Good Friday 2009 – Year B (RCL)
Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4: 14 – 16; 5: 7 – 9; John 18: 1 – 19: 42
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Friday, April 10, 2009
Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4: 14 – 16; 5: 7 – 9; John 18: 1 – 19: 42
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Friday, April 10, 2009
DAY OF DEATH AND HOPE DENIED
Let us pray: O God we feel so alone. In the reality of our sinfulness, we have destroyed that which we loved the most. When we turn to you in hope, we are faced with the despair of the crucifixion and death of your Holy One. In our hearts and our lives the promise lies buried in a tomb. Show us that the ways of our failings and foibles injure our relationships with each other and with you. Be with us, creator God, as we mourn the loss of hope on this day. As we wait in expectation for your salvation; show us how we might be comfort for each other in the journey from death to life. Amen.
(SUNG) O SACRED HEAD SURROUNDED, BY CROWN OF PIERCING
THORN.
O BLEEDING HEAD SORE WOUNDED, REVILED AND PUT TO
SCORN.
DEATH’S PALOR HUE COMES O’RE THEE – THE GLOW OF LIFE
DECAYS.
YET ANGEL HOSTS ADORE THEE, AND TREMBLE AS THEY
GAZE.
This is the most difficult of days for me. In my devotion to and understanding of the paschal mystery of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ.I find this day of death most difficult. Incorporating the reality of the Triduum of Holy Week, we observe the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week as our most venerated and solemn of liturgical expressions. In my youth at St. Lawrence the Martyr; I could bury my sadness and disapointments in the beauty of the Roman Liturgy which for the first thirteen years of my life was spoken in a language that I did not understand, and was technically “dead” in that in no human communication between people was it used. Somehow the “deadness” of that language spoke to my heart on this death of death and descent among the dead.
In order to enhance what the Liturgy of this day wants us to resonate with, I’d like to share with you an old Russian story entitled “How Death Became Life.” The story helps to give focus to these last days of Lent and goes like this:
Death was born on a flaming day; at least that was the way she remembered it. And when she came forth full grown into this world, it was alight with all the colors afire. The light seemed to come from a sword which an innense angel held aloft guarding a door to she knew not where.
At first, death felt like a stranger. She wandered kind of lost, then one day she saw a beautiful bird with gorgeous white plumage. Gently she walked up to it and stretched out her hand to feel the softness of the feathers which shone like the sun on the bird’s back. But no sooner had her fingers touched it than the bird fell at her feet, cold and still. Death picked it up and wondered why it had stopped singing and stopped living. And that was how she discovered her dreaded power. And that is how she understood why she had been born on a flaming day.
Well, slowly the years flowed into eternity where all time goes, and death traveled through them all touching now this animal and that bird, and this fish or that flower. By then she knew the earth very well, and she had noticed that a certain kind of creature, human beings, dwelt in it, who still held in their faces a strange reflection of God. It was as though they had been made in the image of God.
Death took a long itme to touch humankind, but one day she did, and she saw them shudder. They cried out and became as cold and still as that first bird with the white plumage that she touched. And on that day death tasted the fulness of her awesome power, but on that day, also, she know loneliness to the very last drop.
From then on, as the centuries turned into thousands of years and thousands of years into millions, death claimed all living things for her own. Yet there was in her a hunger that grew. In her silent kingdom nothing remained. All living things crumbled and turned into dust at her touch. She was always left with loneliness. There were days, years even, when death almost went mad with loneliness, with the desire to have and to hold something that would last, someone or something that she could call her own.
It was now a great time of plagues and storms and floods, and with tears flowing down her emaciated cheeks, death crisscrossed the whole earth with the swiftness born of frenzied hunger. Throwing herself at the children of hukman beings, she embraced them passionately, hoping against hope that she might see a smile or hear a word that would lift the pall of her loneliness that isolated her from all living things and held her tighter and tighter.
But she learned that human beings feared her above all things. They shrank from her approach. They invented thousands of legends about her trying to pretend that she was really incapabble of harming them. They even began to imagine a life after death that was somehow a continuation of the eartly life that they knew here. Slowly the legends that they made up grew into religious beliefs and centered on ways and means of escaping death. Their attempts left a wide trail of artifacts scattered over the earth, and other humnas would dig in the bowels of the earth to trace this trail.
