Triduum redux: more than you really wanted to know

Well, I've gotten the official Easter cold like I do every single year. This year, I can officially point fingers at my parents, who had colds, but unofficially, it's really not their fault. Holy Week simply wears a body out. Don't tell them that though. Let them stew.

This year, Holy Week and Easter moved away from words and texts and into visuals for me. And that translated into preaching as well. This year, perhaps for the first time, I saw the washing of feet as a parable, and in seeing it that way, I started seeing the rest of the events that happened almost as performance art as well (somewhat shocking to think that about the crucifixion, but that's where my mind went).

So here's what happened:

Maundy Thursday

St. Michael's didn't have a foot washing, which was fine by me. I've got to say, I don't understand why we encourage pedicures before ritual footwashing, when I believe part of meaning of the washing is "Come as you are, with dirt on your feet."

I wanted to do something that would disturb the congregation to illuminate what I sensed was the same sort of disturbance in seeing Jesus step out of his "proper" role. So a great deal of the sermon was in silence, as I stepped forward, took off the stole, took off the cincture, took off the alb, then went into the congregation and, one by one, brought each person forward to sit at chairs the lay minister and I had set up in the sanctuary around the altar. As I walked them forward to their seat, I talked to each person individually, thanking them for coming and making some small talk.

It really did make people nervous, which is what I wanted. I was amazingly nervous, too.

Oh for My sake, Peter!

I spoke for a couple of minutes after everyone was seated (as Jesus did after washing people's feet), explaining why I'd done what I'd done. I also said that this time, I thought that whole side story of Peter refusing to have his feet washed was hilarious. I imagined Jesus doing a facepalm and saying, "Just...go with it, Peter. OK? Just go with me, here."

The big problem with this service? I'd explained to the lay minister my whole plan, but hadn't spoken to the organist. So that was a bit of a train wreck. Ah well.

Good Friday

There wasn't a group of lectors to read the parts of the Passion Narrative, so I was going to reading the whole thing by myself. Whew! I figured that was a lot for listeners to concentrate on, so I hoped to be able to include visuals to help people see while I was reading. St. Michael's used to display all the bulletin material on a large flatscreen in the upper right of the building. So I put together a PowerPoint with art depicting various scenes from the Passion.

Unfortunately, the flatscreen has been disconnected. Ah well. But I, at least, had some pretty vivid images in my mind of what was happening.

What really struck me was the movement from dark to morning to midday to sunset as you read through the story. Unfortunately, that's about as far as that thinking got.

Sermon-wise, I thought I was going to pull from the Good Friday service I did the previous year, which I thought had worked out very well. It began "It was all perfectly legal," which I still think is a pretty kick-ass opener. But as the day went on, I realized I had something else to say. I just wasn't sure what it was.

As I read the text, I was struck by the reversal of roles, as Peter goes from faithful follower to scared denier, and Nicodemus goes from secret follower to openly burying Jesus. My point became "We are not stuck in one place forever." Unfortunately (again) it didn't really get fully developed.

Still...not a bad service overall. I had to do a whole lot of talking, though. No music at this service.

Easter Vigil

Someone else preached at the Easter Vigil -- yay! And she said something that I had been thinking: about how Holy Week is a river and you just catch little glimpses of things passing by.

I had picked five of the readings, but it turns out we only had three lectors. So, a few minutes before the service started, we settled on the three readings. And we hadn't exactly gone over the canticles or anything, so we didn't have any. We're just going with the flow here.

Luckily, the fire worked well because that afternoon I suddenly thought, "Hmmm...I wonder if anyone has got something for the new fire?" And lo! We went to the local Ace hardware and bought a little grill and some firestarter thingeys and tested them out and they worked great. So, yeah, fire.

And I got to sing the Exsultet. So that was fun. For me, anyway. I feel very clever: I photographed the Exsultet on my iPad so that I could have it backlit as I sang it in the dark. Isn't that clever? OK, I'll stop being smug about that now.

And I remembered to talk to the organist. So that's good.

That's more than enough for now. I'll cover Easter Sunday in another post.

Various & Sundry: only slightly holy

I hope you're having a wonderful Holy Week. So far for me it's been terrific, very meaningful. Pinterest has played a surprisingly large role in that -- particularly the work of Pastor Joelle Colville-Hanson who does a wonderful job curating religious images and art, sorting them by books of the Bible or particular narratives. Her board for The Last Supper and the Garden of Gethsemene is stunning.

