Raising Hell

Collect for Holy Saturday

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Raising Hell

His body was cold and stiff when it went in on Good Friday.  It will be warm and alive on Easter morning.  What happens in between, while the tomb is sealed?

To answer that question, some in the early Church developed a doctrine that came to be called the Harrowing of Hell.  Building on references in the New Testament, it tells us that Jesus went down to the underworld, the land of the dead.  There he met those who had died, from Adam and Eve onward, and led them out of the prison of death into eternal life.  In paintings and icons of the Resurrection, we often see Jesus leading the way out of the empty tomb, with other people visible in the background, following him.

I’ve always loved that image.  I love it because it shows Jesus literally raising hell: going down to those most distant from God and bringing them back up.  It gives me hope that Jesus can reach me too, no matter how far I fall from God’s presence.  Not even the tomb could keep him away from his children.  What could possibly keep him from me?

I believe we share Jesus’ ministry of raising hell.  The world is full of people who feel separated from God.  Some feel separated by desperate circumstances, facing hunger, disease or homelessness.  Others feel separated by abuse, or mental illness, or simply by living on the margins of a world that doesn’t want to see them. So we bring them food, healing and shelter.  We bring them justice, compassion and dignity. We follow Christ down into their hell, and by his grace we raise it up.

It doesn’t make us popular.  The world doesn’t like hell-raisers.  It doesn’t like seeing the people it would rather ignore.  It doesn’t like hearing about the hell those people have been raised from.  And it really doesn’t like thinking about how we, in our collective sin, may have kept them there.  The world may call us troublemakers.  Bleeding hearts.  These days, it may even call us socialists!

To which there is one simple response: So what?  No one is beyond God’s reach; no one is undeserving of the freedom Jesus brings.  And not one of us is exempt from the baptismal promise to go to them, to “seek and serve Christ in all people.”  If doing that means raising a little hell along the way, so be it. 

The Rev. Drew Bunting

Rector

Church of the Resurrection, Mukwanago

Easter Message from Bishop Miller

A Sacred Mystery We Will Never Solve

Collect for Good Friday
Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


A Sacred Mystery We Will Never Solve
I never attended a worship service on Good Friday until I became an Episcopalian. In the church of my childhood, hymns and sermons with Good Friday themes permeated the entire year. We sang hymns like:


On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross;
The emblem of suffering and shame,
And 'twas on that old cross, where the Dearest and Best;
For a world of lost sinners was slain.


Or


There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood;
Lose all their guilt and stain.


Or


Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There's pow'r in the blood! Pow'r in the blood!
Would you o'er evil, the victory win?
There's wonderful pow'r in the blood!


Or


Alas! And did my Savior bleed! And did my Sovereign die!
Would he devote that sacred head, for sinners such as I?
At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,
And the burdens of my heart rolled away;


It was there by faith, I received my sight;
And now I am happy all the day.




Many of the sermons I heard preached back then included some retelling of, or reference to, Jesus' death on the cross. Blood. Suffering. Death. These are dark, disturbing themes. But in my childhood church, it was clearly understood that Jesus took up the agony of the cross to reclaim all of humanity -- one individual at a time -- as God's own.


These days, I would want to argue that Jesus' death cannot be understood apart from Jesus' life and ministry. The Son of God not only died "for" us; he lived "for" us as well. The life Jesus lived and the death Jesus died tell us something about God's very Being.


On Good Friday we are vividly reminded that, for Christians, theoretical abstractions do not bring about the healing and wholeness of salvation. God did not send an "idea"! In Jesus, God offered God's own Self. As much as we might like to drain the blood of Jesus from our religious language, we cannot. As much as we may wish it otherwise, the Church (yes, even Episcopalians!) proclaims Christ crucified. And today, above all days, is the day to ponder a sacred mystery we will never solve.


The Rev. Gary Manning
Rector
Trinity Church, Wauwatosa

Maundy Thursday Mikvah

Collect for Maundy Thursday

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Maundy Thursday Mikvah

Maundy Thursday is a day of ritualistic washing.  Jesus reminded Peter that if we have bathed, then we are clean, except for our feet that have been walking through the dirt and grime of the world around us.  Peter, like many of us, lets his self-centered, self-serving ways loose and says, “Wash me all over.”  Peter wants a full bath; he wants it all!  Peter is speaking of the temporal; Jesus is speaking of the spiritual. Peter is speaking of the ritualistic washing of a bath.  Jesus is speaking of the ritualistic bath of a Baptism.

Jesus never loses sight of his Baptism. Jesus never loses sight of who he is and what he is called to be and to do.  This night, this most holy night, Jesus knows that he will be betrayed by one of his closest colleagues. Jesus knows that it is this night that the Holy will be covered and betrayed by the dirt and grime of this world.  Jesus knows that it is this night, that ritualistic cleansing of washing the feet of his disciples, including the one that is to betray him, will merely foreshadow the spiritual cleansing that is yet to come.

