The Value of Doing Easter in full

I am not a ridiculously pious man, despite my calling and present ministry. Indeed, some often claim surprise when they discover that do indeed have a spiritual side - a matter for concern perhaps, but not one that I lose sleep about just now. The fact is, I am a fairly normal type - maybe just not your typical rictus God-botherer.

Over the last few years I have been learning about something which, when expressed out loud as in the form of a blog post, seems obvious. Despite the impression of me that you may have formed if you read this thing often enough, I do not come from a heavily liturgical tradition of church. Indeed, my child-hood parish was a fairly straight-forward estate brick wigwam, blessed with a choir that could only sing in unison. I was not born into a bells-and-smells tradition - no: I chose it having tried other things first. 

As I have grown as a Christian, I have discovered the simple truth about Passiontide, Holy Week and Easter: the more I put in the more I get out. In simple terms, for me it is an all-or-nothing thing. 

As the Vicar, one of the things that I am required to do is to lay out the liturgical flow for the year. That I enjoy it and have something of a gift for it is besides the point (I am a crap preacher, so being good at something else is good). I sat in the immediate wake of a happy Christmas and made choices - not for me, but for the good people of Whitton, not least among whom are the worshippers at this here edifice. I pondered last year at the feed-back that I received after the first such sweeps of ceremonial formed by my vicarly hand, and it was good. It observed the very thing that I myself feel when I seek the Lord - that the more you put in the more you get out. This seems to be the plimsoll line for ritualist Christians. 

And so I drafted the list of services between Palm Sunday and Easter. Upon emailing it, I could sense the gasps, but it was my sense that it was my job to take my people on a journey with Christ. Yes, it needed flavour above and beyond the purpose presented in the Story, so we had Healing on one day, Meditation on another and longer prayers on another. It struck me last year that different people come to different things, so Good Friday was an epic Whitton marathon (for me and the three others who did all of it) of more than nine hours of worship. Each was well-attended and often by very distinctive groups of people. However, it was also having an effect on me - this year I have done more than I have been party to or have lead in previous years and in simple terms - the effect of the entire story on me was yet greater than it had previously been. The more I did, personally, the more I felt connected. 

My abiding memory of this year was being sat in the hall next to my wife watching The Passion of the Christ after a day of liturgising. She was weeping as the film ended and others were holding one another in consolation. For me, Easter 2013 will be characterised by people 'getting it', maybe for the first time. As I look back on the last ten days, I think perhaps more is more. How could anyone ever fully appreciate the joy and cost of Easter in just one visit?

Concerning My Loathing of Stained Glass

Actually, I like stained-glass windows; just not stained-glass Christianity. 

The Passion is a time when the Mrs Alexanders of this world conspire to annoy  me. "There is a green hill far away without a city wall". I ask you - green? Jerusalem? Not the Jerusalem that I visited that was parched and arid. Green Hill? Hardly, love. 

If this were Room 101, I would surely consign Stained-Glass Christianity to that deep pit. Why? Because all glass should be clear or frosted? No. Because it depicts a story in a manifestly sanitized way. 

Windows depicting the events on the Golgotha are a pertinent case in point. You have your cross, all neat and clean. you have your Jesus, all fair and wind-swept - almost dashing. His face is clean, his natty little head-piece set to a jaunty angle. He is often depicted in neat baggy Speedos, wrapped around a muscular, six-pack enhanced physique. It must be that between Gethsemane and Gabbatha, Jesus popped over for an hour at the weights at Gold's Gym. 

The Christmas images are the same. Mary is often a pretty woman in her late twenties, in robes more expensive than Bill Gates could afford. Jesus is always a plumpling, clean and as Caucasian a child as ever there was. The manger is a twee little magazine rack full of my guinea-pig's straw bedding, the donkeys have floppy eyelashes and the moo-cows seem to smile.

It

Was

Not

Like

That

I know that argument for this is artistry, or that the alternative would have wounded sensibilities. Sensibilities Schmensibilities. Artistry Schmartistry. Stained-Glass Shamed Glass.

Now, as a thing to have in ones church I like these windows a great deal, just not the way that they clean up the act, purify the filth, sooth away the agonies, wash the linen, beautify the traumatized. Little wonder people don't 'get' Good Friday let alone a snotty dribble-covered manger stone. If people could be allowed to learn of the horrors implicit in our Gospel stories, they might just start to get the extent and depth of the whole thing. 

"There is a green hill far away ..."

No there bloody well isn't.

And So it Begins

Time to write during the course of this year has been scarce, and even more so as we step closer to the events of the Triduum.

The Lenten journey is epic, if done with any sense of purpose, and brings with it a renewal in the understanding that we have in the stories of our Scripture. Without a good Lent, there is a very real danger that the events we recollect in the days to come will be little more than fancy legends.

Palm Sunday explodes into a Lenten backdrop and having been denuded of our 'Alleluias' of late, find the arrived of our 'Hosannas' to be thrilling. Processing in all the garb and pomp around the church grounds may seem like an eccentricity to a passer-by, but to us who have walked Lent, it truly is a festival day. Barmy we may appear with our floppy palm branches, but joyous we certainly are. Changed too, if the faces on the crowd were anything to go by last Sunday lunchtime.

Today I have wrestled with sermons, devotions, liturgies and paper. Maundy Thursday has arrived, and despite being a feast of celebration, brings with it the roll of clouds on the horizon. We know that we will enter the church in White and Gold, but we try hard not to think about the desecration that will follow. Anyone who experiences the brutality of the Stripping of the Altar in out liturgy will have found it hard not to feel what is happening, as real in our day as in Jesus'. Only for mere moments in a whole year do we find a chance to sit, one-to-one, with Jesus. The perfume of flowers, the semi twilight of candlelight, the near silence of a church in watchful prayer - a sensory treasure if any existed. A pure moment in a faith journey. 