The Last Supper of Jesus -- Andre Derain

Source: wikipaintings.org via Pastorjoelle on Pinterest

Here endeth the Holy Week references for today. From here on out, it's odds and ends.

In case you have ever wondered, "Who are these people who buy semi-automatic weapons anyway?" you might be interested in this excerpt from the book Gun Guys: A Road Trip which came out earlier this month. The Author Dan Baum "is both a lifelong gun guy and a Jewish Democrat who grew up in suburban New Jersey feeling like a 'child of a bitter divorce with allegiance to both parents.' In Gun Guys he grabs his licensed concealed handgun and hits the road to meet some of the 40 percent of Americans who own guns." Given the excerpt, I think this would be a good and informative read. This interview with Baum was...a bit shocking, actually. Meaning, he does not support my point of view 100 percent. The outrage!

I appreciated this post about The Art of Puttering that correctly marks the difference between puttering and multitasking. "Puttering, unlike multitasking, is not marked by a sense of urgency. Puttering allows for breaks in the work, for a cup of coffee or even a burst of play." I love puttering.

Here are some pandas, showing how it's done:



Perhaps these are Luke's sympathy pandas for being thumped in the finals of Lent Madness.

Someone from the Lent Madness Stable o' Snark sent me this tweet:

oh @heytoepfer, here's an obit for our obit fan CB. It involves Jesus and a NASCAR driver. sbnation.com/2013/3/26/4149…
— Lent Madness (@LentMadness) March 26, 2013

How right this mystery person was, Laurie. The obit has the classic lede:

"Timothy Wayne 'Tim' Hopkins, 54, went to be with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and Dale Earnhardt to contribute his building and painting expertise to the constructing of many heavenly mansions on Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Memphis." 

Fantastic!

Finally, here's a great obituary for you March Madness fans: Bud Palmer, credited with creating the jump shot, died a little over a week ago at the age of 91.

Palmer could remember no eureka moment, although at age 6 he was so small and weak that he had to launch his shots with a leap. He knew he had shot them regularly as a student at Phillips-Exeter Academy in the late 1930s. He realized, he said, that “if I dribble, and stop, and jump, I will have an advantage.”

When he tried out for the Knicks in 1946, it was still so odd that Coach Neal Cohalen thundered, “What the hell kind of shot is that?”

 I can just imagine the Times obit writer thinking, "Jackpot!" when he got this quote to end the article:

As a Knick, Palmer roomed on the road with Sweetwater Clifton, one of the first black players in the N.B.A. He once confronted a hotel manager in Baltimore to demand, successfully, that Clifton be allowed to stay. 

Later, after a few beers in their room, Clifton told his friend, “Damn, for a white boy, you sure can jump.”

Where I'll be for the rest of Holy Week

For the second year in a row, I've had the opportunity to lead Holy Week services, which as a peripatetic clergy person is a real treat.

This year I will be at St. Michael and All Angels in Fort Bragg, CA, a community I know well, having served with them for most of a summer in 2009 and off and on since then.

If you happen to be in the neighborhood, please join me!

Maundy Thursday: 6:00 pm

Good Friday: 

  Stations of the Cross: noon

  Solemn Collects: 7:00 pm

Saturday Easter Vigil: 6:30 pm

Easter Sunday: 10:00 am

St. Michael's is at 201 E. Fir Street at the corner of Fir and Franklin.

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A blessed Holy Week to you, wherever you are!

Vulnerability, priesthood, and Holy Week

Cross-posted at the Confirm not Conform blog.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hear Brené Brown present at a conference to a group of Episcopal church leaders. This was especially fun for me because I’ve been a big Brené Brown fan ever since I saw her first TED talk on the power of vulnerability, but this was the first time I’d gotten to hear her speak from the point of view of faith.

Dr. Brown (may I call her Brené?) is a member of an Episcopal church in (I believe) Houston, Texas, and talked about her own experience returning to church after a long absence. She shared that during the new members class, she and the teaching priest did not have the same understanding of Christ, but that the priest had made it clear that though they didn’t agree, Brené and her family belonged.

Brené asked the group if they knew the number one barrier to belonging was. We all had guesses. We all guessed wrong. “The number one barrier to belonging,” she told us, “is fitting in.”

