Churchy churchy church church

So.

It is Holy Week.

This is the time of year when I am most glad to be in a Liturgical church. So far I have attended four services this week. I will likely attend two today, and three tomorrow. And that's exactly how I want it.

St. Margaret's does Holy Week very, very well.

Thursday was Maundy Thursday. Maundy Thursday is a commemoration of the day when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. It is the day when Jesus was arrested and handed over to those who would kill him. It is the day he was abandoned by his disciples.

The Bishop of Rupert's Land was at St. Margaret's, and he washed the feet of some people who are being confirmed. In this way, the Bishop renewed his own service of God by serving his church. In this way, the Bishop acted out his discipleship by imitating Christ.

Our rector David gave an excellent sermon about excommunication, in which he made the point that excommunication is the Bishop's responsibility, because to those who do not discern the body of Christ, communion can be fatal. On Maundy Thursday, when Christ instituted his communion, we would do well to remember that while it is a holy sacrament open to all, it is a holy sacrament, and should not be done lightly. The torturer cannot share communion with the tortured. The oppressor shares communion with the oppressed to his own peril. And the Bishop must remove communion from the oppressor, lest communion be turned into a sword.

At the end of the service, the all the clergy and lay-leaders removed their albs surpicles and stoles, and left the Lord's Supper on the alter. They abandoned the body of Christ, abandoned their office, and left, and the church was made dark. From the back of the church, Psalm 22 was sung, and the altar was slowly stripped, piece by piece. The cross was covered with a dark shroud.

Yesterday at the morning Good Friday service, they were still not wearing their albs, but only a black cassock. The service was excellent, with the best choral music I have heard this year, three excellent meditations by David, and the passion according to the Gospel of John read in full. David's meditations were on the problem of evil, and a Christian response. Christians, says David, cannot ever make peace with evil. We cannot explain evil philosophically to say that it was in some way necessary. We cannot argue that darkness is needed to understand light. The Bible does not support such arguments. Darkness is not necessary for light to exist. Evil is not necessary for good to exist. The Bible offers no philosophical explanation of evil. What the Bible does offer evil is opposition. In Christ, the Bible offers us hope. In the cross we have a God who suffers with us, and in the ressurection we have triumph over evil. Good never had a beginning, and will never have an end, but evil did have a beginning, and it will have an end. Amen.

In the afternoon, Jan and I helped lead a walk through the Passion for families. It was very tangable and tactile, and in the end much more meaningful and moving than I expected it to be. We followed Jesus into a tomb, and then followed him out again.

Then Jan and I skipped the evening Good Friday service to go to have supper at the Olive Garden—which is our Good Friday tradition.

And now it is Holy Saturday. Jesus is dead and buried, and today we wait. We wait in mournful sadness, and we wait in joyful anticipation, but our joy does not overcome our sorrow yet. Though we know that Sunday is coming, and we cannot pretend that we don't—though we cannot help but see the crucifiction in the light of the resurection, and therefore is it a Good Friday—yet it is not Sunday yet. But soon.

Soon.