This year as the Diocese lives more fully into our value of “Wholehearted Worship,” I invite you once again to tend carefully the traditions of your congregation for Holy Week and Easter Season. How can the old traditions be carried out in ways that enhance your worship? Do your traditions carry clear meaning or have they become drab and routine? Are there new things which would add meaning? For example, instead of importing palm branches, would using local cedar branches or ferns bring fresh reflection on the spontaneous actions of the crowd on the original Palm Sunday? Are you using all your senses: sound, smell, sight, touch, taste? Is there beauty? Can the preparation be prayerful, slow and meditative rather than rushed or begrudging?
Is there still a sense of mystery and reverence? Worship with mystery and reverence does not mean it is so rigid or so serious there cannot be smiles or quiet conversation. If people are uptight or anxious about doing it “perfectly” that can get in the way of reverent worship. Anxiety can communicate itself to visitors as well as to the whole congregation, robbing worship of joy. Focus on God. Communicate Grace! Yes, of course we plan and practice and offer our best, but sometimes there are hiccups even with the best of plans. Worship leaders need the grace to smile, take a deep breath and move on reverently, putting people at ease. We do not want any tinge of fear in worship to stop creativity and spontaneity. Please stop comparing your worship to another parish or another decade!
There is such wonderful drama in it that I have outlined before. Drama that deepens year by year as we reflect on God’s saving Love for us.
Enter fully into as many of the Holy Week and Easter liturgies as you are able: walking with Jesus through the crowds welcoming him with shouts of praise as he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, washing feet as a symbol of Jesus’ new (old) commandment “Love one another,” receiving the gift of the first Eucharist “Do this in remembrance of me,” praying with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, witnessing his betrayal, arrest, and trial; feeling the helplessness with the women at the foot of the cross; taking spices to anoint his body; engaging in the confusion, bewilderment and amazement of discovering an empty tomb. Participate in all of this as a spiritual practice, enter into the old story and listen to what it says to you at this point in your life. Are you helping someone bear a heavy cross? Are you waiting with a friend who is praying in agony “take this cup away from me”? Have you, like Peter, betrayed someone? Have you run away from a trial in fear? Are you, like Mary Magdalene, immobilized by grief? Do you hear Jesus saying “Fear not!”
I particularly encourage you to enter fully into the vigil of Holy Saturday. If your congregation does not hold a vigil, you can still read the readings, have a quiet time of reflection with a few people or by yourself; wait in silence, act out the story.
We know Holy Saturday in our own experience. Holy Saturday we wait. We wait “between death and resurrection.” Much of life is lived here,“between death and resurrection.” Keeping a vigil on Holy Saturday, not rushing into celebrating Easter too soon, but praying through the waiting at the tomb, is a way to tend to how God is present to us even in times when we feel abandoned or hopeless. It is a prayer practice for us to deepen our trust in the God who is unseen and in mystery, even now, bringing about resurrection.
“Gethsemane”
by Mary Oliver
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.
May your wholehearted worship enrich your insight into God’s new life at work in us and the world. May you have a Blessed and Joy-filled Easter.
Yours in the Risen Christ,
+Lynne
