Holy Week 2013

March 25, by Creighton University’s Online Ministries March 26, by Rodney Duke March 27, by Lenten Devotions from the Society of St. Andrew Maundy Thursday, by Jana Duke Good Friday, by Rodney Duke Holy Saturday, by Creighton University’s Online Ministries Easter Sunday, by Jason Byassee

March 25, by Creighton University’s Online Ministries Fifth Week of Lent

This is the last full week of Lent. We can feel the conflict and struggle developing in the readings. As we read about the drama that surrounded Jesus’ last days on earth and reflect upon its meaning, we experience how the drama that is going in our own hearts in more intense the closer we get to the end of Lent. The Spirit of the Lord is really trying to help us be more open and more free, to receive the graces our Lord wants to offer us. There is another spirit that is fighting just as hard to distract us, discourage us, and prevent us from being open and attentive to God’s gifts. The closer we get to the mystery of our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection for us, the more we can experience struggle. If I experience myself somewhat “at war” with myself, then these are very important days to keep deliberately asking our Lord to help me. It is also a great time to begin to prepare to renew the baptismal promises at Easter. We can reject the unloving choices we’ve made, all that is unjust, dishonest, disrespectful and violent. We want to refuse to be mastered by empty promises. Declaring our desire for freedom is a great preparation to receive this great gift. If we are celebrating the Scrutinies with the RCIA candidates and catechumens, this is a wonderful time to pray for them as well, for their protection from the evil one in the last days of their journey. If we have developed the habit of naming a desire the first thing each morning, and carrying on a conversation with our Lord in the brief background moments of the day, we are already comfortable with letting the Word or the Season interact with the concrete events of the week. This way of finding intimacy with our Lord, through our daily interaction – even in a very busy life – is so appropriate for the Fifth Week of Lent. We can discover areas that are still resistant to God’s grace. We can ask for help to practice new ways of being free, or new ways of loving. We can find ways to make financial sacrifices to give to the poor this week. Each night this week, we can give thanks. The closer we get to celebrating Holy Week and the events that brought us our salvation, each of us can express our gratitude, realizing this was all for me. Taken from the “Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer” on the Creighton University’sOnline Ministriesweb site: http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html Used with permission.

March 26, by Rodney Duke Repentance and Holiness

Lent, Holy Week, and Good Friday bring up the subject of sin and repentance. I am not comfortable when preachers talk about my sins for a couple of reasons. The first reason, though, is something of a misperception. Talk about sin reminds me about being a child and the shame I felt when I was punished, particularly publicly. But that is not what good sin talk is about. God does not seek to humiliate wayward people, but to reveal what is of Life and what is of Death. The call to repentance is a call to turn back to Life. The second reason I feel uncomfortable is legitimate. Talk about sin, when empowered by the Holy Spirit, confronts me with a Holy God. I realize that I, His creation, have lived in violation of His will and character. I have missed the mark and have fallen far short of His glory. So, in this case, a true sense of sin is directly proportional to my sensitivity to the presence of Jesus. It is a heartfelt knowledge of God’s holiness that reveals my utter lowliness. Good sin talk is a call to holiness, a call into Jesus’ presence. I remember reading sermons of some of the great Wesleyan holiness preachers. In response, I wanted to be holy just because the sin in my life is always such a pain. It makes such a mess of my life. But that is the wrong reason to want to be holy. Jesus is holy. And only that which is holy can be in His presence. I want to be in His presence. Lent is a good time to repent and draw close to Jesus.

March 27, by Lenten Devotions from the Society of St. Andrew John 4:7-42 New Possibilities

Lent is a time to meet Jesus anew and discover unrealized possibilities in our faith journey. When the Samaritan woman came to the well, she was leading a life that seemed to have no other possibility. She was stuck in a rut, repeating the same choices over and over again. Her choices had led her to be marginalized in her community. How surprised she must have been to have this man, a Jew, a stranger, talk to her. But she was not a stranger to Jesus. She came for water that would be consumed, but she received water that would change her life. When she left her home, she could not see the possibility of such a change. She could not anticipate that she would have a positive influence on her community. She had no idea that she could move out of her marginalized status. She had no hope for new possibilities for her life. She expected that her life would be the same when she returned from the well as when she approached it. But Jesus was at the well. He saw her with eyes of concern and acceptance that looked past who she was, who she had been. He offered her new possibilities for her life. And she accepted. Will you be the same at Easter as you were on Ash Wednesday? Seek new possibilities. Meet Jesus anew. ~ The Rev. Dr. Youtha Hardman-Cromwell Taken from the Society of St. Andrew’s Lenten Devotions http://endhunger.org Used with permission.

