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Seasonal Journal Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Colorado Springs, CO

Ash Wednesday, Lent, The Annunciation, Palm Sunday,

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, Rogation Day, Ascension Day 2021

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On the cover: Icon of Mary at the Annunciation by Laura Fisher Smith,

Courtesy of The Episcopal Church of the Nativity, Scottsdale, AZ

Table of Contents

3 Editor’s Note & The Liturgical Season

by Joan Ray, PhD

7 Ash Wednesday

by The Rev. Shayna Watson

10-11 The Annunciation

by The Rt. Rev. Dr. Susan Brown Snook, Bishop of San Diego

12 Two Extreme Gospel Readings that Unite Palm Sunday with Passion Sunday

by The Rev. Taylor Daynes

14 The Three Grace-Gifts of Maundy Thursday

by The Rt. Rev. Dr. Gregory O. Brewer, Bishop of Central Florida

17 Christina Rossetti’s “Good Friday”: A Nuanced Presentation of Christian Faith

by Joan Ray, PhD

20 A Meditation on Good Friday: Where Innocence Dies Young

by The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson, Rector

22 Editor’s Note: The Evolving Study of Jesus’ Appearance

by Joan Ray, PhD

25 Holy Saturday: A Day of Patience

by The Rev. Claire Elser, Curate

26 Meditation for the Great Vigil of Easter

by The Rev. Debbie Womack, Deacon

27 “It’s Easter Anyway!”

by The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States

31 The Second Sunday of Easter: Bad Rap

by The Rev. Kate Bradsen

33 Editor’s Note: The. Rev. Dr. Heather Murray Elkins’ “The Younger Brother of Thomas”

35 So, What’s a Rogation?

by The Rev. Dr. Christopher I. Wilkins

39 A Meditation for Ascension Day: Forty Days after Easter

by Pastor Jennifer Williamson, Youth Pastor

Editor: Joan Klingel Ray, PhD

Editorial Assistant: Susan Defosset

Layout and Design: Max Pearson

Printed by Print Net Inc., owned by David Byers, 306 Auburn Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80909 Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church at Tejon and Monument Streets (Nave), 601 N. Tejon St. (Office), Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Tel: (719) 328-1125 http://www.gssepiscopal.org The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson, Rector The Rev. Claire Elser, Curate Pastor Jennifer Williamson, Youth Minister The Rev. Debbie Womack, Deacon The Seasonal Journal does not receive funds from Grace & St. Stephen’s. Its publication is made possible through the generosity of parishioners. If you’d like to donate to the Journal’s publication costs, please note “Journal” in the memo section of a check made out to GSS Episcopal or in an envelope with cash that says, “Journal Donation.” Permission to reprint: Articles by GSS clergy and the Editor in this issue of the Seasonal Journal are available for use, free of charge, in your diocesan paper, parish newsletter, or on your church website. Please credit Grace and St. Stephen’s Seasonal Journal. For sermons by clergy of other churches, please contact the appropriate church. Any copyrighted image is so noted. Permission to reprint any copyrighted work must be obtained directly from the creator. Let us know how you’ve used the Seasonal Journal by emailing susan@gssepiscopal.org.

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Editor’s Note: The Liturgical Season

The cover of this issue of the Seasonal Journal

features an icon written (yes, written is the term

used!) by artist Laura Fisher Smith, which we are

using courtesy of The Episcopal Church of the

Nativity in Scottsdale, AZ. The icon measures 24 x

30 inches with an additional 3.5 inches on all sides

for the frame. The artist emailed me that the icon is

“egg tempera with 24 K gold foil background,

varnished.” I mentioned to Laura that I was

surprised not to see Gabriel in her work as many

famous Annunciation paintings show Gabriel

talking to the young Mary, while hers focuses

exclusively on Mary. Laura kindly replied:

You are correct about the norm of

including the angel Gabriel in

annunciation paintings. I used

Mary only because the image

“came to me” in this form when I

was contemplating the commission.

This is not something that occurs

with all icons (for me anyhow), so I

thought I had better pay attention!

There she was—and who am I to

question? She turned out pretty

much exactly as imagined (with

appreciation to Laura Fisher Smith

for her email to Joan Ray,

1.16.2021).

I thank the Rev. Scot McComas, rector of The

Episcopal Church of the Nativity, for giving us

permission to reproduce the icon on the journal

cover, and Mina Rafferty, Parish Administrator, for

promptly measuring the icon for me upon my

request. The Rt. Rev. Susan Brown Snook, Bishop

of San Diego, who worked with the artist, Laura

Fisher Smith, when she was rector of The Church of

the Nativity, called my attention to this unique icon.

All three individuals were pleasant, patient, and

prompt in their communications with me.

This issue of the church’s Seasonal Journal

proceeds chronologically through the liturgical

season. We open with the Rev. Shayna Watson’s

sermon for Ash Wednesday, reminding us that

fasting from prejudice and gossip is far more

meaningful and difficult than fasting from chocolate

or other temptations that we can simply hide from

ourselves in the back of a cupboard: she asks that

we fast from a habit or behavior that requires the

self-examination and penance that Lent is meant to

be. From the ashes of February, we move to nine

months before the Nativity with young Mary’s

courageous and faithful acceptance of Gabriel’s

Annunciation: The Rt. Rev. Susan Brown Snook’s

meditation on the Annunciation presents insights

about the icon on the journal’s cover. Proceeding to

Holy Week, we read a message from the Rev.