Death kept walking the earth. At times she smiled at human being’s subtle fear of her, and she enjoyed her power over them. At other itmes she wept bitterly, not only because she was lonely, but because she sensed that there was always some part of each hunan being that seemed to escape her. One day, the story goes, tired and weary, she sat on a hill beneath three crosses on which three men were being executed. She did not feel like looking at or touching any one of these. She was too tired, and she was too lonely, and she was too disconsolate. So she just sat there, her weary head in her hands, and she wept slow, huge tears, bemoaning her loneliness.
Suddenly above her she heard a voice say, “I thirst.” She looked up. Her gaze met two fathomless eyes. From their depths flowed a brilliant, warm, blue light, the like of which she had never expereinced before, Instantly she stood up, rigid, erect, tall, and thin. A few paces away this man hung between two others. She somhow did not dare to look at thim though she wanted, more than she had ever wanted, to touch him, and to touch him with love and respect. Yet very selfconsciously she put her hands behind her back and stared at this bleeding, disfigured face, as if she could never see enough.
She heard him speak some short sentences. Each word she locked into her heart. She relished them. The very echo of the voice weak with pain and hunger moved her deeply. Then he was silent, but his eyes called to her in a wordless message. She did not know how it happened, but gently, ever so gently, she touched his cheek. He seemed for an instant to smile for her alone. Then like all the others before him, he closed his eyes and became lifeless and cold.
She could not believe it. Somehow she knew without knowing that he was different from all the others. So she lingered awhile. She saw him taken down from the cross. She saw his mother hold his lifeless body in her arms and cradle the ashen face against her bosom. She saw him being carried into a grave in the hollow of a cave. She saw some soldiers roll the stone to the entrance of the cave in order to seal it. Then, fleet on foot and noiseless as only death can be, she entered the cave just before the stone was put in place.
What pased between him and death no hunam being will ever know. But one thing is certain. On the following Sunday, two days after he had been taken dwon from his cross, some women came to the tomb and it was empty. Death was not there. And since that Sunday morning, all who look upon death with the eyes of faith see it differently. They know that love is life, and death is naught but the gate to eternal life.
That’s an old Russian legend that talks about the same thing the scriptures talk about. As a poet put it:
Is there a leaf upon the tree
The father does not see?
Leaves fall, so do we all
Return to earth, to sod.
Sparrows and kings
And all manner of things
Fall, fall into the hands
Of the living God.
So again Christ waits high on the cross, to take away that death. And for those who know other kinds of death – physical or moral or mental – again, in this last week, to to the Christ in prayer, go and turn over those things to God, and say: “Here I am. Only you have this power. Only your love is stronger than the strongest thing on earth.”
And so death herself found out that in Jesus she was powerless. And death’s loneliness found fulfillment in Christ; and the message is that so can ours. The message is that on this day of death which is so difficult – the message will carry us through this day and into a new day; when death yeilds to a power greater then herself.
Amen.
(SUNG) O SACRED HEAD SURROUNDED, BY CROWN OF PIERCING
THORN.
O BLEEDING HEAD SORE WOUNDED, REVILED AND PUT TO
SCORN.
DEATH’S PALOR HUE COMES O’RE THEE – THE GLOW OF LIFE
DECAYS.
YET ANGEL HOSTS ADORE THEE, AND TREMBLE AS THEY
GAZE.
This is the most difficult of days for me. In my devotion to and understanding of the paschal mystery of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ.I find this day of death most difficult. Incorporating the reality of the Triduum of Holy Week, we observe the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week as our most venerated and solemn of liturgical expressions. In my youth at St. Lawrence the Martyr; I could bury my sadness and disapointments in the beauty of the Roman Liturgy which for the first thirteen years of my life was spoken in a language that I did not understand, and was technically “dead” in that in no human communication between people was it used. Somehow the “deadness” of that language spoke to my heart on this death of death and descent among the dead.
In order to enhance what the Liturgy of this day wants us to resonate with, I’d like to share with you an old Russian story entitled “How Death Became Life.” The story helps to give focus to these last days of Lent and goes like this:
Death was born on a flaming day; at least that was the way she remembered it. And when she came forth full grown into this world, it was alight with all the colors afire. The light seemed to come from a sword which an innense angel held aloft guarding a door to she knew not where.
At first, death felt like a stranger. She wandered kind of lost, then one day she saw a beautiful bird with gorgeous white plumage. Gently she walked up to it and stretched out her hand to feel the softness of the feathers which shone like the sun on the bird’s back. But no sooner had her fingers touched it than the bird fell at her feet, cold and still. Death picked it up and wondered why it had stopped singing and stopped living. And that was how she discovered her dreaded power. And that is how she understood why she had been born on a flaming day.