Good Friday is always a funny one. We are left with so little after the robbery of Maundy Thursday, yet we find the most meaning in lots of ways. We are forced, as worshipers, to cope without the beauty and the 'things' of our faith's practice. We are called to look on the agony of one man, almost certainly younger than any of us, as his body is smashed before our eyes. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Father, why have you left me here to die? For those of us who will lay face down on ground, there is a sense that would be better if we were spared having to get up and proceed. The hardest thing, for the onlooker, is the lack of reverence. We are a processional people, a well-behaved gathering - yet we leave in disarray, in chaos - as the church doors are bolted fast and we are left with nowhere to go. 

Darkness gives way to light on Holy Saturday. The darkness of death is conquered by the nullifying light of new life. A tiny spark of light on beeswax announces the Resurrection of our Saviour. The light pours across the church and the lullaby of the Exsultet is sung, pronouncing the arrival, finally, of Easter. Light explodes over the entire gathering and life is restored. The journey to new light is complete, accomplished. Dreams have come true. 

The amount of work that we all put in at this time of year is a fit reminder of the real significance of the events that lay ahead. This isn't just another Triduum, it is the Triduum. It is our Triduum. 

And may the betrayed, crucified and Risen Lord bless us all.

Culture and Changes to Meaning

I am not a fallen cross

Mrs Acular was sitting with the Twins Aculae reading to them from a book that I was using to help me prepare for Lent (yes, I do pious things like that). It was a book about the Seven Saying of Christ on the Cross (there, I have given away the theme of my Good Friday Devotions) and the kids were interested in my book.

So, the dear woman read to them. I think that she was extracting something out of me, I am not sure, but read she did. She flicked through some pages concerning Eli and Lenny Sabakthany, some others about mother swapping, yet more about needing a drink and some about exercise. Huh?!

Me - I was faffing on my Gadget of Choice (and thrashing AC Milan right royally) and hardly paying any attention. Something didn't seem right, but never mind. I scored another virtual goal, with Rooney being the able  player responsible for my advancing lead. 

"What was that you just said?", I uttered as I peered over my GofC (half time, so I could look away from the screen). She read the line again.

What she read should have meant that Jesus was brought before the Roman Geezer who would wash his hands of him. As it was, in her rendition of the now famous account, Jesus was brought by his friends to an exercise class. (Lk 23: 1)

No - not 'Pilates' I said. It is pronounced 'Pilate'. Oh how we laughed (as I let a goal in).

Still, it goes up there with Pontius Plate the other Roman error.

The Curate's Egg I

Egg of the Day

Scrambled

It is not late in the day; it is fairly and squarely lunch time (if you are not of the view that 'lunch is for wimps'), and already my head hurts. In life, a man needs a spitoon, and today's post is that spitoon. Hoik-Petooee ... ding.

1. I have been fully exposed to the popular press of you wimmin  - oh my word; what are you doing to yourselves? I didn't realise to what level the female psyche obsesses about weight. Guess what ... no, really - Beyonce lost four pounds last week. I can lose more weight than that by vacating my olfactory canals with a digit. Four pounds - and it reaches the glossy gleaming pages of Grazia. Natalie Cassidy apologised to the world for looking a little more cuddly than last edition - and why might this terrible circumstance be? She is pregnant. Oh my word ... saying sorry for wrapping the miracle of life in an ounce or two of love ... I ask you! Peculiar Spice (or is that Posh, I forget) is now so thin that all can see is her pout hovering 5'9" off of the ground, in the vicinity of a floating handbag and some whacky oversized sunglasses. If you are  to be anyone these days in Sleb Land then you will have sweated your giblets to near-death and produced a 'Lose Fat Fast' DVD  - immaciation for in un-initiated. Ladies, STOP!

Speaking as a blokey, and with some idea what causes the male red-cells to course more nimbly, I can tell you this: what you look like in the transient delapidating shell that you call a skin is as NOTHING when compared to the light that shines within it. God knows - you only have to look at most fellas to determine that four pounds to a man is largely his wallet and car-keys. It is all to do with who you are and not what you look like - though if in the event you are taller lying down than you are standing up, fear only for your health, not for how the world through the Sleb Land lens regards you. Enough said ... ?

 2. A controversial statement now - but if I don't make it, I will pop. Ladies of the Priestly Charism: stop apologising. God chose you, the Spirit ordained you, and the rest can ... well, converse with their own consciences elsewhere. I sense that in some circles that I have been party to in passing recently that you wonderful women are the only ones beating yourselves over the head. Enough said ... ?

3. I am tired. We are now in Holy Week (and if there are any Christians reading this that didn't know that, please go and stand in the corner), and the work-load is reaching its climax. I am a person who feels every cut of the scourge and each nail - and I rarely get through the Liturgy of Good Friday without weeping. This year, with so much stuff to do, I think that Good Friday might just overwhelm me - not good given that I am preaching. The crushing weight of the Passion has been given an extra dimension today. I officiated at the funeral of a very nice man earlier, and as I walked to the flower garden, I saw the vast array of flowers for a little girl of four years old who had died. That is as close as I got to that tragedy, and yet I am winded by it. I saw her radiant face on a card and she was overflowing with life. I bet that she was overflowing with life as she breathed her last and I pray that her smile is still as bright somewhere else. Life can be crap at times - and my prayers for the rest of this week will be with that poor family whose name I will never know.