Taylor Daynes, Episcopal Chaplain at Cornell

University, who connects “the extremes” of the two

Gospel readings read on the Sunday before Easter:

the first recounting Jesus’ jubilant entry into

Jersualem, and then the second, read only minutes

later, recounting the events of Christ’s Passion. The

Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer, Bishop of Central

Florida, offers a meditation on the gifts of Maundy

Thursday: intimacy, stillness, and security. Bishop

Brewer’s quoting some lines from poet Christina

Rossetti’s “Good Friday” prompted me to review

the poetical speaker’s evolving response to Good

Friday in her poem. Our rector, the Rev. Jeremiah

Williamson, presents a touching meditation on

Good Friday and martyrs of innocence. Stemming

from Father Jeremiah’s meditation, I provide

information on the evolving research treating the

question, “What did Jesus look like?” Our curate,

the Rev. Claire Elser, writes about Holy Saturday: a

day of patience that gets one page in the BCP. The

Rev. Debbie Womack, our deacon, gives us a

meditation on The Great Vigil of Easter, when we

move from darkness to light. Then our Presiding

Bishop, The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, reminds

us that despite our masks, “‘It’s Easter Anyway.’”

As readers know, the “Doubting Thomas” story

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always appears in the Gospel reading on the Second

Sunday of Easter: The Rev. Kate Bradsen comes to

the Apostle’s defense in her sermon “Bad Rap.” We

then encounter the Rev. Dr. Heather Murray Elkins’

wonderful imaginary monologue of Thomas’s

younger brother, who claims that—unlike his elder

brother, the Apostle—he would have probed Jesus’

wound because “Doubting runs in the family.” The

Rev. Dr. Christopher I. Wilkins takes us to the Sixth

Sunday of Easter and provides the historical

background of Rogation Sunday in the context of

our contemporary world. The fortieth day after

Easter marks the Ascension, about which Pastor Jen

Williamson, our Youth Minister, is inspired by and

inspires us by recalling the lively folk hymn, “I’ll

fly away.” Prepare to sing!

………………………………………………………

Unless otherwise noted, information about the

liturgical seasons and feast days comes from Don S.

Armentrout and Robert Boak Slocum, eds. An

Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. NY: Church

Publishing, Inc.: 2000.

Lent

The word Lent comes from the Old English word

lencten, meaning spring and the lengthening of

days. More familiarly in the Christian church, Lent

refers to a period of forty days (excluding Sundays)

that begins on Ash Wednesday and continues

through Holy Saturday (the day before Easter). The

forty days of Lent reflect the forty days that Jesus

spent in the wilderness (Matthew 14:1-11). Lent is

meant to be a period of introspection, self-

examination, penance, and spiritual preparation for

the celebration of salvation in Christ on Easter.

Early Christians observed Lent. Traditionally,

persons give up a particular “vice” such as eating

chocolate or smoking to reflect Christ’s deprivation

and self-discipline in the wilderness. But

renouncing sweets or smokes is comparatively

trivial in a Christian scheme of things. For Lent is

truly meant to be a time of self-reflection when we

take an inventory of our lives through reflection and

prayer. The last week of Lent is Holy Week. The

Book of Common Prayer (BCP), pp. 264-295 offers

the Liturgies for the Easter Vigil (sundown on Holy

Saturday or in the pre-dawn hours of Easter

morning.).

Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2021)

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent: the ashes

that our priest imposes on our foreheads, usually

with a sign of the cross, signify penitence and

remind us of our mortality. Clergy bless the ashes

from the burned palm fronds from last year’s Palm

Sunday to become the ashes of this year’s Ash

Wednesday.

The Annunciation (March 25, 2021)

Luke 1:26-38

Exactly nine months before Christmas, Mary learns

from the angel Gabriel that she will be the mother

of God’s son, Jesus. Asking the angel how this can

be as she does not “‘know a man,’” Gabriel replies

that “‘with God, nothing is impossible.’ Then Mary

said, ‘Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be

to me according to your word.’”

Palm Sunday / The Sunday of the Passion

If you look at your Episcopal Church Year

Calendar, you will see that Palm Sunday is also

named The Sunday of the Passion. Palm Sunday is

the final Sunday in Lent: it celebrates Jesus’

triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when palm branches

were placed on his path, and persons greeted him

with cries of Hosanna (Matthew 21:1-9). In Jesus’

day, palm branches represented goodness and

victory. Christian symbolism views palms as the

victory of a martyr and the victory of the spirit over

the flesh. We should remember that the same

persons crying “Hosannas” on Palm Sunday were

crying “Crucify him” on Good Friday: triumph was

quickly followed by crucifixion. We are now in

Holy Week.

Holy Week and the Triduum

The last three days of Lent are the sacred Paschal

Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and

Holy Saturday, beginning the evening of April 1st

and ending Easter Day, Sunday, April 4th. Paschal

means relating to Easter or Passover and comes

from the Latin and Greek pascha and Hebrew

pesach meaning “Passover.” Triduum is pronounced

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trid-yoo-uhm, meaning a period of three days. Early

Christians observed the week before Easter,

beginning with Palm Sunday, as a period of special

significance recalling Christ’s last days. (Mother

Claire Elser uses the word triduum in her Holy

Saturday meditation.) Egeria, a 4th-century female

pilgrim, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and

recorded her experiences in Peregrinatio or

Itinerarium Egeriae, the earliest known written

record of a journey to the Holy Land, dated c. 380.

