Good Friday

April 19, 2019

Thank you to all who made yesterday's Maundy Thursday service project and last night's Maundy Thursday worship service so meaningful.  Today, Good Friday, we have two services:  5:30 pm: Children/family Good Friday Service (begins in the Main Sanctuary)  Children and their families gather for a special service when we tell the whole story of Holy Week. We use the space of the Main Sanctuary in creative ways to explore the Jesus' primary actions during the last week of his life - the cleansing of the Temple, the washing of his disciple's feet, the Last Supper, Jesus' crucifixion and death, his time in the tomb - ending with a hint of the hope that is to come. 7:30 pm: Proper Liturgy for Good Friday (Historic Church) This service features the traditional elements of the Good Friday service:  Passion NarrativeSolemn CollectsCommunion from the reserved sacramentDevotions before the crossand is made special and beautiful by featuring Taizé music. 

Taizé is an ecumenical monastery in France founded in 1940 by Roger Schütz. The brothers' fundamental focus on community is evident through their meditative musical prayers, which have spread throughout the world. Taizé songs are known for using just a few simple words, sung repeatedly.  If you are not able to attend Good Friday services at The Falls Church, you can observe it in other ways:  -Find an Episcopal Church near your place of work (here is a sample list of area Episcopal churches near many work areas, along with their addresses and Holy Week service times). 

-If you'll be out town, take a few minutes to do a web search and find a church near where you will be. Watch the National Cathedral's webcast of their Holy Week services.Read through our Holy Week leaflet (download here) as a spiritual resource.

About Holy Saturday:  Holy Saturday is a unique moment in the church year. It is the day on which Jesus is in the tomb, the day on which those who knew and loved him mourned him. At The Falls Church Episcopal, we observe Holy Saturday with a special service. All are most welcome, but the invitation is especially extended to those who have lost a loved one in the last year or so. We gather at 9:00 am at the Memorial Chapel (in the Church Yard) for a brief service of scripture, candle lighting, and prayer for those who have gone before us and for those who remember them. Faithfully yours,  John

Jesus' Passion, AND the passions of Jesus during Holy Week

April 12, 2019

Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord.                            

  -- Book of Common Prayer, p. 270

This Sunday is Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week.

Even if you tend to think of next week more as "spring break" than Holy Week, I hope you find ways to enrich your Holy Week. 

One of the best ways to do that is to engage the stories told (read aloud) in church during Holy Week. 

One of the best ways to do that is by getting yourself to church on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday.  

If that's not possible, another best way is to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the sacred story told of Jesus' last week on earth: ALL those events between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday which share not only "the" Passion of Jesus, but the passions Jesus had, and wanted us to share. 

And in order to help with that -- in order to help you move fully into the story that unfolds over the course of Holy Week, and in order to help make sense of the events which happened between the time that Jesus entered Jerusalem and the time he was put on trial, crucified, and died, there are a few changes we are trying this year, to which we want to call your attention:

• Instead of having four separate, disjointed leaflets for the four different liturgies of Holy Week, we've prepared one booklet containing all the liturgies and readings of Jesus' Passion which are observed and read during Holy Week, in chronological order. This booklet will be distributed in print on Palm Sunday, and is intended as a resource you can take with you. (It will also be shared electronically on Sunday afternoon, as well as posted on our website and in Realm.) 

• The Passion of Jesus typically read aloud on Palm Sunday is printed, in full, in the Holy Week leaflet. However, instead of reading ahead all the way through the events of Holy Week (as is typically done during the Palm Sunday service), what you will hear read aloud on Palm Sunday are those events and sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke which worshippers typically do not get to hear as part of Jesus' passion: namely, the events and sayings which take place between the time of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and the start of Maundy Thursday.

• This, we hope, will set the stage for (and help make sense of) the tension which leads to Jesus' Last Supper and the other events later in Holy Week, as we end our Palm Sunday dramatic reading with the words, "So Judas consented, and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present." (Luke 22:6) At the end of the service on Palm Sunday, we disperse -- much like the crowds have dispersed -- and the next time we gather for worship (Maundy Thursday) it will be to remember Jesus' final meal in the upper room with his disciples.