Well, slowly the years flowed into eternity where all time goes, and death traveled through them all touching now this animal and that bird, and this fish or that flower. By then she knew the earth very well, and she had noticed that a certain kind of creature, human beings, dwelt in it, who still held in their faces a strange reflection of God. It was as though they had been made in the image of God.
Death took a long itme to touch humankind, but one day she did, and she saw them shudder. They cried out and became as cold and still as that first bird with the white plumage that she touched. And on that day death tasted the fulness of her awesome power, but on that day, also, she know loneliness to the very last drop.
From then on, as the centuries turned into thousands of years and thousands of years into millions, death claimed all living things for her own. Yet there was in her a hunger that grew. In her silent kingdom nothing remained. All living things crumbled and turned into dust at her touch. She was always left with loneliness. There were days, years even, when death almost went mad with loneliness, with the desire to have and to hold something that would last, someone or something that she could call her own.
It was now a great time of plagues and storms and floods, and with tears flowing down her emaciated cheeks, death crisscrossed the whole earth with the swiftness born of frenzied hunger. Throwing herself at the children of hukman beings, she embraced them passionately, hoping against hope that she might see a smile or hear a word that would lift the pall of her loneliness that isolated her from all living things and held her tighter and tighter.
But she learned that human beings feared her above all things. They shrank from her approach. They invented thousands of legends about her trying to pretend that she was really incapabble of harming them. They even began to imagine a life after death that was somehow a continuation of the eartly life that they knew here. Slowly the legends that they made up grew into religious beliefs and centered on ways and means of escaping death. Their attempts left a wide trail of artifacts scattered over the earth, and other humnas would dig in the bowels of the earth to trace this trail.
Death kept walking the earth. At times she smiled at human being’s subtle fear of her, and she enjoyed her power over them. At other itmes she wept bitterly, not only because she was lonely, but because she sensed that there was always some part of each hunan being that seemed to escape her. One day, the story goes, tired and weary, she sat on a hill beneath three crosses on which three men were being executed. She did not feel like looking at or touching any one of these. She was too tired, and she was too lonely, and she was too disconsolate. So she just sat there, her weary head in her hands, and she wept slow, huge tears, bemoaning her loneliness.
Suddenly above her she heard a voice say, “I thirst.” She looked up. Her gaze met two fathomless eyes. From their depths flowed a brilliant, warm, blue light, the like of which she had never expereinced before, Instantly she stood up, rigid, erect, tall, and thin. A few paces away this man hung between two others. She somhow did not dare to look at thim though she wanted, more than she had ever wanted, to touch him, and to touch him with love and respect. Yet very selfconsciously she put her hands behind her back and stared at this bleeding, disfigured face, as if she could never see enough.
She heard him speak some short sentences. Each word she locked into her heart. She relished them. The very echo of the voice weak with pain and hunger moved her deeply. Then he was silent, but his eyes called to her in a wordless message. She did not know how it happened, but gently, ever so gently, she touched his cheek. He seemed for an instant to smile for her alone. Then like all the others before him, he closed his eyes and became lifeless and cold.
She could not believe it. Somehow she knew without knowing that he was different from all the others. So she lingered awhile. She saw him taken down from the cross. She saw his mother hold his lifeless body in her arms and cradle the ashen face against her bosom. She saw him being carried into a grave in the hollow of a cave. She saw some soldiers roll the stone to the entrance of the cave in order to seal it. Then, fleet on foot and noiseless as only death can be, she entered the cave just before the stone was put in place.
What pased between him and death no hunam being will ever know. But one thing is certain. On the following Sunday, two days after he had been taken dwon from his cross, some women came to the tomb and it was empty. Death was not there. And since that Sunday morning, all who look upon death with the eyes of faith see it differently. They know that love is life, and death is naught but the gate to eternal life.
That’s an old Russian legend that talks about the same thing the scriptures talk about. As a poet put it:
Is there a leaf upon the tree
The father does not see?
Leaves fall, so do we all
Return to earth, to sod.
Sparrows and kings
And all manner of things
Fall, fall into the hands
Of the living God.
So again Christ waits high on the cross, to take away that death. And for those who know other kinds of death – physical or moral or mental – again, in this last week, to to the Christ in prayer, go and turn over those things to God, and say: “Here I am. Only you have this power. Only your love is stronger than the strongest thing on earth.”
And so death herself found out that in Jesus she was powerless. And death’s loneliness found fulfillment in Christ; and the message is that so can ours. The message is that on this day of death which is so difficult – the message will carry us through this day and into a new day; when death yeilds to a power greater then herself.
Amen.
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