Maundy Thursday

The term Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin

mandatum novum, meaning new commandment in

reference to John 13:34, where Jesus says, “I give

you a new commandment, that you love one

another. Just as I have loved you, you should love

one another.” On Maundy Thursday, we remember

Jesus’ instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper

(Matthew 26:26-28) and washing his disciples’ feet

(John 13:1-20). The foot-washing ceremony was

also called “the Maundy.” After the altar and church

are stripped on Maundy Thursday, the Sacrament is

reserved in the aumbry or covered with a veil on the

bare altar. Stripping the altar is sometimes followed

by a washing of the altar.

The Watch or Vigil

A “Watch” is a time of remaining awake for

religious reasons: a watch is maintained before the

Holy Sacrament on the night of Maundy Thursday,

a time of prayer and meditation. In Matthew 26 and

Mark 14, when Jesus goes to pray in Gethsemane,

he tells Peter and two sons of Zebedee to “stay

awake with me,” “stay awake and pray”; each time,

upon returning, he found them sleeping. Poet

George Herbert’s good friend, Deacon Nicholas

Ferrar (1592-1637), instituted a “Night Watch” at

Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, England. During

these watches one or more members of the extended

Ferrar family recited the whole Psalter while

kneeling. The Church remembers Ferrar on Dec. 1,

2021, and George Hebert on Feb. 27, 2021.

Good Friday

Good Friday commemorates Christ’s suffering and

death on the Cross. The earliest Good Friday rites

occurred in the 4th century in Jerusalem. In church,

the altar has been stripped, and the crosses are

veiled in black since Maundy Thursday. We

meditate upon Christ’s crucifixion on this day of

sorrow and penance. The Episcopal Church does

not celebrate the Eucharist today; however, Holy

Communion may be administered from the reserved

sacrament: consecrated bread (wafers) and wine are

kept or served in the aumbry, a recessed cupboard

used to store the reserved sacrament. People are

sometimes confused about what is “good” about

Good Friday. The Oxford English Dictionary

(OED) states a definition of good as “a day on

which a religious observance is held, a day that is

observed as holy by the church,” as “pious,” or

“holy.” Some say that Good Friday was originally

called God’s Friday. Still others observe that the

Crucifixion of Jesus was good or necessary so that

the resurrection would occur. Psalm 85:10 states:

“Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;

righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” We

see this on the Cross.

Holy Saturday

After the sorrows of Good Friday and before the

triumphs of Easter Sunday’s resurrection of Christ,

Holy Saturday reminds us that Jesus experienced a

physical death: “He suffered and was buried,” as

the Nicene Creed states. The Apostles’ Creed states:

“He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,

died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On

the third day he rose again.” I share with you the

words that Brother Scott Michael BSG

(Brotherhood of St. Gregory) preached on Holy

Saturday (2018) at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in

Denver. He quoted from the 4th-century homily

given by St. John Chrysostom: “He has destroyed

death by undergoing death. / He has despoiled hell

by descending into hell.” In Greek, Chrysostym

means “golden mouthed,” referring to his

eloquence. He was Bishop of Constantinople.

The Great Vigil of Easter

With Easter, the somber tones of Lent are replaced

by the “Alleluias” proclaiming Jesus Christ’s

resurrection from the dead. Easter Day is the first

Sunday after the full moon that falls on or after

March 21st. The Venerable Bede or Saint Bede

(672-735), an English Benedictine monk known as

the “Father of English History,” wrote over forty

books on subjects ranging from astronomy to

theology. The most famous is The Ecclesiastical

History of the English People in which he observes

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that the word “Easter” derives from the Anglo-

Saxon spring goddess Eostre. Carole M. Cusack in

the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism* states

that “Heathen spirituality is intimately connected

with the earth, the seasons, and all natural cycles,

and individual gods and goddesses may be honored

at appropriate times. One such goddess is Eostre

who gives her name to the Christian Festival of

Easter. She is associated with the coming of spring

and the dawn. . . . [She] brings renewal, [and]

rebirth from the death of winter” (pp. 353-354). The

Easter Season lasts fifty days and is sometimes

called “The Great Fifty Days.” The BCP notes that

it is customary for the Paschal Candle to burn at all

services of the Easter season. The Paschal Candle,

representing the light of Christ, is a tall white candle

usually decorated with a cross, the Greek letters

alpha and omega, the year, and five wax candles. It

is lighted at the beginning of the Easter Vigil.

(*Carole M. Cusack, “The Return of the Goddess:

Mythology, Witchcraft, and Feminist Spirituality”

in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, eds.

James R. Lewis and Murphy Pizza. Leiden, Boston:

Brill, 2008.) See Revelation 22:13, “‘I am the Alpha

and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning

and the end.’”

Rogation Sunday (May 9, 2021)

The sixth Sunday of Easter, Rogation Sunday can

be considered Episcopal Earth Day. The word

“Rogation” comes from the Latin rogatio, meaning

“asking”: asking the Lord to bless the harvest and

crops and those who tend to them. Originally an

agricultural observance, Rogation Days date back to

the 5th century, when life was largely bound to the

land in an agrarian society. Nowadays, as we

process around the church grounds on Rogation

Sunday, the rector reminds us to be responsible

stewards of God’s creation. Historically, Rogation

Days (the three days before Ascension Thursday,

meaning Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday)

originated to bless the fields at planting time. The

BCP provides collects and lessons for Rogation (pp.

