Good Friday Sermon

“They shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child; for the Lord who is without sin, is slain.”

These words from the prophet Zachariah, spoken as an antiphon at Tenebrae on Wednesday, is a reminder that our experience of Good Friday is the mourning of one who was slain, like those who mourn the loss of their only beloved child, it is a tragedy and a great loss.

Jesus death on the cross, strikes at the heart of our faith and our lives. It is one thing to think back and consider the events some two thousand years ago. It is quite another to realize that we have mourning parents nearby whose child was slain.

Good Friday came early for many parents & godparents, and in fact the whole community of Newtown last December. They are still very much grieving the tragic loss of those children (and adults).

As I thought about Good Friday & Sandy Hook, I remembered an anthem I had sung years ago on Good Friday. (Think about music and the power it has, memories of childhood, or significant events, songs you want played at funeral, etc. – they have meaning for us)

On that Good Friday some 16 years ago or so, we sang When David Heard. It is based on the passage from II Samuel, 18:33 (KJV):

“When David heard that Absalom was slain he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept, my son, my son, O Absalom my son, would God I had died for thee!”

As an anthem it is sad and disturbing, and the constant refrain, O Abslaom, my son, my son… you could feel David’s great pain, & through singing it, it became my own and it brought the loss of Good Friday home to me.

It is the song I have come back to since Sandy Hook because David’s cry is the cry of any parent who has lost a child. MY son, my son, my daughter, would God I had died for thee…

The anthem was written by Thomas Weelkes, organist of Chichester Cathedral, after Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales and the son of King James VI of Scotland and England, died tragically at the age of 18. After Henry's sudden death in November 1612, artistic memorials to him invoked the grief of the nation, which included several musical settings of King David's biblical lament for his son Absalom.

“When David Heard” was a musical way for a nation to mourn the death of the king’s son. I wonder if we as a nation have lost our way in mourning the victims of Sandy Hook, lost the nerve to ask the hard questions, we have shied away from the cross of December 14 and of so many who die too young at the hands of others.

The cross on Good Friday does not let us escape from any of it, we must sit and weep at the loss of sons and daughters, all of them, with too many parents and friends weeping at their graves. We weep with Mary & the disciples at the foot of Jesus cross.

This Good Friday, Jesus on the cross beckons us to stand near and take notice, that his death not be avoided in vain, but held on to, so that we can be with one another in grief that is too often too much to bear.

When his mother and the beloved disciple came close, Jesus connected them in their grief, so his mom and the disciple whom he loved would not be lost. Let us not lose one another, let us embrace the cross, the pain and sorrow, for we mourn for him as one mourns for an only child; for the Lord who is without sin, is slain. Amen.

A Song for Good Friday

When David Heard...

Walking the Way of the Cross

Paying Attention

I heard this on NPR and was impressed that it speaks to our need to pay attention, "to see the sacred in the mundane and the profound in the prosaic."

This is the first in a series of commentaries by Adam on the theme of "How To See The World In A Grain Of Sand." Stay tuned to All Things Considered and 13.7 for future installments!
More than two centuries ago, the great poet William Blake offered the world the most extraordinary of possibilities:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.

Yeah, that would be nice.

Unfortunately, most of us don't know how to hold eternity in the palm of our hands. In fact, most of us feel lucky if we can just hold it together until the end of the day. The problem, of course, is that mostly we've lost our minds. And I mean that literally. Our attention is endlessly lost in the endless blur of appointments, to-do lists, worry, concern and agitation that makes up modern life.

Sometimes, however, for the briefest moment, we do pick up a scent that there is something more going on than this daily round of survival. But those moments pass and waves of mundane urgency swallow us again. Tumbling through the chaos of our day-to-days, we wonder if Blake's vision of a broader, more expansive experience is nothing more than a poet's fancy. Can we really see the Universe in a grain of sand, even as we slog through traffic? Can we really hold infinity in our hands, even as we drop off the kids to violin practice?

The answer, I believe, is "yes." In fact I am sure of the answer is yes. The connection between the everyday reality we experience and boundless landscapes of cosmic beauty, inspiration and joy is actually so close, so present for us. It's there in the dust on your car, the mess on your desk and the swirling water in your sink.

