Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 8th:  Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16; Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; 1 Peter 4:1-8; and Matthew 27:57-66.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is Holy Saturday.  Today Jesus lies dead in the tomb.  Passive.  Acted upon.  In Jesus, God experiences the reality of death, the reality of separation and the sorrow it brings.  Today, some scholars wonder, does God permit the division of God’s perfect wholeness.  On Palm Sunday, we read the Philippians passage that speaks of Jesus emptying Himself of His divinity.  Jesus’ humanity, in other words, is authentic.  This places self-imposed limits on the divine relationship between God the Father and God the Son Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, but the relationship continues although modified.  Is it broken as Jesus lies dead in the tomb?  Is this profound separation experienced by God personally?  We cannot know, but the reality of Jesus’ death and entombment, if we carry Jesus’ Incarnation forward until the moment of the resurrection’s transformation, forces us to consider this theological possibility.

On Holy Saturday, the community of the church waits, the people of faith wait.  Jesus had spoken of His impending death, but also of His being raised again to life.  His followers could not make sense out of this prophecy.  They kept reinterpreting it according to their own expectations.  However, the seed of hope had been planted. 

Today’s reading from Lamentations gives expression to Jesus’ anguish as the one who suffers “under the rod of God’s wrath; [God] has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone [God] turns his hand, again and again, all day long.”  However, the one who suffers also says, “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”  The intent of this connection between Jesus and the Hebrew Scripture’s lamentation of a suffering, faithful servant is that Jesus suffers because of His God-given ministry, and that Jesus hopes in this same God.

Holy Saturday is a time of hope for believers, but remarkably maybe also for Jesus Himself, God Incarnate who accepted the reality of human death.  Maybe the inspired words of Lamentations convey the depth of Jesus’ despair:  “Though I call and cry for help, [God] shuts out my prayer;  [God] has blocked my ways with hewn stones.”

I share these musings on this last day of Lent, this last of this year’s Lenten Blogs, because it puts into perspective the majesty of the joy and triumph that is hoped for in Easter.  The death of Jesus of Nazareth is real.  The totality of its separation may be allowed by God.  And for Jesus there was hope but not certainty when He went to the cross, when He accepted even the reality of death.  To imagine the wonder of that glorious moment when God raised Him off of that burial slab where His marred, dead body had been thrown unceremoniously, raised Him to the full glory of the divine nature that Jesus had emptied Himself of at the Incarnation, this is the hope and power of Easter Sunday.

I invite you to join with us at worship to share in this most profound mystery, to share in triumphant and lasting joy.  If you would like to join us online, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom login.  It is exciting to think of tomorrow’s Alleluia’s.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 7th:  Psalm 22; Isaiah 52:13—53:12; Hebrews 10:16-25; and John 18:1—19:42.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial.  This is a day to be treated with exceptional reverence.  The church will be open from 12 – 3:00pm this afternoon for private meditation and prayer.  Please be mindful of the silence of these hours.  Today’s biblical readings are the longest of Lent.  They are intended to help us spend more time in conversation with the still-speaking Word of God.  The Gospel passage tells the harrowing account from John’s perspective of Jesus’ Passion.  It begins with Jesus’ arrest and ends with His burial.

John’s chronology is different than that of the other three Gospels.  Mark tells us that Jesus had been crucified at 9AM and that the skies grew dark at noon. (15:25, 33)  John tells us in today’s Gospel that at noon Jesus was paraded before the crowds by Pilate and that the crowds shouted, “‘Crucify him!’” (19:14-15) 

The oldest Gospel, Mark’s, informs the reader that Jesus dies at 3PM. (15:33)  John offers no specific time of Jesus’ death, but he does share that the bodies of all the crucified needed to be removed from their crosses before sunset “because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity.” (19:31)  This would equate roughly with Mark’s mid-afternoon.

These are the reasons why on this most solemn day the hours between noon and 3PM are especially sacred.  This is why the church building will be open for the faithful. 