207-208, 258-259, 930); page 258 offers a prayer

for Rogation Day.

Ascension Day (May 13, 2021)

The fortieth day after Easter—and so always on a

Thursday—Ascension Day marks Christ’s being

taken into heaven after appearing to his followers

for forty days: Mark 16:19, Acts 1:1-11. The

Episcopal Dictionary reminds us, “It is the final

elevation of his human nature to divine glory and

the near presence of God. The Ascension is

affirmed by the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds” (p.

29).

The Easter Season ends on May 23, 2021, which is

Whitsunday, the Day of Pentecost.

Liturgical Colors

“Liturgical Colors” in Episcopal worship signify

our place in the Church Year. White, the color of

Jesus’ burial garments, is for Christmas, Easter, and

other “feasts” or festival days, as well as marriages

and funerals. Purple / violet is for Advent (or royal

blue) and Lent (or unbleached linen). Red is used in

Holy Week, the Day of Pentecost, and at

ordinations. Green is used during Epiphany and the

“Ordinary Time” after Pentecost Sunday.

Secular Easter Traditions: The Easter Bunny

and Easter Eggs

Many secular traditions are

popular at Easter, just as they

are at Christmas. Most of these

traditions derive from folk

customs. The 13th century

likely marks the beginning of

decorated Easter eggs. People

viewed the egg as symbolic of

the tomb of Jesus, with new

life, a chick, emerging from

the eggshell. Protestants in the

17th century developed the association of rabbits or

bunnies with Easter; by the 19th century, the idea of

Easter bunnies leaving baskets of decorated eggs

and sweets for children became popular.

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With a background in hospice and hospital chaplaincy, the Rev. Shayna J. Watson is a

priest in the Episcopal Church of the Anglican Communion, currently serving as the

Associate Rector at St. James Episcopal Church, Lancaster, PA under the leadership of its

rector, the Rev. David W. Peck. As a community activist she serves on various boards that

advocate for children and youth, the arts, and racial and gender equality. Shayna is creator

and founder of ΘeoCon (pronounced Thee-Oh-Con), Where Theology Meets Pop Culture

Convention, a one-day comic book convention-style event, a first of its kind. Ordained a

deacon in 2018 and a priest in 2019, Mother Shayna graduated from the University of

Pittsburgh in 2002 with a dual major in Political Science and African Diasporic Studies.

While a student at Pitt, she had the opportunity to study abroad for a semester in a

program hosted by The Institute for Shipboard Education: Semester at Sea. During her visits to Japan, China,

Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, and Cuba, she learned to appreciate how God and the

Church showed up in various spaces. She earned her Master of Divinity with honors from Lancaster

Theological Seminary, and an Anglican Studies Diploma from Virginia Theological Seminary.

An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Preached by the Rev. Shayna Watson,

at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Cathedral,

Harrisburg, PA 2/26/2020

In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and

the Holy Spirit.

Sisters and Brothers in Christ: Ash

Wednesday invites us into a time of reflection,

repentance, and fasting as we enter the season of

Lent. The Season of Lent consists of 40 days and 40

nights, symbolic of Jesus’ journey into the

wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, when he

experienced temptation, solitude, and fasting. It is

also intended to be a season of preparation or

process to Easter.

Lent is a season of self-emptying, a spiritual

kenosis if you will, in order to be open to the voice

and movement of God. There are various ways that

one can go about deepening their spiritual walk.

People observe the fasting tradition in different

ways. Some practice a technological fast, where one

disconnects or suspends her use of video games and

or social media. Dietary fasts involve abstaining

from eating sugar and carbs, etc. Time Designated

fasting means meals are only eaten at certain times

of the day using sunrise and sunset as the

designated time perimeter Some of the most

common fasts for our times include meat, smoking,

alcohol, coffee, sugar, and especially chocolate. So,

let’s pause right there—at chocolate—for a

moment.

Ash Wednesday and the Lenten observance

derived from the Council of Nicaea around 325AD.

Chocolate was not officially created until a century

later. So, I want to make sure that you are aware

that the creators of this observance did not have

chocolate in their lives.

Furthermore, they did not have cell phones

with game apps like Minecraft, Roblox, or Candy

Crush, or social media like Facebook or Snapchat.

What do we do now? What do we give up or

fast from during this season of Lent?

Some of the non-chocolate food and social

media items that one can “fast” from are negativity,

spending money, single-use plastics (an ecological

fast?), and high expectations.

Now just to be clear, we all have to live with

these people who are fasting and live with ourselves

for the next 40 days while we go through this

withdrawal. Life is already difficult, right? And

having to give up these small pleasures? What more

could God want from us?

The texts (Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6,

16-21) we heard read tonight all point to ways in

which we could fast, what fasting looks like, and

what fasting is and is not about.