How do I know this? Because I am a scientist dammit and I know that Science — under all its theories equations, experiments and data — is really trying to teach us to see the sacred in the mundane and the profound in the prosaic.

The trick is in the noticing and that happens by unpacking the question hidden in Blake's poem.

Can we really see the whole world in a grain of sand?

Through the lens of science we can see how even the smallest thing can be a gateway to an experience of the extraordinary, if only we can practice noticing.

We walk past a thousand, thousand natural miracles everyday, from the sun climbing in the sky to the arc of birds seen out our windows. Those miracles are there waiting for us to see them, to notice them and, most importantly, to find our delight in theirs.

You want some transcendence? I got if for ya. Let's start with that grain of sand.

You can keep up with more of what Adam Frank is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @AdamFrank4

Addressing Christian Anti-Judaism

As we hear again the Passion stories from the four Gospels in Holy Week, we need to recall also how the very construction of these stories in their times and places have come out of conflict between Christians and Jews, and have directly caused terrible violence over the centuries by Christians against Jews. This hatred has been institutionalized into the Church from its first days. It does dishonor to Jesus the Jew, and to our Jewish neighbors, and to our own Jewish religious roots to behave as though this is not the case – as though our sacred texts describe history with faciticity rather than through the lens of ancient conflict. Whether by footnotes, or by preaching and teaching, we must change our thinking about our relationship with Jews present and past if we are not to repeat the pogroms, genocides, and holocausts of history in the future.

The Greek word judaios (Ioudaios) might refer to Jews or to Judeans – residents of Judea whatever their religion. This substitute may work in some places. But changing the English word doesn’t address the issue adequately. Roman Catholics and members of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith consulted together to make changes in the famous Passion Plays of Oberammergau who noted that the high priests in Jesus’ time exercised their power at the behest of the Roman government and were not well-liked by their own people. Also, that Jesus had supporters in Jerusalem who caused some hesitation by those in power in acting against him (Mt. 26:5; 23:27); and that the Gospels were written when Rome was at the height of its power and Judaism was at a state of almost constant civil war with it. There were uprisings 60-70CE, 112-115, and 132-135 CE that met with fierce retaliation by Rome. Romans did not always differentiate between Jews and the followers of Jesus’ Way (hodos) who later came to be called Christians. They were easily lumped with Jewish followers of the Way (halacha in Hebrew) of Yochanan ben Zakkai, a leader who opposed the Sadducees, survived the emperorship of Vespasian and helped protect the town Jamnia (Javne) where a new school of Jewish sages arose after the destruction of the Temple to rebuild a Phariseeic Judaism centered on Torah not Temple. Jews and Christians who originally worshiped together in the early first century drifted apart and finally fell into enmity and polemic from both sides. As Christianity eventually became a majority religion, this polarization led to official policies of violence against Jews.

It does disrespect to our Gospel texts to simply expurgate parts that distress us. When Pilate had the notice nailed to the cross that satirically proclaimed (in 3 languages) Jesus as “King of the Jews”, it was the Jewish people indeed to which that Roman would have referred. The Sadducees and Levites– so connected with the cult of the Temple – were largely wiped out when the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. Sages of the law (Pharisees and scribes) survived in larger numbers though many fled into the diaspora of the empire and beyond. There is little doubt that there were Jewish collaborators with Roman authority among them: people appointed to collect taxes from their own communities, people appointed to religious leadership offices to keep order, and those who may have sought to line their pockets or protect their interests by siding with power. If the imperial representatives opposed Jesus, so would they. And some quite likely opposed what they may have seen as a fringe rabbi questioning some of the practices and commitment of their own leadership. Other Jews either followed Jesus, or didn’t consider him of any importance one way or another. There may well have been some Jewish leaders who conspired to stop Jesus and who may have called for his arrest and execution, but only Rome had power and authority to condemn to death and crucify someone.

