The Rev. Patricia Hanen, PhD., is an exceptional preacher, a spiritual guide, and a pastoral caregiver. She can care for us, deepen our faith and awareness of God, open our eyes to the needs of others, and help us to be a witness to Christ to the outside world.
A graduate of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, Pat has always been involved in small parish ministry. She has stated that “my job as clergy leader [is] to preach, teach, celebrate, innovate, and 'care' us into developing still further what God is already doing among the people of New Life.”
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Written by The Rev. Patricia Hanen
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 00:00 |
Dear friends -
The point of self-discipline during Lent is not to make us feel bad. The point of self-discipline during Lent is to concentrate on ourselves because (no matter how much we wish this were not so), we are the only people we have a chance of disciplining. The point of self-discipline during Lent is not to save us from the wrath of God. The point of self-discipline during Lent is to make disciples of us.
In the Greek New Testament, the word most used for Jesus’s disciples is maqhthV, mathetes, most commonly translated “learners” or “students,” meaning students of a particular teacher who lived with that teacher and learned from him (or her) how to follow his or her way of life. Discipline, then, in Christian terms, doesn’t mean learning a set of precepts or successfully performing a set of exercises—instead, it means learning how to live, and move, and have our being in a certain way—the Jesus Way.
That’s why Jesus’s earliest disciples were called the People of the Way, since he was known to have said, of himself, “I am the Way.” If we are truly his disciples we are learning, every day, what it means to be his people in God’s world. Being learners of the Jesus Way doesn’t mean Baptism is a merit badge or that Confirmation is like a high-school graduation or that ordination is an advanced degree—that I’m now finished with all that, and I’ve earned the right to live my own life as I choose and congratulate myself on my accomplishments.
Huh-unh. Nope. Being a learner of the Jesus Way means that 24/7/365 I hold the shape of my life up to the Jesus Way and see where I need to do things differently—where things I thought were right yesterday need to be corrected today; where what I was proud of knowing yesterday is childish and foolish today; where what I was sure yesterday was absolutely something Jesus would have done or been is revealed to me (with embarrassment and pain) today as being self-serving and even hurtful to others.
That’s why the Baptismal Vow exercise is so hard—looking at what I, a self-confessed Baptized and Confirmed disciple, do every day to live what I promised when I said yes to God in Jesus Christ. Or, if it’s clearer, looking at what I don’t do every day to live out those promises. If a day goes by that I don’t think about who Jesus is and what he does, I’m not really living the Jesus Way. Only when I think about his life will I be able to think about my own and whether it follows his pattern. Only then will I be his true disciple.
That’s why Holy Week matters so much—because it’s in Jesus’s passion, the events of his last week of life as a human being, that we can see most clearly what the Jesus Way consists of. This year we have the retelling of the whole Passion on Palm Sunday—that helps us see the whole landscape at one time. Then, piece by piece, in Tenebrae on Wednesday night, on Maundy Thursday night, and on Good Friday, we lay ourselves open (if we have the courage) to the fullest possible understanding of what it will cost us, and what will happen to and in us, if we live the Jesus Way.
In the Tenebrae service the story of Jesus’s Passion is told through Psalms and through readings from the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, punctuated by responses from the congregation that relate the life of Jesus to the story of the people of Israel as the Hebrew Scripture tells it. The service essentially concludes with the 16th Canticle, the Song of Zechariah from the Gospel of Luke, in which Elizabeth’s husband understands that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies, and the true Messiah. There is no sermon or homily, and there is no communion.
The tone of the Tenebrae service is set in two ways: first, by the semidarkness of the church, lit only by candles. One of these is extinguished after each reading, suggesting that the light of Christ is going to be swallowed up by the darkness of evil and death. The darkness encourages us to focus on the meaning of the readings. Second, the tone is set by the music used for the “Lessons of Tenebrae”—the Lamentations of Jeremiah in particular. This year, as we sit in the semidarkness, meditating on what we have heard in the Hebrew Scripture, we will be listening to a recorded version of the Lecons de tenebre of Francois Couperin, 1688-1733, sung by the British countertenor Alfred Dellar. The music is mostly a cappella, and comes through quite well in our sound system. This service is meant to be contemplative and focused. We leave the church in silence, aware of how Jesus’s Passion has been prefigured in the Hebrew Scripture, and feeling the pathos of Jesus’s suffering.
On Maundy Thursday our service reminds us of Jesus’s last commandment and his last gift to us. The last commandment is to love one another as he has loved us, and this is symbolized in the footwashing. The last gift he leaves with us is his presence in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood—his institution of the Holy Communion. I recognize that footwashing has not been part of Holy Week devotions here for some time, if ever. The three Synoptic Gospels attest to Jesus’s institution of the Communion. The Gospel of John has long been accepted by church tradition as attesting to Jesus’s insistence that we should wash one another’s feet, and so we will. I will be asking for volunteers for this, and you may also decide at the service to have your feet washed. Please come wearing socks that can be removed, and shoes that come off and on easily. Our Maundy Thursday service will begin at 7 p.m., and will include a sermon, music sung by our choir and hymns for us all, and fine organ music by Curt. At the end of the service the Altar Guild and I will strip the altar. Once the altar is stripped, we will bring the large wooden cross into the church, and those who wish to may remain in the church for private prayer until midnight.
On Good Friday, our two services will focus directly on Jesus’s Passion and death, with the Good Friday propers and the Solemn Collects at both services. Both services will also include stations of the cross in a new way. The noon service will be spoken, but there will be congregational music at 7 p.m., and a sermon and Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament at both services. After both services we will leave the church in silence. The church will be open for prayer from the noon service to three p.m.
I hope that our Holy Week services will provide you with a “total immersion” experience of the Passion of our Lord, helping us to die with him so that we may rise with him, full of joy, on Easter Sunday.
Love, Pat |
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Rector's Message