Good Friday

I didn't attend a Maundy Thursday service this year, though for the past 2 years I have and have felt the weightiness of it. From a past year I wrote:
     Tonight was the Maundy Thursday service, my first. I didn't know exactly what to expect, though I anticipated communion and perhaps foot washing. Both were present. What powerfully struck me, though, what stunned and shook me was the emphasis of betrayal. Though the service was begun in contemporary praise, almost celebratory, the bishop's sermon emphasized that Judas accepted the footwashing of his master, ate the passover with his lord, all the while knowing he betrayed him, all the while perhaps even thinking how he would spend the 30 pieces.
     Then 4 basins were placed at the front, 2 in the center from which the 2 bishops wash and 2 at the sides for anyone else to use. This community quietly washed each others' feet...from the bishops washing the members' to the young men washing the bishops' feet...husbands and wives, fathers and children...friends. One of the most moving was a young girl, about 10 or 11, who took her daddy up to the side basin and washed his feet. She was weeping. She then crawled in his lap.

     Then the greeting of "Peace to you" and the feast...communion given to us by these servant leaders, the Bishop saying: "Christ's body broken for you"as he placed the bread in my cupped hand.
     The service ended with sudden harshness. There was total silence, no background keyboard or guitar, no choral reading. We had just finished communion, and the bishops forcefully stripped the communion table and tugged off their robes. Only the cross was left at the front with a bare table in front of it. The bishop threw a black cloth over the cross and abruptly pushed over the table. It thudded as it hit the ground. He ran off stage and turned and looked at the sound of a stake being struck several times. Then he ran out of the room, a look of anger on his face. 
     There was no movement, no sound as we all realized the implications. We, who just washed each others' feet, who just participated in the Feast together, were all the betrayers. Every last one of us, from the Bishops to the young girl. We were all Judas. We left the church in silence, no benediction, no blessing.

Then a later year, another Easter this:
     I didn't understand before what struck me so forcefully this year: the act of footwashing is done by the betrayed to the betrayer, by Jesus to Judas, by Jesus to me.
     And we are called to do the same...to wash the feet of those who betray us and to allow those we have betrayed to wash our feet. I had this terrifying vision of the people I had betrayed washing my feet. Harder almost than Jesus ...with Him I know acceptance, I know vulnerability, I know He dived into the mess I was in and walked through it with me.

     But with others, I don't know if they really forgive...maybe because I don't forgive myself? Could I wash the feet of  people who have betrayed me? I hope so, I hope I do...Why is it so difficult to be that vulnerable with each other, when we are all betrayers of Him and each other?

     I do have more hope this year...more hope that it all is leading somewhere. More hope that there really is healing and maybe even restoration. And more assurance that we're not alone, will never be alone, no matter how lonely we sometimes feel.

     The pastor said on this snowy Easter morning, while huge flakes looking like doilies floated lazily down, that "more was gained in the Resurrection than was lost in the fall."

the fortunate fall...
And this year my thoughts are lingering on words from Taylor's book...the one about wearing skin. She says: 

     In the case of the meal, he gave them things they could smell and taste and swallow. In the case of the feet, he gave them things that were attached to real human beings, so that they could not bend over them without being drawn into one another's lives.

Then she imagines their thought process: 

     Wow. How did you get that scar? Does it hurt when I touch it? No, really, they're not ugly. You should see mine. Yours just have a few more miles on them. Do you ever feel like you can't go any further? Like you just want to stop right here and let this be it? I know, I can't stop either. It's weird, isn't it? You follow him and you follow him, thinking that any minute now the sky is going to crack open, and you're going to see the face of God. Then he hands you his basin and his towel, and it turns out that it's all about feet, you know? Yours, mine, his. Feet, for God's sake. (p. 44)

loss part 2, liturgy and community

One of my daughters asked me recently why I liked the liturgy of the International Anglican Church where we've been going for the past year. It is a big change from the Evangelical megachurches we've been a part of for about 15 years. She wondered if saying the same words aloud week after week would cause them to lose their meaning. You would think so. But the opposite was true, is true for me. Through the painful healing process of this last year, the words were LIFE to me....sometimes the only life I could hold on to...week after week hearing and saying the same words with others is reassuring. You don't feel so alone. You start to believe that "the God who will come is the God who has long since come before."

"The Almighty and merciful Lord grant you absolution and remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of His Holy Spirit." amendment of life...

And the weekly participation in the eucharist is also restorative. Each week the bishops hold up the bread and wine and say, "The gifts of God for the people of God. Take them and feed in your hearts by faith and with great thanksgiving!" Then you stand and row by row move to the front where the pastors and leaders place the bread into your cupped hands, look into your eyes and say, "The body of Christ broken for you," then you drink from the cup and hear, "The blood of Christ shed for you." Others have drunk from that cup, and sometimes the person dips the bread instead of drinking, so you might find a few crumbs in the cup. You know you are not alone. And it's messy, maybe even unsanitary. But it's also sacred.

--just like loss, just like healing;

just like life.

Communal Worship

On congregational worship:
"...once everyone was seated and the first hymn began, it was foretaste-of-heaven time. Our bread was given, not earned. We had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but sit there together, saying sonorous words in unison, listening to language we did not hear anywhere else in our lives...Although we could have sat quietly with Bibles on our laps and read these things to ourselves, we took turns reading them out loud to each other instead. The words sounded different...from the mouth of a young mother than they did from the mouth of a widow. This was because the words did not come straight off the page. They percolated up through the silt and gravel of real people's lives so that the meaning in them was fluid, not fixed. Listening to one another read Holy Scripture, some of us learned what is meant by 'the living word of God.'"
--Barbara Brown Taylor in Leaving Church

This Blog

I have lots of words that run constantly through my mind. Doubts and questions. Trying to make sense of the rapid changes in technology and how my very thought process is molded by it. So my oldest daughter, her blog, got me into the blog scene where I hope to post some of those thoughts and process the questions.

Fallback words are powerful. They are the words that remain in my mind when nothing else is there, the words I fall back on almost subconsciously, the words that speak back what I believe on an elemental level about God, myself, the world, and my place in it.

Usually they are the words we've lived with for a long time.

My grandmother, when she was in the midst of chemotherapy, heard a man's voice sing hymns in a rich baritone over and over in her mind. She called him Buddy. Some say he was her angel. Maybe. But she had lived with those hymns most of her life..."Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,..." "Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word." Her fallback words.

Lauren Winner says in Girl Meets God that through "sitting with liturgy," her habitual prayer, that "words of praise to God are becoming the most basic words... they are becoming the fallback words."

The most fundamental word can be and will be ultimately His...or...Him.