Have you bathed?  No, not in the running water that most of the municipalities provide for us that is treated with fluoride and chloride and other chemicals that will preserve your body.  Have you bathed with the Baptismal water that is running full of the Holy Spirit.  The same Living Water that Jesus offered to the woman at the well, he has offered to you and to me and if we have received it, we are clean!  Have you bathed in the Living Water that preserves not your body, but your soul? 

This night, as we go through the ritualistic reenactment of the institution of the “Cena Domini”, the Supper of the Lord, the ritualistic reenactment of the Jesus washing our feet, the ritualistic reenactment of striping away every piece of beautiful dirt and grime from the altars and sanctuaries that divert our attention from the basic reasons that we gather to worship, remember, for the ritualistic cleansing by our Father in Heaven. You are preparing to bathe in the Living Water of Jesus Christ.  Remember to strip away all of the walls, all of the layers, all of the ritualistic barriers that we place between our Savior and us so that we might see and acknowledge that God sees us for who we are:  broken, fallen, loved, and forgiven.  And then, we might see Jesus for who he is:  the Son of God, denied, broken, crucified for you and for me.

The Rev. Kenny Miller, Rector

St. Boniface Episcopal Church

www.saintbonifacechurch.com

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Joy-filled Suffering

Collect for Wednesday in Holy Week
Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.




“Joy-filled suffering” (John 13:21 – 32)


What do jumbo shrimp, liquid gas and the living dead all have in common? They are all examples of oxymoron’s. Today- Wednesday in Holy Week- in our Gospel reading from St. John, Jesus speaks to his betrayal, which elicits many not me’s from the disciples. Even as Judas is identified as the betrayer, the other eleven still do not fully understand. The only person in the room who truly understands is Jesus Himself, who says to Judas Iscariot, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”


At this point in the passion narrative, I don’t picture Jesus being happy, yet I cannot imagine Him being anything but joy-filled. Happiness comes and goes based on circumstances, yet someone who is joy-filled can be so, even in the midst of suffering. Jesus knew the anguish and suffering that awaited Him. He even pleads with the Father for another way than the cross He was to bear. Although Jesus knew in His spirit that this was the only way, He also knew the joy that would be known by the whole world because of the sacrifice of love He was called to endure. I believe it is with joy-filled suffering that Jesus says to his disciples, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.”


Many Christians today and throughout the ages have lived out the same oxymoron modeled by their Lord and Savior. Those who have endured ridicule or pain because of their belief in Jesus; lost friends, family or career, standing for the Truth of the Gospel; or even lost their lives for the sake of Jesus, have done so by the grace and strength of God and the indwelling joy of the Holy Spirit. Even when our happiness fades away, the truth of the Gospel is that the joy of the Lord is always nearby. May we, as our Lord and countless Christians before us have done, walk through this life with that same sacrificial love, grace and joy, praying that God the Father would “give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.” Amen.


The Rev. Christian Maxfield
Rector
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Prairie du Chien, WI

Holy Tuesday

Collect for Tuesday in Holy Week

O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Holy Tuesday
“The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” – 1 Corinthians 1:18


When the Apostle Paul penned these words nearly two millennia ago, the notion that Messiah, God’s Anointed, had actually been put to death by the machinations of an Empire was an affront to the “way things were supposed to be”. Messiah was supposed to liberate God’s people from oppression, not fall victim to it!


Paul’s argument in the face of this contradiction was to adamantly hold to the righteousness of God and to invite his friends to enter more fully into the mystery of the cross as saving event rather than mourning it as a travesty of justice or the tragedy of human cruelty. We are invited, during this Holy Week to do the same. To walk the way of the cross is to confront our own discomfort with a part of the Gospel story we’d probably prefer to ignore.


The collect appointed for today, asks, in part, that the Church will “glory in the cross of Christ”. How does that happen? How is God’s wisdom made known in the illogical (even foolish) shamefulness of the cross? How is the wisdom of the world turned inside out by this event which defies human logic? How exactly does the body of Jesus being nailed to the cross unleash the power of God to save the world?


So many questions come along with us on this Holy Week journey. Very few answers make sense. Most answers sound somewhat incomplete.


I wonder. If we could figure out all the answers, would we then begin to trust our own wisdom as a power on a level with God’s? Would we begin to act as if we had some control over the God of Sarah, Rebecca, Ruth, Hannah and Mary – the God who, over and over again, refuses to conform to human expectations of how a god should behave?


The God of the Matriarchs and Patriarchs still confounds us today – with irascibility we find unsettling. This God comes to us in the ways of weakness – a babe in a stable cave and a dying man on a cross. The Church proclaims, with particular emphasis during Holy Week, that this foolishly behaving God has, “brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.” (BCP, p. 368) But this power of God to salvation and wholeness isn’t merely a set of interesting teachings inscribed in a book. This saving power is gifted to the world in the weakness of human flesh – Jesus, Son of Mary, Son of God.


 
The Rev. Gary Manning
Rector
Trinity Church, Wauwatosa

What Do I Smell?

Collect for Monday in Holy Week
Almighty God, whose dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other that the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.