Maundy Thursday, March 28, by Jana Duke

The Mystical Supper, Icon by Simon Ushakov (1685)

Maundy Thursday is the day in the Church that we remember Christ’s Last Supper with his disciples. In some churches around the world this day is named, “Thursday of Mysteries.” The word, “Maundy” comes from the Latin word mandatum, “commandment” and refers to the commandment Jesus gave to his disciples at the Last Supper:

“A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” John 13:34

On this day in the Church year I try to enter into the mystery of the Last Supper — the sadness, the sorrow, the knowledge that Jesus will be taken away to the Cross. We symbolize this in our church as we take down the altar cloths, strip the altar bare and leave a dark sanctuary. As we go through the symbolism of the mystery I must ask myself, do I obey Christ’s commandment? Jesus said that the world will know that we are his followers if we love one another. I have fallen short on this mandate. If I am to participate in Christ’s mandate to love others, this means I need to allow Christ to make a radical transformation in my life. How is it people will recognize me as a follower of Jesus? Jesus says it is simply by how I treat others. I pray to our Sweet Lord Jesus to help me to love as he has loved to help me to see others as He sees them and to help me to live his mandate.

Creator and Loving God, you kneel to wash my feet, yet I am reluctant for you to see all the places I have gone in my attempts to escape you. Forgive me, Holy One, and have mercy on me. As you have broken your heart for me, may I open mine in service to others. As you have given your life for me, may I offer mine to bring healing to the world. As you have called me together around your Table, may I go forth to feed a world hungry, not only for food, but for your Spirit which brings peace and reconciliation. Amen

(Revised Common Lectionary)

Good Friday, March 29, by Rodney Duke Never Forsaken

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’– which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of those standing near heard this, they said, ‘Listen, he’s calling Elijah.’ (Mark 15:34-35, NIV) Those people misunderstand what Jesus said, and we sometimes do too. Jesus is starting to recite Psalm 22. Psalm 22 is the epitome of the Psalm of the Innocent, Righteous Sufferer. Jesus’ cry from the cross is a cry of despair, but not of total despair. Jesus’ cry is grounded on faith: “For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help” (Psalm 22:24, NIV). Jesus’ cry from the cross reminds me deeply of the Incarnation, that God took on our humanity. We will never know the depth of Jesus’ despair and suffering on the Cross; but, Jesus in his humanity does know and understand the depth of our despair and suffering. We will experience times when God does not seem to be present and when we seem to be engulfed in darkness: times of crucial decisions, times of lost relationships, times of depression and anxiety, times when we feel beaten down. I am convinced that in these times, Jesus not only gives us permission to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me;” but our Risen Lord Jesus is there to intercede for us and cry out those words for us and in us and through us. But, when Jesus cries out those words through us, they, like those of Psalm 22, will also be words of faith, words that proclaim down to the very last breath of life that God is sovereign, that God is there, that God is for us. And we also have this perspective: When Jesus cried out those words from the Cross, it looked like all was lost, that the Son of God was dead, that the Kingdom of God would not come, that Satan had triumphed. But we know that those words and the bleakness of the Cross were followed by Resurrection and Life.