Jesus was a Jew by birth and upbringing and remained so through his death. As a young adult, he read Torah in the synagogue as should any young Jewish male, and interpreted and preached about the texts. In all four Gospel accounts, Jesus is constantly worshiping and learning and teaching and healing in the assemblies of his Jewish people. As Mark says: 1:39 And Jesus went throughout Galilee proclaiming the message in their synagogues”, and Matthew says 4:23 “Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues…” and in 26:55 Jesus says to his arresters: “Day after day I sat in the Temple teaching and you did not arrest me.” He went up to Jerusalem for festivals, and blessed the bread and cup at meals at home with friends, just as would any Jew at table. It is pretty certain he quoted the Psalms and prophets from memory as he taught, and was natural that the Gospel writers (the likely-Jewish Mark and Matthew, and even Luke who seems to have written for a Roman Gentile audience) would also quote the Psalms and Prophets as they reconstructed the story of his life and death. Jesus is inseparable from his Judaism.

One reasonable approach – particularly when we adapt the Gospel texts for dramatic reading in Holy Week – to help us hear the texts differently would be to substitute religious officials and elders of the community for the Gospels’ punching-bag generalization the scribes and the Pharisees, the chief priests. When we get to Matthew 27:25 where the Jewish crowd shouts “His blood be upon us and upon our children”, there is no easy remedy. Matthew’s particular spleen is that of an insider Jewish author who was evidently angry that, from his view, his own people rejected the one he believed to be the Messiah when they should have known better. Because of his vindictiveness, the whole Jewish people ever after have been saddled with the entire blame for rejecting and crucifying Christ. Not until very recently has the Vatican publically acknowledged the role of Roman empire and the harm done by blaming the Jews for Jesus’ death – and this despite a theological understanding that the suffering and death of Jesus became the occasion for the exceptional and salvific outpouring of grace, mercy and forgiveness for the “whole world” (kosmos) by God.

So as you hear the Hebrew Scripture lessons that we call “the Old Testament” each week, and especially when you hear the stories of Jesus, including the Passion stories, pray for our Jewish neighbors who live beside us. Remember that – as Paul taught and has always been the case – faithful Jews keep the irrevocable covenant God made with them through Abraham and Moses, and God still keeps with them. We Gentiles have the privilege, through Christ, to be grafted onto the vine rootstock of Judaism by adoption. We are not the only people God loves and saves.

Written by the Rev. Jennifer Phillips, Lent 2013 (posted with permission)

Holy Week at St. Peter's Church

Remember our Church is open 24/7/365.
You are welcome to come in anytime and pray this Holy Week.

Here is our Holy Week Schedule:

Holy Wednesday, March 27
Tenebrae (Service of Darkness) - 7 PM

Maundy Thursday, March 28
Holy Eucharist & Washing of Feet - 7 PM*

Good Friday, March 29
Children's Stations of the Cross - 12 noon*
Good Friday Evening Service - 7 PM

Holy Saturday, March 30
Easter Vigil at St. Peter's - 7 PM

Easter Sunday, March 31
Easter Sunrise on the Green - 6:30 AM (Led by the Monroe Clergy Assoc.)
Our Easter Morning Festal Services at 8 & 10:15 AM

*especially appropriate for children

All are welcome to all of our services.

The Lenten Offering will go to an outreach project of Deacon Christopher's choice.
The Good Friday Offering will go to the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East.

More Money, Lesss Charitable?

An interesting article:

Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity by Ken Stern - The Atlantic, April 2013
The wealthiest Americans donate 1.3 percent of their income; the poorest, 3.2 percent. What's up with that?

A couple of excerpts:

Wealth affects not only how much money is given but to whom it is given. The poor tend to give to religious organizations and social-service charities, while the wealthy prefer to support colleges and universities, arts organizations, and museums.

Underlying our charity system—and our tax code—is the premise that individuals will make better decisions regarding social investments than will our representative government. Other developed countries have a very different arrangement, with significantly higher individual tax rates and stronger social safety nets, and significantly lower charitable-contribution rates. We have always made a virtue of individual philanthropy, and Americans tend to see our large, independent charitable sector as crucial to our country’s public spirit. There is much to admire in our approach to charity, such as the social capital that is built by individual participation and volunteerism. But our charity system is also fundamentally regressive, and works in favor of the institutions of the elite. The pity is, most people still likely believe that, as Michael Bloomberg once said, “there’s a connection between being generous and being successful.” There is a connection, but probably not the one we have supposed.

The article is worth reading!

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/why-the-rich-dont-give/309254/