What do I smell?  (Matthew 26:6-12)


For all their textured richness, the gospels rarely tickle my nose. I suppose we might catch the faint smell of straw around the Christmas manger, or perhaps the distinctive smell of fish as Jesus calls his first disciples. And there is always that great line in the KJV’s telling of the raising of Lazarus, “But sir, he stinketh!” But most of the time, my experience of the gospels is pretty ‘unfragranced.’


Not so today. Reminding me of a perfumer’s shop in Cairo, to which I was once taken, as I read of Mary’s singular attention to Jesus’s body, my sense of (imagined) smell is carried away by the exotic pungency of the essences from the east, the faraway lands of spices and mystery. Like the clove-studded orange I made in first grade, or the lavender sachet my wife made for my Christmas stocking, or the smoke from the wood fire carried on the wind of a winter’s afternoon, there is something comforting, something real about the smell of the perfume that fills the room in Bethany where Jesus and his closest friends have gathered for a meal.


Holy Week is full of vivid visuals—green flashes of palm, the deep purple of a robe designed to mock, the water and blood seeping from the pierced side of a dead man. Holy Week is full of searing sounds—cries of Hosanna, chants of a frenzied crowd calling for action, the mocking taunts and quiet sobs of those gathered at the foot of a cross. But for me, today, after the joy turned to sorrow of Palm Sunday, when I had dared to hope yet again that the timeless story would somehow change, and the power of evil would not seem to triumph, my anxious soul is stilled by the soft sweep of hair, the silky smoothness of the oil, and the fullness of its fragrance.


Jesus rests, and receives the loving attention of his friends. My senses tingle as I watch. My nose tickles. My brain is sated by the heavy perfume. And I am reminded that the loving care Mary shows for Jesus is but a mere hint of the loving care with which God longs to sooth and shower us.


We have a long way to go yet this week, but stop for a moment and ponder this question—what does the love of God smell like to you? Whatever it is, hold on to it, remember it. Make it part of your journey to the cross—and well beyond.




The Rev. David A. Pfaff
Canon to the Ordinary
The Diocese of Milwuakee

Palm Sunday

Collect for Palm Sunday

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Palm Sunday
I sometimes refer to this Sunday as “Schizoid Sunday,” as we try to cram everything from the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to the Passion into one liturgical celebration with only a couple of readings and a psalm setting them apart. A popular strain for sermons is often contrasting the sections of the service - how the crowd seems to support Jesus in the beginning, and then joins in the condemnation of him before Pilate when he doesn’t deliver what they want. Heck, I’ve preached that sermon.


But in many ways, these aren’t two contrasting events, they are part and parcel of a pattern that is inherent in us as human beings. The french theologian René Girard calls this the “Scapegoat Mechanism” and locates it deep within the human psyche. As we admire someone, we seek to “posses” them - to see them as the fulfillment of our needs. As other people begin to desire the same person, the antagonism towards rivals spreads like wildfire and begins to impinge on the mutual object of desire. Finally, in order to appease the need for group violence, the object of desire is sacrificed and brings a temporary peace until a new object becomes the focus. Girard finds this principle operative in basic myths from all over the world. It can only operate as long as it is done subconsciously. As soon as it is made known, its power is broken.

On Palm Sunday, the desire for Jesus reaches its zenith. Those in Jerusalem project onto him their desire for a political leader to overthrow the Romans. The desire becomes exceptionally palpable and strong. When it becomes clear that no one can possess Jesus, the feedback is also extraordinary. Members of that same throng now turn on Jesus and make him the scapegoat. The will of the mob is so strong that everyone, even his most trusted associates, abandon him. In fact, Peter denies him three times. In Matthew, Jesus is crucified with no one sympathetic around him. The thieves both mock him, the disciples are nowhere to be found, and the women watch from a distance. God even seems to be distant when Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

In this way, Jesus is the ultimate scapegoat. He dies alone with the hate and fear of all upon him. But Jesus is not just another scapegoat. As the son of God, his death and resurrection has a cosmic resonance. As Christianity spreads, it becomes harder and harder for the mechanism to operate with the secrecy it requires. For Girard, Jesus dies not to save us from the anger of God, but from our own human wrath. While his death does not put an end to the cycle completely, it works like yeast, leavening the whole and making the cycle harder and harder to sustain.

This observation is similar to Julian of Norwich’s vision, “I saw no wrath except on humanity’s part, and that He forgives in us. For wrath is nothing else but a departure from and an opposition to peace and to love, and either it comes from the failure of power or from the failure of wisdom, or from the failure of goodness.” (Long Text, Chapter 38)

As we start into Holy Week, this is a good time for self-examination. What wrath do we harbor in ourselves that keeps God out? What sacrifices do we long for from others in a vain attempt to screen our own issues? Can we give those up, recognizing that they are the same impulses that have lead to the deaths of millions, including the only-begotten son of God? As we cry “Hosanna to the Son of David” on Sunday, it is good to remember that this cry is not of joy, but is a veiled threat that will come to fruition on Friday with Jesus’ death.

The Rev. David Simmons
Rector
St. Matthias Church, Waukesha