Last week I wrote about us all being a part of Jesus’ Resurrection, how we are a resurrection people. Well, this Sunday, we begin the walk to the Cross with Jesus. The joyous beginning of this Sunday’s service with the procession of palms waving minutes later will become a reading of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the Gospel According to Matthew.
Each year I mention how it feels like spiritual whiplash to go so quickly from joy to sorrow in one service. It is a compression of Holy Week going from Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem straight to Good Friday which unfortunately doesn’t include the poignant love and devotion of the Last Supper and the Foot Washing on Maundy Thursday. A service that ends with the dramatic and symbolic Stripping of the Altar and the preparation for the 12-hour vigil before the Altar of Repose, a representation of Jesus’ night in Gethsemane.
This is why each year I encourage each of you to attend the Maundy Thursday service at 6:30 pm on April 2. It is beautiful and I believe it is a necessary part of our journey to the Cross, the Tomb, and the Resurrection. (I think some of you may avoid the service because of the time when people wash each other’s feet. Trust me when I say that for as meaningful as this ritual is, it is not mandatory and should not dissuade you from coming.)
Whether you are a part of the Maundy Thursday service or not, this Sunday we are going to enter into the Passion of Jesus Christ. It is called the Passion because of the Latin word passio which means to suffer or to endure. When Latin was the language of Christian, worship Jesus’ final suffering and death was called Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi which translates as The Suffering of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the ways we express our participation in the Passion is in how we read the gospel. This Sunday the Passion isn’t read only by the Deacon. Instead, the entire congregation will be reading parts of the text.
Here at St. Gabriel, we don’t assign “parts” to the voices of the various speakers in the text. Rather, except for the Narrator and Jesus, the whole congregation reads, in unison, all the other parts of the gospel.
We do this for two reasons. One, because we are not putting on a play or a performance. This is not theater, it is liturgy. Second, by having all of us read the voices that make up the Passion, we all become for as much as possible the Disciples, Judas, Peter, the False Witness, the Chief Priest, Pilate, the Crowd, etc. In other words, we say the words of love, of betrayal, of condemnation, of sorrow, and of heartbreak. The hope is that we take those words and the entirety of the Passion with us when we leave the church. That we carry them, think on them, pray on them, and bring them back when we come to Easter Sunday service where we lay them at the tomb of the Risen Christ and we are reminded of the Paschal Mystery by which our sins have been forgiven, and we have been reconciled with God. In other words, how we became a people of the Resurrection.
I hope that you will join us this Sunday, and on Maundy Thursday, on Good Friday at All Saints in Hillsboro, back here for the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday, and of course, on Easter Sunday. However, the Spirit calls to you to participate in this holiest of times in our year, I offer you my blessings and my prayers as the Church celebrates the promise of Eternal Life won for us by the Word of God made man, Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the peace and love of Christ,
Everett+