As we can see, the details of Jesus’ crucifixion may vary, but they do not effect the principal message that we gather on Good Friday to honour our crucified God.  Again, the details are just that – details.  However, one detail that I find interesting, especially this year, is the scholarly hypothesis that the actual, historical date when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under orders of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, under the titulus “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews,” (In Latin this charge is often rendered and seen on crosses as the initials INRI.  There is no “J” in Latin, thus the “I.” The “N” is for Nazareth and “R” is for rex, which is king.), which is a charge of insurrection against the Roman Empire, is today. 

The well-respected biblical scholar John P. Meier writes in “A Marginal Jew:  Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1” that Jesus “died on Friday, April 7, 30.” (p. 406)  This means that today is the actual 1,993rd anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion.  This is only a calendar detail.  It is insignificant in comparison to the teaching of the crucified God.  However, if this calendar coincidence helps you to feel more powerfully the impact of Good Friday, then that is not a bad thing.

We began this journey on February 22nd, Ash Wednesday.  We have now reached the event that is the reason for Lent’s preparation.  The public shaming and tortured death of Jesus, whom we recognize as our Saviour, is a sacred scandal.  Jesus is Isaiah’s Suffering Servant.  Jesus is God’s perfect revelation that there is a divine love for us that is greater than God’s love for God’s own self.  How can we not treat this event, this day, with the utmost respect? 

When Jesus’ body is removed from the cross and placed in the tomb, Lent has reached its completion.  We have mentioned that Advent prepares for Christmas.  Lent, however, prepares for the death and burial of Jesus.  It needs to be this way because the empty tomb must be always recognized as a surprise.  To do otherwise is to devalue that completeness of Jesus’ sacrifice as one of us.  Not only must the pain of the cross be real, the fact of death must be just as real, if Jesus’ crucifixion is as one of us for all of us.  Let us, therefore, not rush past Good Friday in unnecessary haste to get to Easter.  We have prepared too long for the cross to not spend some time in its shadow. 

Again, the church is open from noon until 3PM today.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 6th:  Exodus 12:1-14;  Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; and John 13:1-17, 31b-35.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is Maundy Thursday.  Our Lenten journey has entered its final stages.  On the evening of this day, Jesus will gather with His disciples for a final meal.  The church’s worship for practical reasons must sometimes conflate the different biblical accounts of an event in Jesus’ life.  Take Christmas for example.  The two different stories of the manger and the shepherds, and then the Magi and the star are often blended in worship.  Our church manger scenes have everyone gathered for Jesus’ Bethlehem birth even though this obscures the distinction between the Infancy Narratives of Luke and Matthew.  Worship is allowed a bit of poetic license in this way.

This evening we run into a similar occurrence.  When we gather for the Maundy Thursday Worship Service, we will focus on the Institution of Communion and we will also read the Gospel account of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.  It is the same Gospel as we share here.  This account is not found in any other Gospel; it is unique to John.  Another uniqueness of John is that there is no account of the words of Institution at the Last Supper.  There is no reference to the sacrament of Communion at John’s Last Supper as there is in the other three Gospels.

John shares his “‘I am the bread of life’” Communion message much earlier in the Gospel at chapter 6.  In John, the discussion of Communion takes place among the crowd, not within the smaller circle of the Twelve.  It takes place well within the life of Jesus’ ministry, not at its completion as Jesus awaits His execution.  There is merit to this theological treatment that should be kept in mind when we speak of Communion.  However, what I would like to have us think about now is that for John the Last Supper’s memorable act is not the bread and wine, but the washing of feet.  In the liturgy of the church, the Institution of Communion and the washing are forced together, but this is not to be found in the biblical text.  This, again, is the church’s liturgical poetic license.  It serves a practical purpose, but also it blurs John’s message.