• It is then we will read aloud the continuation of the story as told in Luke 22:7-65. 

• And on Good Friday, we will read aloud the near-culmination of the story, the events which happened on Good Friday -- Luke 22:66-23:49.

Again, we are sharing, in the leaflet, the entire Passion story on Palm Sunday, the "Sunday of the Passion." The difference is that what you will hear read aloud on Palm Sunday (and then Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday) are those events which took place on Palm Sunday (and then Maundy Thursday, and then Good Friday, and then Holy Saturday, respectively).

We do realize that not many people are able to attend all Holy Week services at The Falls Church.

• However, that does not mean you cannot engage in Holy Week worship or enter into its sacred mysteries in other ways: 

• Find an Episcopal Church near your place of work (here is a sample list of area Episcopal churches near many work areas, along with their addresses and Holy Week service times). 

• If you'll be out town, take a few minutes to do a web search and find a church near where you will be. Watch the National Cathedral's webcast of their Holy Week services.

• Take (or download, after Sunday) our Holy Week leaflet and read through the entire passion, using it as a kind of spiritual resource. 

It's said "you get as much out of something as you put into it."

That can be true as far as Holy Week and Easter Day are concerned: we can get a lot more passion out of Easter Sunday if we pay a lot more attention to the Passion of -- and the passions of -- Jesus during our Holy Week.

So we hope you welcome these changes as a way of helping you do what is possible, under your circumstances, to make the the story of Holy Week a more meaningful part of your story.

See you Sunday,  John 

"Everything in moderation" and other terrible advice

April 5, 2019

Years ago, I wrote a short blog piece titled "Three Things we [as Christians] shouldn't say"- it was meant to be part of a series of posts on bad expressions -- things I wish people would quit saying because they are not only bad psychological advice, they are terrible theology.  That blog piece dealt with the three expressions: 

• "Everything happens for a reason," 

• "God helps those who help themselves,"

• and "You can't bargain with God." 

(If you want to know why I think those are terrible expressions, you can read it here.)

Given this Sunday's Gospel, I want to add a fourth: 

• "Everything in moderation." 

I suppose that's a common expression because if you don't take it literally, it could be good advice. 

Say, for example, it's being said to someone who is trying to to lose weight and is wondering if they have to give up ice cream for the rest of their life. 

In other words, "Ice cream in moderation" would be okay advice if it means "go ahead and have a scoop when you're celebrating someone's birthday...but don't make three-scoops-after-dinner a daily habit." 

But taken literally, "everything in moderation" doesn't make any sense at all. Heroin? Is heroin okay, as long as it's taken in moderation? How about gossip, or insulting people? Stealing is okay, if done in moderation? 

Okay, maybe I'm being silly, to make a point. 

So maybe the expression really means, "all good things in moderation." 

That would make sense if we were talking about good things that we can sometimes get carried away with...good things we do to such excessive extremes that they end up causing more harm than good. Things like exercise, or saving money, or sharing (or not sharing!) one's opinions.

But what about kindness? Should we really be moderate in our kindness? What about goodness? 

What about love? 

One of the most remarkable things about Sunday's Gospel passage -- the anointing of Jesus' feet -- is how IMMODERATE the action is. 

Like the love displayed by the "forgiving father" in last week's Gospel, like the water-to-wine miracle at the start of John's Gospel, and, for that matter, like the very fact of the incarnation, life, and resurrection of Jesus -- God not only approves of, but encourages over-the-top displays of love. 

In fact, as I hope to explore in Sunday's sermon, when this immoderate, unsettling, loving anointing action (by Mary in the Gospel of John, by an unnamed woman in Mark, by "a woman, who was a sinner" in Luke) is criticized by those embarrassed (or shamed) by it, the actions are not only defended by Jesus, but are held up by Jesus as model discipleship.

Everything in moderation? 

No. 

Not love. 

When it comes to love, the biblical standard is abundance. 

When it comes to love, it's "everything over-the-top." 

When it comes to love, ours is to be the lavish, wild, extravagant, nothing-by-haves" attitude modeled by God.

See you Sunday,  John