The Word: Sends – Day 38
Seven Wonders of the Word
6But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down)7or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). –Romans 10:6-7
It’s Good Friday.
I had a pastor friend of mine post on Facebook this question: “What makes this day Good?” Chris knows what makes this day good, he just laid that question out there to get people thinking. But he mostly got “smart alecky ” responces.
But I think it is a good question. What is so good about; humiliation, beating, a cross and death?
Doesn’t seem to be much.
But here is where it gets interesting.
It isn’t about us, and our holiness, it is about God coming to us, and despite all that happened, loving in and through it all. Today is good not because of us but it is good because we are who we are. It is good because there is a promise, it is good because God is good on His word, it is good because the cross is not the end of the story.
Good Friday isn’t good in the sense of feeling good or as a dear friend once said “sensational!” It is good because of Jesus. The Word doesn’t end at the cross, the cross and all that it represents is just the beginning. It is Good Friday because… Sunday is coming!
Easter
Light crawls along the horizon, and from the very depths of death, life erupts out of an empty tomb…and shatters everything we knew… or thought we knew about life!
The promise is fulfilled… Alleluia…
There is nothing… NOTHING in all of creation that can seperate us from the Love of God In Christ Jesus our Risen Lord and Savior.
Alleluia Alleluia without end!
The Vigil
Honestly, when the idea was first layed out to me when I was prepapring for Holy Week, my first year on Washington Island, the fine worship board just sort of said, yeah…. we do this. I was like… ugggg… I need another worship service in Holy Week like another hole in the head. Well Trinity has a little chappel across the road, a stavkirke, a replica of the old wooden churches in Norway. We held the service over there often plowing through snow to get there and set up the candles.
Well, I have been doing vigil services now for.. whoa… 10 years and I missed it last year cause it was the other pastors turn to do it, and I’ll be danged if I didn’t miss it.
What’s a vigil? you may ask, well I am glad you did.
Well a generic vigil is a time of waiting, of keeping watch, of being awake when you would normally be sleeping.
The Easter Vigil is what I am talking about our worship resource talks about it this way: “This is the night! This is our Passover with Christ from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom, from death to life. Tonight is the heart of our celebration of the Three Days and the pinnacle of the church’s year. The resurrection of Christ is proclaimed in word and sign, and we gather around a pillar of fire, hear ancient stories of our faith, welcome new sisters and brothers at the font, and share the food and drink of the promised land. Raised with Christ, we go forth into the world, aflame with the good news of the resurrection.”
The Easter Vigil for us is modified. We sort of wimp out, we have it at 7:00 p.m. and not many of us are actually sleeping by then!
But the point of the vigil is not really in the staying awake until the sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. For in fact Christ has been raised for quite some time, but the vigil is a great service for the stories and how those stories continue to feed and live in us today.
We read the salvation history in stories from scripture, from creation, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Jonah and the big fish, and my favorite… Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the firey furnace! (honesly I just like sayin; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!)
Then after these stories… we baptize and in the waters of baptism these stories of salvation continue! This year we have two! Devin, a very energetic 2 year old and Robert who is in his early 20′s. These two are not related, and they may only run into each other periodically over the years in worship, but they become my brothers and brothers to every baptized child of God out there. The Good News, the Gospel of Easter is summed up in the waters of baptism, we are put to death in these waters and raised up to new life in Christ.
Oh.. I got so worked up I almost forgot to mention that we start this service outside in the dying day light with a fire. I get to start the fire…. woot! Then we all grab candles and light them off the newly lit paschal candle and walk into the darkened church and then boom as the light fades outside the light in the church erupts!
The service is a little long, but the good news is with all those stories and the baptisms I don’t need to preach much, the word carries the weight just fine.
We close this service with the gift of Holy Communion, blessed to and prepared to celebrate Easter in the morning… it is a great service.
It is great I think in part because it is in the dark of night when we are reminded of what God has done for us when things looked darkest…. and in the light of a new dawn we can celebrate this love and hope that has been with us since the beginning.
May God bless you and keep you this Easter as you become what you already are in Jesus Christ.
“Simul Justus et Peccator”
Its the back of my ipod... and yes it does say "Simul Justus et Peccator" oh... and "Soli Deo Glora" I am such a Lutheran Nerd.
Today is Maundy Thursday… it starts off the Triduum or “three days.” Ok, Easter is great, its wonderful and as Christians it would be fair and appropriate to call us “Easter People.” But if all you have is Easter and you don’t walk the days before it… you are missing a very big part of what Easter is.
I invite you where ever you find yourself to participate in the these days and their worship services as much as you can. From today’s services to Good Friday and the Vigil on Saturday evening, they all bring out different parts of the bigger story, the divine drama, if you will. The empty tomb is what brings us hope as Christians, but why do we have to go there? How did we get to this remarkable joy? Well in part that is what the journey of Lent and in particular these last three days of Holy Week are all about. The story of the resurrection brings us back to the beginning of the story, it is about our relationship with God and what God will go through for us and for our sake.
Speaking of journeys…In the closing of our Lenten devotions, the book of faith Lenten Journey just touches ever so lightly on the last petition of the Lord’s prayer. “Deliver us from evil” you would think that evil would get a little more time, but I guess whe
n you think about it, it really doesn’t need any more!
When we pray that we might be delivered from evil, are in part praying that everything will come out ok. You could say that when we pray this petition we are really asking for what we already prayed for in the first three..holy name, kingdom come, will be done, when these three are happening we are indeed delivered from evil.
We are a people who live in the middle. A paradox if you will, even if you won’t I believe this is where we are at. We know the end of the story, the one who is Alpha and Omega has been here done that and bought the T-shirt. 
But we still live between. There is a Latin phrase that is a big deal in Lutheran Theology… that phrase is “simul Justus et Peccator” Basically that means we are saint’s and sinner’s at the same time, simultaneously a righteous person and a sinner.
Our lives are between the already and not yet… we are becoming what we are already in Jesus Christ (ohhhh… notice how smoothly I worked that in!) But it is true.
Maundy Thursday for me is ultimately about two things… The gift of the Lord’s Supper and an example of humble service.
Many people do the foot washing thing that Jesus does in the Gospel lesson appointed for this day. I think that is fine in many ways, but I think it is way too little. People get hung up on their feet nowadays… while our feet may not be suitable for a Dr. Scholls ad, they are not for the most part caked with disgusting animal waste and filth from the streets. When we symbolically wash feet today that is great as long as it informs our service to others. I would rather have people do something for another person, or donate their time to a good cause, because I think this gets at Jesus point. Being a Christian being an Easter people person, means 
not reveling in our glory or salvation, but rather reaching out in love.
Here is where the supper comes into play… fed and nourished with the Word and at the Lord’s table we are energized to live in this between-ness… to love fully and serve fully as we were first fully loved and served in Jesus Christ.
Time for bed… its gonna be a great couple of days…