The title Maundy Thursday is derived from the Latin word for commandment, and it is based upon Jesus’ words after he washes the feet of His disciples:  “‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.’”  For John the emphatic image of the Last Supper is not the gift of Communion, it is the new commandment.  The culmination of Jesus’ life, in John’s Gospel, is not the “Do this in remembrance of me” Communion.  It is “love one another just as I have love you.”  It is the new commandment of seeing glory in humble, loving service.  “Love one another” is not left nebulous so as to be interpreted as we choose.  It is defined quite strictly by Jesus.  It is to love as Jesus loves.  It is to imitate the startling humility of Jesus taking on the role and appearance of the servant as He offers a loving, final gesture to His companions. 

Both the Communion and the new commandment will be combined this evening, as they should, but there is so much to contemplate in John’s reformulation of the Last Supper centered on holy Service rather than holy Communion.  We treat Communion with the profound sanctity that it rightly deserves.  John’s message is that we should treat the new commandment of humble service with an equal sanctity.  Both are communions with Christ.

I invite you to join with us in Hatfield this evening at 7:00pm as we will gather as God’s People in God’s House to remember the Last Supper’s Communion and the washing of feet, and also the beginning of Jesus’ Passion.  Liturgy in a profound way can help us not only remember but feel the power and presence of Christ’s life.  In a mystical sense, there is in our worship a timelessness we share in.  
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 5th:  Psalm 70; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Hebrews 12:1-3; and John 13:21-32.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

It is rather difficult to understand the proceedings shared with us in today’s Gospel selection.  As in the other Gospels, John’s account begins with Jesus’ warning that one of the Twelve will betray Him.  Similarly, they are all in denial.  In John, however, the Twelve should know who the betrayer is.  Peter turns to the Beloved Disciple and asks him to inquire of Jesus who the betrayer is.  Jesus answers by saying it is the one to whom He will give the piece of bread, and Jesus then gives it to Judas.  Jesus has identified quite plainly that the betrayer is Judas, and yet the message does not seem to be received.  I have no idea how it could be missed.  When Jesus prods Judas to do quickly what he intends, Judas leaves their company and goes out into the night.  The other eleven witness this and have no clue as to what is unfolding.  How is this possible?

John is an accomplished author.  There must be something to help explain this blatant inconsistency.  It may have something to do with the fact that the Johannine Jesus is much more comfortable with His divinity than the Jesus of the Synoptics.  One such attribute of the Johannine Jesus is His supernatural knowledge.  Jesus knows things before they happen.  Jesus knows, for example, that Judas will be His betrayer even before Judas does (cf. 6:70-71).  John’s Jesus is always in control and not even His betrayal is outside of Jesus’ influence.  This is why Jesus says to Judas, “‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’”  Jesus prods Judas to action with these words. 

The other eleven are somehow oblivious, but Judas understands well what Jesus means.  He exits the community around Jesus and goes out into the night.  With the act of betrayal now put in motion by Jesus, Jesus turns to the remaining eleven and speaks in terms of glory:  “‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.’”  The betrayal has been transformed into an act precipitated by Jesus and falling within the divine plan, and thus the theme of glory.  Again, the Johannine Jesus is much more comfortable with His divinity than the Jesus conveyed in the other Gospels.

This theme of glory in the face of betrayal repeats the Isaian theme shared in another of today’s readings.  The Suffering Servant is confident of the presence and power of God and this gives him the fortitude to stand firm.  We read today:  “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.  Who will contend with me?  Let us stand up together.  Who are my adversaries?  Let them confront me.  It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?”  Jesus is prepared for all that will befall Him as His Passion plays out because who are these human actors when compared to God?

I think it is John’s insistence on Jesus’ supernatural abilities that lead to the confusion in today’s Gospel.  Jesus must know who the betrayer is.  It can no longer be knowledge shared only within parentheses with the reader.  It is a foreknowledge that must be made plain to the others around Jesus.  Thus, Jesus exposes Judas to the eleven.  The fact that the others cannot process this information testifies to the abhorrence of the idea that among them is a traitor.  It was a scandal among them and the earliest believers that one of Jesus’ closest followers betrayed Him.  Jesus rose above this human denial in His supernatural wisdom, but the others could not.