Holy Saturday, March 30, by Creighton University’s Online Ministries

Today we contemplate Jesus, there in the tomb, dead. In that tomb, he is dead, exactly the way each of us will be dead. We don’t easily contemplate dying, but we rarely contemplate being dead. I have had the blessed experience of being with a number of people who have died, of arriving at a hospital shortly after someone has died, of attending an autopsy, and of praying with health sciences students over donated bodies in gross anatomy class. These are blessed experiences because they all brought me face-to-face with the mystery of death itself. With death, life ends. Breathing stops, and in an instant, the life of this person has ended. And, in a matter of hours, the body becomes quite cold and life-less – dramatic evidence that this person no longer exists. All that is left is this decaying shell that once held his or her life. Death is our ultimate fear. Everything else we fear, every struggle we have, is some taste of, some chilling approach to, the experience of losing our life. This fear is responsible for so much of our lust and greed, so much of our denial and arrogance, so much of our silly clinging to power, so much of our hectic and anxiety-driven activity. It is the one, inevitable reality we all will face. There is not enough time, money, joy, fulfillment, success. Our physical beauty and strength, our mental competency and agility, all that we have and use to define ourselves, slip away from us with time. Our lives are limited. Our existence is coming to an end. We will all die. In a matter of time, all that will be left of any of us is a decomposing body. Today is a day to soberly put aside the blinders we have about the mystery of death and our fear of it. Death is very real and its approach holds great power in our lives. The “good news” we are about to celebrate has no real power in our lives unless we have faced the reality of death. To contemplate Jesus’ body, there in that tomb, is to look our death in the face. Today’s reflection will lead us to the vigil of Easter. This night, communities from all over the world will gather in darkness, a darkness that represents all that we have been reflecting upon today. And there, in that darkness, a fire is lit. That flame is shared around the community until its light fills the room. Then, a song of exultation is sung, proclaiming that Christ is the light of this night. And, there, in the light of Christ, we will read the scriptures that prepare us to celebrate God’s revelation. This is the story of our salvation – how God prepared to rescue us from the power of sin and death. The God who created us, who led a chosen people out of slavery, raised Jesus from death. We can rejoice that death has no final victory over us. We can celebrate our faith that we have been baptized into the death of Jesus, so that we might be baptized into his life. As we behold the body of Jesus in the tomb today, and as we contemplate the mystery of our death, we prepare our hearts to receive the Good News of life. We know that tomb will be empty and remain empty forever as a sign that our lives will not really end, but only be transformed. One day, we will all rest in the embrace of Jesus, who knows our death, and who prepares a place for us in everlasting life. Our reflection on this holy Saturday, and our anticipation of celebrating the gift of life tonight and tomorrow, can bring immense peace and joy, powerful freedom and vitality to our lives. For if we truly believe that death holds no true power over us, we can walk each day in the grace being offered us – to give our lives away in love. Taken from the “Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer” on the Creighton University’sOnline Ministriesweb site: http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html Used with permission.

Easter Sunday, March 31, by Jason Byassee “Not one of his bones will be broken.” – John 19:36

This is one of several prophecies in the Old Testament that we Christians hold to have been fulfilled in Jesus. But it is a puzzling one. Jesus was tortured to death in the most gruesome form of execution that the quite-gruesome Romans ever came up with. If one is beaten and then affixed with nails to a tree to die either of asphyxiation or blood loss, what virtue is there in the resulting corpse having no broken bone? The gospel of John is echoing the Psalms. The hymns of Israel often lamented deep suffering. Yet the psalms hold out a promise that God will be faithful. Suffering is horrible, but temporary. It will not last. One of the promises of the limitation of suffering comes in Psalm 34:20, “Not one of his bones will be broken.” The psalm praises the way of the righteous. She will face many afflictions, but “the Lord rescues them from them all.” When ancient Christians were trying to make sense of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, they turned back to their bibles. In a time when the New Testament was not yet written, all the scripture they had was what we call the Old. And they saw this promise in the psalm–that the righteous are afflicted, but God keeps their bones from being broken. Somebody remembered that after Jesus’ death the Romans broke the bones of the thieves on either side of him. This was done to keep the crucified one from standing up straight enough to draw a breath. But when the soldiers came to Jesus they saw he was already dead, and did not break his bones. And they remembered the psalmist’s promise of many afflictions and one point of mercy; Good Friday preparing the way for Easter morning. Still, it’s an odd promise isn’t it? What do we make of it? In this last year I’ve gotten to know some of the bones of this church. Some of the fiber in the spine of Boone Methodist that keeps the body from puddling to the floor in a pool of mush. We lost some of them this year–Bill Dixon, World War II veteran. Bette Hodson, longtime lover of children’s ministry and UMW. Jennie Lee Deal, who loved to play games and never met a stranger. Tom Cottingham, who went on our church’s first mission trip when he was in his 80s. These bones of our church may have died this year. But they did not break. They held the rest of us up and allowed us to stand tall, breathe, and worship. I’ve also been privileged to get to know some of the newest members of our church. James Lorello and Brandon Nelson, who are trying to help the Appalachian State students they work with to see masculinity differently than the macho and womanizing image in much of our media. Jessica Lorello has planned weddings and Adryona Nelson works in distance ed on campus. Joe Bradford, the retired real estate agent keen to see us more engaged in helping the poor. Rhys Hester, who plays a mean guitar. Courtney Moretz, who grew up in Boone and has found good friendships in us. Bob and Lisa Campbell who have worshiped with us for four years and just now made it official (some engagements last longer than others!). These folks are each a gift–each a bone in the body of Christ that will not be broken, that will hold the rest of us up. This is the mystery of the church. We are always in a precarious state. You have heard predictions about the church in the US–that we are too old, giving less, less committed, showing up less often. There is truth in those claims. Here’s a greater truth: we exist only because the crucified one is raised. That’s a thin thread on which to hang our entire hope. But just like the bones of the savior, the bones of the church, that thin thread will not break.