I was floored. Why was it bad to fit in? How does that keep us from belonging? She explained: fitting in is about assessing the situation and adapting to it. It is not about being yourself. Belonging is about showing up and being seen for who you are, even if it is different from the other people around you. You cannot belong if you have to fit in.

Isn’t that fascinating?

I suspect you think I might go on to talk about how we want people in our churches to fit in to our models of belief and behavior. But that’s not what I want to talk about right now. I want to talk to my fellow-clergy for a moment, so lean in a little closer. Because here’s what else Brené talked about: she talked about us clergy types. And she has got our number.

She pointed out that clergy, like the academics she works with, have a similar weakness: we tend to think that being more accessible means being less intelligent or sophisticated. The more Jesus-y we are, the more holy we think we appear to others. But this kind of holiness has separated us from people. She notes that often we are trained to take care of the church, not of people. “You have to start where people are, so people see their stories reflected in what you’re saying.”

“People are starving,” she said to this group. And what people need is to know that “you care more about what I need than what your peers think of you.” Actually, I would say it’s that we care more about what the people we work with and for need than we care even about what they think of us.

“You cannot have a conversation more vulnerable than you already are,” she told us. And that is a scary thought. It would be great for our congregations to be full of people who are open and honest and vulnerable and courageous. But what if they can’t do that unless we are open and honest and vulnerable and courageous? What would happen then?

Maybe they won’t think we’re smart. Maybe they won’t think we’re holy. Maybe they won’t think we look like a priest or sound like a priest or act like a priest.

But here’s the thing: our priesthood does not depend upon whether we fit in. Our priesthood does not require us to be perfect. We are called “In all that you do…to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of [wait for it…] his grace.” Not our profundity. Not our appearance of Priestliness. We’re sharing Christ, who hung out with the wrong people and said the wrong things and told little stories about farming and families and acted strangely and did not fit in. That guy. Not the "Jesus-y" behavior we think makes us holy.

So maybe we can draw from that. Maybe there will be a cost, as Jesus well knew. But Brené also told us “There is no faith without vulnerability.” What if she’s right? If she’s right, then how do we share faith if we are never vulnerable?

“Who is Jesus for you?” someone asked Brené at the end of her talk. She said (roughly), “I’m not a priest. I’m not bound to take on a certain theology or belief. But to me, Jesus is someone who could be on a cross and still look out at the people and world around him in love. And that’s what I hope to be able to do too.” Well, I am a priest, and I think if I were able to do that, I’d be a much better one.

A blessed and vulnerable Holy Week to you.

Sermon: Palm Sunday

The person putting together the bulletin asked me if I wanted the shorter gospel reading (which still isn’t short) or the long gospel reading. And of course I wanted the long gospel reading, but I promise you that as a trade-off the homily will be short even though there are so many amazing things in this gospel that I could go on for days and days, starting with the very first bit when Mark tells you that Jesus is in the house of Simon the leper. Who is Simon the leper? The official answer from the commentary I used: “Simon the leper is otherwise unknown, but he was probably known to those who handed on the tradition.” So there you go.

It’s the woman with the ointment who interests me: the woman with ointment is the reason you got the long gospel reading today. As far as I’m concerned, the whole Last Supper and Crucifixion parts can wait till later in the week where they belong. For me, Palm Sunday is all about extravagance and the ways we respond to it, the ways we try to keep things under control and make ourselves feel good about ourselves, often at the expense of others, this woman being a case in point.

So here’s Jesus (at the home of Simon the leper) when a woman comes in, unnamed and so most likely unknown (see: Simon the leper), with an alabaster jar filled with a costly perfume. She approaches Jesus, breaks open the jar and pours the contents on his head. As far as I can tell, she reserves nothing, but empties the jar of perfume. The room must have been overwhelmed with the scent of it. And as I imagine the scene, everyone there: Jesus, the disciples, Simon the leper, is taken by surprise by the act. And so it is very telling how people react in that first moment.

First, there are those who were indignant, who said, “This should have been given to the poor.” Their lack of graciousness is astonishing—or would be if it weren’t part of a larger pattern. But if you read through the rest of the gospel of Mark to see how often this concern for the poor appeared among Jesus’ followers, you’ll find the answer is: not so much. The feeding of the 5,000? “Send them away to the villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” People bringing their children to Jesus? “The disciples spoke sternly to them.” You know what Mark reports the disciples were concerned about? Who was the greatest among them, and who was going to sit on Jesus’ right and left hand.