It is a strange revelation that equates glory with suffering.  It is even stranger to ponder the revelation that God is the one who suffers and through this suffering is glorified.  A suffering Saviour, a crucified God, is maybe as baffling as the disciples imagining that instead of betrayal Judas was just going out into the night to buy something for the party or to give something to the poor.  What lies ahead of us, regardless of how many times we have gone to Golgotha, is a mystery that will always challenge us.  Even if we know the answer as did the disciples in the Upper Room, the cross should still lead us to ask all sorts of why’s.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 4th:  Psalm 71:1-14; Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; and John 12:20-36.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

I think the last part of John 12:36 is one of the saddest verses in the Bible.  It is preceded by the account that some Greeks try to approach Jesus.  Philip is a Greek name.  The Greeks try to meet with Jesus by going through Philip, a disciple of Jesus, and one they may have viewed as sympathetic to their request.  It is interesting to wonder why they felt this need.  Philip then confers with Andrew and the two of them approach Jesus with the request of the Greeks. 

This passage indicates Jesus’ renown is spreading.  It is not confined to Jews in Galilee.  Jesus is no longer only a small-town celebrity.  Jesus is now a recognized name among a far larger and more influential group.  These are most likely Hellenized Jews because they have come to Jerusalem in order to participate in the Temple’s Passover celebration.  They are Jews, but cultured in the ways of the Greco-Roman world.  This is a definite expansion of Jesus’ sphere. 

The Gospel reader may expect this to be good news, that Jesus’ message is expanding.  However, when Jesus receives this request through His two disciples, He does not address their inquiry.  Rather, Jesus speaks about His approaching death.  Jesus realizes that if the Greeks have heard about Him and seek Him out, then His ministry and message have grown to the point where His enemies will feel compelled to act.  Jesus also sees this as His ministry reaching its maturity.  Jesus does not see His impending death as the end of His work.  He speaks of it through the imagery of a stalk of wheat that is fully ripe.  The grain of wheat then falls to the earth and dies, but from that grain new life will emerge.

Jesus is not unconcerned about the torture and pain that His death will require:  “‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – “Father, save me from this hour?”’”  But neither will Jesus pull back from it in order to protect Himself.  Answering His own question, Jesus says, “‘No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’”  The physical reality of the cross is not unknown to Jesus, but even so Jesus will accept it in order to fulfill His ministry.  The grain must fall and die for new life to be born.

 Before Jesus is ready to die, however, there is the latter portion of 12:36:  “After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.”  Jesus came into the world to share God’s love and grace, to bring us peace and to share the promise of eternal life.  Jesus healed the sick, comforted those in distress, treated with kindness those who were rejected, and yet, when His mission reached its maturity, He needed to depart and go into hiding.  God came into the world in Jesus and we forced Him to go into hiding, to depart from our presence. 

Jesus went into hiding in order to concentrate on preparing His closest followers for what would ensue.  Jesus needed to make sure that they would be able to recover from the horror and confusion of the cross, and would then be able to continue His work and ministry.  This is why Jesus went into hiding.  It was not to avoid death.  It was in order to prepare for His death.  But that message of Jesus having to go into hiding is distressing.  It says something terribly worrisome about humanity.  When faced with Jesus’ radical message of a loving and inclusive God, humanity became so violent in its opposition, in its willingness to protect power and the powerful, that Jesus was chased from human society.  Jesus had to go into hiding.  Is this still a reality today?  Do we still chase Jesus away either overtly or more surreptitiously?  In other words, do we ignore Jesus in one sense, and in another do we so water down His radical message that it is no longer His gospel?  Either way, Jesus is forced from our presence.

This Holy Week let us counter this scenario.  Let us bring Jesus back into our lives and through our lives back into our world. 
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.