Friday, March 21, 2008
From AscensionNYC
Good Friday
by Sister Linda Julian
Psalm 22:1-21
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:1-25
John 18:1-40, 19:1-37
The Suffering Servant passage from Isaiah has always moved me deeply. One reason for this is that it is a magnificent poem, in whatever translation we find it. Another, deeper, reason is that the very beauty of the text brings me face to face with one of the great paradoxes of Christian, perhaps most particularly Anglican, faith. Central to the message the poem conveys is that "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, / nothing in his appearance that we should desire him."
I have a potent memory of hearing, during a long-ago Tenebrae service in a Toronto church, the antiphon "Behold, we have seen him without form and comeliness," and being suddenly shaken. Did I want to know that? Was my faith based only on the desire to worship in the beauty of holiness? Was I unable to face the reality of holiness? I love the jeweled crosses, the elegant crucifixes, scorning the "gory" representations of the salvific act common to some other branches of our faith. By such means I try to evade the ugliness of dereliction and death, which is an all-too-real part of the life God saw fit to share with me.
Do we all have a secret dread of Good Friday liturgies? I know I do. As my remaining years become fewer, I try to remind myself that I must drink the cup, however bitter the passion it may contain, as must we all.
In an 8th Avenue brasserie
the bread is crusty, the wine
an edgy Beaujolais: not soft
but passionate food.
At the next table
a couple clicks glasses,
another mealtime consecration,
meaning nothing, perhaps,
or much.
'This cup that I drink,
you will drink" —
you, the couple moving on to onion soup,
you, the skinny waiter with your basket,
you out there under the wet umbrellas,
this cup, this crust for us all.
Psalm 22:1-21
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:1-25
John 18:1-40, 19:1-37
The Suffering Servant passage from Isaiah has always moved me deeply. One reason for this is that it is a magnificent poem, in whatever translation we find it. Another, deeper, reason is that the very beauty of the text brings me face to face with one of the great paradoxes of Christian, perhaps most particularly Anglican, faith. Central to the message the poem conveys is that "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, / nothing in his appearance that we should desire him."
I have a potent memory of hearing, during a long-ago Tenebrae service in a Toronto church, the antiphon "Behold, we have seen him without form and comeliness," and being suddenly shaken. Did I want to know that? Was my faith based only on the desire to worship in the beauty of holiness? Was I unable to face the reality of holiness? I love the jeweled crosses, the elegant crucifixes, scorning the "gory" representations of the salvific act common to some other branches of our faith. By such means I try to evade the ugliness of dereliction and death, which is an all-too-real part of the life God saw fit to share with me.
Do we all have a secret dread of Good Friday liturgies? I know I do. As my remaining years become fewer, I try to remind myself that I must drink the cup, however bitter the passion it may contain, as must we all.
In an 8th Avenue brasserie
the bread is crusty, the wine
an edgy Beaujolais: not soft
but passionate food.
At the next table
a couple clicks glasses,
another mealtime consecration,
meaning nothing, perhaps,
or much.
'This cup that I drink,
you will drink" —
you, the couple moving on to onion soup,
you, the skinny waiter with your basket,
you out there under the wet umbrellas,
this cup, this crust for us all.