For all that we like to pick on the Pharisees, Jesus’ disciples are cut from the same cloth: doing their darndest to keep their status high and that of others low.

And Jesus calls them on it, as he always does. That whole “the poor you will always have with you” line? What I hear in that today is Jesus telling the disciples, “Why are you so all-fired concerned about the poor right now? Could it be because she’s done something beautiful—and you haven’t. Quit being such jerks.”

But why did they react so strongly and immediately? Here’s why I think that is, and this is something that is true for me as well, and perhaps for you too: it’s because when we see someone being truly extravagant, doing something truly beautiful and noble, it points out how stingy and miserly my own offerings are. So when we see the real deal, such as this woman, some woman who doesn’t even know Jesus, hasn’t been taught properly, hasn’t been part of the gang, pouring out a whole jar of costly perfume, it blows away our shabby little pretenses of our own most noble and gracious self.

We want her to be wrong somehow. And so in a desire not to be reminded of her generosity and my stinginess, it is best to shut down the extravagance, label it completely inappropriate, tell her how she ought to have done it, and keep things tidy and gray.

The commentary I read about the woman with perfume said, “[Her gift] was a glorious maximum of sacrifice which never stopped to calculate what might have been a passable minimum.” That’s the thing that the Pharisees, and the disciples, and many more of us throughout the ages have never been able to quite grasp: that the life that Jesus calls us to is a life of the glorious maximum, not the passable minimum.

I can think of no better symbol of the glorious maximum and passable minimum than Palm Sunday. The story we hear is of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, with crowds of people yelling and cheering, palm branches and cloaks strewn before him--a glorious maximum of welcome...and what we end up with is this single sad frond, the passable minimum of palmness.

The story of the woman with the ointment is the story of Holy Week in miniature: the extravagant entrance, the muttering reaction, the shameful punishment that is overcome for all time by Jesus' redemption. Her gift to us is giving us this sign of how we too might live as Jesus did, called to the glorious maximum of life and faith in whatever we might do.

I'm afraid it's not going to be easy. We talk a good game about abundance and generosity in the church, but I have seen a whole lot of beautiful gifts covered over with shame and scorn. People who are looking for the glorious maximum are told it’s unrealistic or too soon or costs too much or that we need to focus on other things. People who want to do beautiful things are worn down by the pressure of those interested only in the passable minimum.

But there is hope, and that’s what this week is about: that the glorious maximum ultimately overcomes the forces of the passable minimum, despite their every effort. And it starts with the glorious maximum of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s where we start. Let’s see what meets us as we walk down this road. And let us go forth extravagantly.

Sunday Funnies, April 1

April Fools Day and Palm Sunday?  Here are some...appropriate selections from the Twitter hashtag Easter Pro Tips, collected by David Hansen.

1. Palm Sunday Tips:
2. Share
   “

   On Palm Sunday, use sour wine at Communion, served from a sponge on a stick. Side piercings are optional. #EasterProTip

   Undercover Nun

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
3. Share
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   #EasterProTip Enhance your Palm Sunday atmosphere by annointing folks with coconut-scented suntan oil on the way in.

   Ellen Cooper-Davis

   a day ago

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4. Share
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   Palm Sunday processional: Black Eyed Peas, Let's Get it Started #easterprotip

   David Hansen

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
5. Share
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   For your children's sermon, make sure you have a Passion Jesus action figure, complete with lash, spear, blood, and water. #EasterProTip

   Undercover Nun

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
6. Share
   “

   For a more exciting Passion gospel, use (@TheAuthorGuy) Christopher. Moore's LAMB, rather than from the bible. #EasterProTip

   Undercover Nun

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
7. Share
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   #EasterProTip Do you have a rain date for your Palm Sunday procession? Just fine to have it on the second Sunday of Easter!

   David Hansen

   a day ago

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8. Share
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   #EasterProTip Film Sunday morning's video reflection using marshmallow peeps. Consider a Passion Play!

   Ellen Cooper-Davis

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
9. Share
   “

   Palm Sunday Sermon: "Is Jesus on Your Ass?" #easterprotip

   David Hansen

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet

Be sure to check out the full Easter Pro Tip storify for further tips for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter!