, we pass it on to others. We help others in need of release from pain by being vehicles of deliverance by “the God of all comfort.”

Just as the suffering of Christ had a purpose so our suffering can be a blessing.

(Dick H.)