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While people discuss what they’re going to

“give-up,” the fast is not meant to literally destroy

us; rather, based on emptying, fasting is meant to

give us life, light, and liberation. Fasting is not

meant to make us look drawn, or to suffer

traumatically, but rather, stripping away material

extras is intended to give us life, to liberate us, to

help us see what’s most important. The passage in

Isaiah 58:1-12 outlines for us the “fast” that God

would choose for us:

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up

your voice like a trumpet! Announce to

my people their rebellion, to the house

of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day

they seek me and delight to know my

ways, as if they were a nation that

practiced righteousness and did not

forsake the ordinance of their God; they

ask of me righteous judgments, they

delight to draw near to God. "Why do

we fast, but you do not see? Why

humble ourselves, but you do not

notice?" Look, you serve your own

interest on your fast day, and oppress

all your workers. Look, you fast only to

quarrel and to fight and to strike with a

wicked fist. Such fasting as you do

today will not make your voice heard

on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a

day to humble oneself? Is it to bow

down the head like bulrush, and to lie

in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call

this a fast, a day acceptable to

the LORD? Is not this the fast that I

choose: to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let

the oppressed go free, and to break

every yoke? Is it not to share your

bread with the hungry, and bring the

homeless poor into your house; when

you see the naked, to cover them, and

not to hide yourself from your own

kin? Then your light shall break forth

like the dawn, and your healing shall

spring up quickly; your vindicator shall

go before you, the glory of

the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will

answer; you shall cry for help, and he

will say, Here I am. If you remove the

yoke from among you, the pointing of

the finger, the speaking of evil, if you

offer your food to the hungry and

satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then

your light shall rise in the darkness and

your gloom be like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched

places, and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water, whose waters

never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be

rebuilt; you shall raise up the

foundations of many generations; you

shall be called the repairer of the

breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

Often Ash Wednesday and the season of

Lent can be misconstrued as a season of self-

loathing, but this passage points to the idea of new

life, of a deep satisfaction to those who hunger, to

those who thirst, and to those who need brightness

and cheer in their lives. According to the Gospel of

Matthew (6:1-6, 16-21), God is not seeking a

“fasting fashion,” where people brag or boast about

what they’re doing in order to deepen their faith.

God seeks your brokenness, your heart, and your

mind. We spend most of our lives beautifying our

messiness, but God wants you, all of you: the mess

and all.

I say, “Eat the cake; fast from hate.” For

many, giving up food and social media is a practice

that I condone. But these are also “things.” We can

shut them off, suspend our accounts, put something

on the shelf, or avoid certain favorite foods and

drinks.

But what if we fast from the things we

cannot put away as easily? What would the Lenten

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season look like if we fasted from gossip? What

would our Lenten season look like if we fasted from

prejudice? What would our Lenten season be like if

we fasted from jealousy and envy? What would our

Lenten season be like if we fasted from feeling the

need to be in control?

If you really want 40 days and 40 nights of a

true wilderness experience, fast from coffee. Pray to

Jesus, think of Mary, but have no cup of joe: that

would create a wilderness experience for everyone

within a certain radius of you!

There are various ways to fast or empty

oneself of worldly attachments in order to deepen

our faith in God and our understanding of humanity.

Fasts help us to lose some of the baggage we’ve

accumulated over the years—whether it’s spiritual

weight or physical weight, the season of Lent helps

us to reflect on the interconnectedness of the two

while allowing our relationship with God to deepen.

Lent is not fasting or “giving up” something only.

The secular-detoxification works in tandem with

contemplation, meditation, confession, repentance,

and humility.

And so, too, this Ash Wednesday, this first

day of the Lenten season, marks the beginning for

us to reflect on our deeds, examine our hearts, atone

for our sins, repent of the ill we perpetuate or are

complacent in or feel apathy toward.

Repent and Remember: Whatever path one

decides to encounter, this is a time of repenting and

remembering. We repent of greed. We are to

remember those who are impoverished and for

whom “giving up something” is viewed as a

privilege. We repent of self-consumption. We are to

remember those who are still in the wilderness, who

continue to struggle because they have not

experienced the resurrection hope of Easter: for

such souls, the 40 days and 40 nights have since

turned into years. We repent of violence. We are to

remember those who experience soul-injuries as a

result of war. We repent of racism. We are to

remember those who experience discrimination

based on the color of their skin We repent of

homophobia. We are to remember those who

experience discrimination based on their sexual

identity. We repent of detachment. We are to

remember those who weep in the night and whose

joy has not come yet in the morning.

We repent of segregation and fear of the

other. We are to remember that while we yet have

breath in our body, God calls to us to unify as a

people, not despite our differences, but because we

are different. We are to repent of misuse of time,

because it is short and so very precious. According

to the Gospel of Matthew, fasting is not a fashion

statement; it is not something we boast about.

Fasting is not about the outward. As Jesus says,

“‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like

the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to

show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you,

they have received their reward. But when you fast,

put oil on your head and wash your face, so that

your fasting may be seen not by others but by your

Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in

secret will reward you’” (Matthew 6:16-18).

Returning to dust is expressed in both the

Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. We mostly

hear this litany during this season and funerals—not

because it’s depressing or penitential, but rather,

because it reminds us of the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ; reminds us of our

beginning and our end; reminds us of our sameness,

because we all came from dirt and will return to dirt

(dust sounds much better than dirt, but we’ll go with

it for now); reminds us that dust is our end, but the

dust is also our beginning—a rebirth, similar to the

symbol of the Phoenix, a mystical bird who is

depicted in beautiful imagery rising from its ashes;

and reminds us of our mortality and how close we

are to it.

We should be able to use this season to look

back over our lives and to see how far we’ve come.

We are to use this season to be present with God. We

are to use this to look ahead to see what God is

calling us to do.

10

The Annunciation of Mary: Luke 1:26-38 NRSV: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel

was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name

was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said,

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and

pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for

you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and

you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the

Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of

Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this

be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the

power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will

be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son;

and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with

God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your

word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Editor’s Note: Prominent iconographer Laura Fisher Smith’s icon of the Annunciation, which

we are honored to have as this issue’s cover illustration, is a cherished artwork at The Episcopal

Church of the Nativity in Scottsdale, Arizona. When I was looking on the internet for an

illustration of the Annunciation, I expected to find one showing the angel Gabriel talking with

the young Mary, as above, often dressed in her traditional blue robe—as seen, for example, in

artistic depictions of the Annunciation in works by El Greco, Giordano, or Francisco de Goya.

You can view 300+ of these on a Pinterest website maintained by Sister Julia Darrenkamp

(https://www.pinterest.com/srjulia/annunciation). But what struck me about Laura Fisher Smith’s

interpretation was that it focused on Mary and only on Mary. I will let The Rt. Rev. Susan

Brown Snook, Bishop of San Diego, tell the story of the icon’s inception in her own words, as

taken from her Bishop’s Blog. Bishop Susan worked with the artist when she was Rector of the

Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Scottsdale; the artist is the wife of The Rt. Rev. Kirk Stevan

Smith, who was at the time (2004-2019) Bishop of Arizona.

11

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Susan Brown Snook, fifth Bishop of San Diego, CA, is a leader in the

areas of evangelism, church growth, church planting, and new mission development. Bishop

Susan was ordained as a priest in the Diocese of Arizona in 2003. From 2006 to 2017, she

served as the church planter, vicar, and then rector of the Episcopal Church of the Nativity,

Scottsdale, leading it through a process of growth to a program- sized parish and through a

building process that created a permanent home for the vibrant congregation. From 2017 to

2019, she served as Canon for Church Growth and Development in the Diocese of Oklahoma.

In 2019, she was elected as the Fifth Bishop of the Diocese of San Diego and was

ordained and consecrated on June 15, 2019. As bishop, she has focused on discipleship,

evangelism, and service as the pillars of church mission, and has led the diocese in a strategic

planning process to grow and revitalize the church throughout the diocese. Bishop Susan has

also been a leader in interfaith work for social justice in San Diego, advocating for loving and

just approaches to the challenges that face our world today.

Bishop Susan holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Virginia Theological Seminary, and a Master of Divinity

degree from Church Divinity School of the Pacific. She also holds Bachelor’s, Master of Business Administration, and

Master of Accounting degrees from Rice University in Houston, Texas.

I thank Bishop Susan for her affable, prompt, and delightful assistance.

Feast of the Annunciation 3.25.2020

On the cover of this journal is the Annunciation

Icon at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity,

Scottsdale. The iconographer is Laura Fisher Smith,

and as the vicar of Nativity, I worked with her to

commission this remarkable icon. I hoped for a

depiction of Mary that would show her not as the

Queen of Heaven, but as an ordinary, brown-

skinned peasant girl from Galilee. Laura’s Icon does

not show the angel; it shows Mary experiencing the

angel’s message. I am glad, for I have never seen a

picture of an angel that could display the awesome

and terrifying presence of such a creature. We

humans often resort to beauty and golden wings to

signify what angels must be like. Yet we know from

scriptures that angels can be terrifying; the first

thing they often say is, “Do not be afraid.”

When Laura brought me the completed icon to

show it to me for the first time, she thought I would

not like it. “She just had to be born,” Laura told me.

Then she unveiled the completed work, and I was

stunned by its beauty and grace. The icon Laura

created has such extraordinary spiritual power that

people are often overwhelmed by it. We see the

simple peasant girl at the moment of transformation,

experiencing the presence of an angel, and opening

her hands to receive God’s unexpected grace. We

see Mary absorbed in prayer, bathed in heavenly

light, and hearing the angel’s words of blessing,

challenge, and hope. We see the moment that God

started the salvific work of bringing Jesus into the

world. In the transformation Mary experiences, as

she listens to God’s words, we experience the

transformation of creation as the Word becomes

flesh. The moment of Annunciation appears as the

“still point of the turning world,” in the words of

T.S. Eliot (“Burnt Norton”), as Mary descends into

silence and allows God to speak.

And perhaps this moment of Annunciation has

something to say to us today, too, in this odd

moment of solitude we find ourselves in. We have

stilled ourselves, at least outwardly. We are in a

kind of solitude often relieved only by the voices of

family and the electrons on our screens. We are

waiting for something we can’t describe: a moment

when the world will start up again; a message that

dispels our fear and loneliness; a signal that we are

safe and that we can touch each other once more.

We are at the still point of the turning world, a quiet

place where none of us imagined we would be. We

look toward Easter and we realize that though it is

long past, it may also be long delayed.

Yet here we are, on the day of Annunciation, stilled,

in the presence of God. And perhaps today we can

find that in our stillness, our expectation, our hope,

God will bring new things to birth. Perhaps what

God will bring is a new sense of connection to those

we cannot see in person; perhaps God will give us a

new hunger for God’s Word; perhaps God will plant

in us a new longing for the Incarnational touch of

the Son of God in the church community and the

sacraments of our faith. Perhaps, in our stillness,

what we will hear from God is simply the assurance

the angel shared with Mary, the assurance we need

now more than ever: Greetings, favored one, the

Lord is with you.

12

Editor’s Note: In my many decades of attending church on Palm Sundays, I’ve

frequently seen folks fashioning their palm fronds into crosses. This palm cross

carries a lot of symbolism, combining Christ’s triumphant entry to Jerusalem,

where people jubilantly waved their palm branches, his Good Friday crucifixion,

and his triumphant Easter resurrection. For the journal’s Palm Sunday’s sermon,

I chose one by the Episcopal Chaplain at Cornell University that reminds us that

Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday: the Passion of Christ, from the Latin

patior meaning “to suffer or endure,” refers to the short final days of Christ’s

life, including Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, the Last Supper, Christ’s agony in the

garden of Gethsemane, where he prays while his disciples sleep (Matthew 26:42

KJV, “‘O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it,

thy will be done,’” and he says this prayer three times, each time checking on the three disciples, who remain asleep), his

arrest, crucifixion, and Holy Saturday, “when the crucified Christ visited the dead while his body lay in the tomb of

Joseph of Arimathea” (Episcopal Dictionary, 251).

The Reverend Taylor Daynes began her position as Episcopal Chaplain to Cornell

University in August of 2018. She’s also a published poet and brings her passion for all forms of creative expression to her work with the Episcopal Church at Cornell (ECC). Before her priestly

ordination, Taylor served as deacon at St. Paul’s in Rochester, NY, and as Community

Engagement Coordinator at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD. She was also an

instructor in the Creative Writing department at Johns Hopkins University and worked with

several other community arts and social justice organizations. She continues to serve HOPE

Baltimore in an advisory capacity. She studied Anglican Theology at the University of Toronto,

holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Johns Hopkins, an MA in religion from Yale Divinity

School, and a BA in English from Vanderbilt University. She lives in the Episcopal chaplain’s

residence on North Campus with her husband, Will, and their cat, Charles.

Two Extreme Gospel Readings that Unite Palm

Sunday with Passion Sunday

by the Rev. Taylor Daynes, Episcopal Chaplain,

Cornell University, April 5, 2020

This is a day noted for the extremes of

emotions its readings inspire: the two readings from

the Gospel of Matthew [Year A].1

In the first, with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem,

seated on the back of an unbroken beast of burden,

his pathway paved with cut greens and cloaks, Jesus

is triumphant. The people cry out, “‘Hosanna!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the

Lord!’”—greeting him as a king and savior in

Matthew 21.

But soon, very soon, a mere five chapters

later, the story progresses in Matthew 26.

When we meet Jesus again, Pilate is

interrogating him. And very soon after, he is being

led to Golgotha and breathing his last on the cross.

The seeming incongruity of the emotions

associated with these events, hearing about them

just minutes apart —the joyous excitement of

processing into the city, the bitterness of arrest and

crucifixion—has flummoxed countless faithful

people over the generations. I preached about this

strangeness myself some time ago.

And yet, in 2020-2021, we are a people

harder to flummox than we were a year or two ago.

As a society, we have experienced a dramatic shift

from one way of being in the world in which, even

if we were not happy, at least we felt it was

somewhat predictable. Seemed somewhat

predictable until, well … it didn’t. Until everything

was canceled. Until we had to travel to get home

before borders closed. Until we started learning of

friends and family members who were ill, but

whom we would not be allowed to visit in the

hospital. Until Zoom became our second nature….

Until we started fearing for our livelihoods or the

livelihoods of our neighbors.

All that took place within relatively short

time frame. Given what we’ve experienced—what

we know of how quickly one way of life and one set

of expectations can give way to another—the

pairing of the first Gospel reading from Matthew

and the second doesn’t feel quite so incongruous on

Palm Sunday 2020-2021.

13

And indeed, perhaps this dramatic

transformation in our lives is actually helping us

understand Jesus’ story a little better than we did

before.

He enters Jerusalem, all potential energy,

vim and vigor: full of force. His first stop once

inside the city gates is the temple, where he

overturns the money changers’ tables, calling out

their hypocrisy and greed.

And yet, planted within him already is the

seed of who he is and what he will face before long.

It’s a seed that has been in him since birth:

throughout his ministry he has been predicting what

he will become. But here in Jerusalem, that seed is

finally beginning to sprout and take shape. All that

had been possible for detractors and skeptics to

ignore before now—rumors about a great healer and

teacher in Galilee, a son of David, a Messiah—like

green shoots rising in the spring, are suddenly

visible to one and all in the great city of Jerusalem.

There is no denying anymore that alive in

this holy man is a truth that is poison to hypocrisy,

poison to greed, poison to exploitation: a truth about

loving our neighbor, a truth about protecting the

vulnerable and taking on their suffering as our own,

a truth about God’s welcome that does not exclude

anyone who seeks it.

And as his seed begins to proliferate, one of

its fruits is to reveal the hypocrisy of the world it is

growing into. Just as it is the seed of our hope and

our resurrection, it is also the seed of Jesus’ death

on the cross.

I believe that on the Palm Sunday during

COVID-19, we are also witnessing a small,

seemingly innocent seed shoot up and spread. A lot

of what coronavirus has revealed to us we already

knew. We were aware of the voice crying out in the

wilderness: all is not well in the world! Our

neighbors are suffering and dying simply because

they are poor!

But now, this truth is here. It is at our

doorstep. It is growing and spreading in our

Jerusalem. We are feeling its consequences deep in

our bones, in our loneliness and our anxiety as we

remain within our Covid-bubbles and wear our

masks when we step outside.

But what this truth brings is not just the risk

of death by disease. It is also bringing the

possibility of our salvation.

We do not have Jesus here with us in body

to die for us on the cross in 2020-2021— not

literally. That has already happened.

Today, today on this Palm Sunday that is

half triumph, half devastation, we have the chance

to be Christ’s body. To foster and love the little

seed in him that is also in us and that says, “This is

not right!”

It is not right that protections for the poor

should be cut in a time when millions have lost their

jobs and their health insurance. It is not right that

large corporations and their beneficiaries should

prosper while others die. It is not right.

This is what Jesus says when he rides

triumphantly into Jerusalem. This truth—the truth

that is good news to the poor and fearful to the

rich—is what he stands for to the end of his life, and

what he does not stop standing for in the

resurrection. It is the truth that unites Palm Sunday

with Passion Sunday. It is why we tell both these

stories on the same day.

Just as we give him glory, laud, and honor2

in his triumph at the gates of the city, we must also

lament his death on the cross just outside that same

city. And like so, in his glory, laud, and honor, we

cannot let our march into the city end in death. We

must believe in the resurrection. We must work for

it: in faith, through faith. And by exercising our

voices.

This is my prayer for us on this Palm-

Passion Sunday: That we may truly believe that

these strange times we are living in are not just a

trial to be gotten through, but a chance at

resurrection: a psychological resurrection. These

times offer a chance to envision a world in which

the forces that have left so many miserable and

vulnerable are not our death sentence. That our

world’s resurrection can be a hopeful one.

It will not come easily. We know that much.

But as Jesus loves us, and as we love Jesus, we

must cultivate the audacity to believe that out of

devastation can arise something truly wonderful.

The seed that seemed dormant can be the first fruit

of the new world.

_____________ Editor’s Endnotes 1 For Liturgical Year B, we will hear on Palm / Passion

Sunday readings from Mark, recounting Christ’s arrival in

Jerusalem, betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. 2 The Book of Common Prayer notes that on Palm Sunday the

hymn “All glory, laud, and honor” (Hymnal 1982, 154-55)

may be sung (271).

14

The Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer was ordained the fourth bishop of the Diocese of

Central Florida on March 24, 2012. In Central Florida, major focuses of his

ministry include raising up the next generation of lay and clergy leadership and

looking at our community neighborhoods and facing the missionary challenge that

is before us. He currently serves as the National Chaplain of the Daughters of the

King and is an active member in the Communion Partner Bishops. Before being

called to Central Florida, Brewer served Episcopal Churches in NYC and Paoli, PA.

He was an assistant professor of pastoral theology at Trinity Episcopal School for

Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, from 1992 to 1996. For 16 years previously,

he had served parishes in the Diocese of Central Florida. Ordained a deacon at St.

John’s Episcopal Church, Lynchburg, Virginia, and ordained a priest at All Saints

Episcopal Church, Winter Park, Florida, he has published articles in The Anglican Digest, with articles

appearing regularly from 1985–2007. Other publications include Bible Reading Fellowship: Journey Through

the Word Series and The Coming of the Lord, Second Corinthians. Bishop Brewer earned his B.A. from

Lynchburg College, Virginia, where he received the Hugh M. Burleigh Award for Outstanding Ministerial

Student in 1973. He received his M.Div. from The Virginia Theological Seminary in 1976. Married for almost

forty years, Bishop Brewer and his wife Laura Lee actively engage in their hospitality ministry with regular

clergy dinners and parish visitations. They are the proud parents of five sons and four grandchildren. Bishop

Brewer enjoys spending time with family and friends, taking road trips, reading British murder mysteries,

cooking, listening to contemporary Christian and classical music, and feeling sand between his toes on the

beach.

The Three Grace-Gifts of Maundy Thursday

by The Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer,

Bishop of Central Florida

Posted April 9, 2020, Bishop’s Blog

[http://cfdiocese.org/bishopsblog/the-3-grace-

gifts-of-maundy-thursday/]

Not long ago, I was sending an email to a

friend of mine. He is a young Reformed minister,

and for him, the whole occasion of Maundy

Thursday is foreign—at least to his branch of that

tradition. So, I sent him an email describing a

little bit about what we would normally do when

we gather for this special service.

I said, “This is a solemn, holy, and

sometimes invasive time. Solemn because we

proclaim the Lord’s death. Holy because it is set

apart in time to ponder and give thanks for the

extraordinary mysteries of Christ’s sacrificial

atonement. And invasive because I am never

invited to ponder these things at a distance; I am

drawn in.”

Let’s look at three grace-gifts Maundy

Thursday brings us.

A Sense of Intimacy

In fact, if there were ever a time when this

Episcopalian would ever believe in Calvin’s

irresistible grace, it would be on Maundy

Thursday. And it’s because I have almost no

power to say no to God’s invitation. Even though

it can feel almost frightening, I want to be drawn

in all the more.

Yes, God, get between my toes, when my

feet are washed: touch with your tenderness those

very sensitive places in me, bringing peace and

order; create resting places between the

unanswered questions, and above all, show me

yourself.

The good news, which like a strong rope

pulls me into Maundy Thursday, is that I know in

advance that I will be welcomed by God to His

table. As the hymn says, “Nothing in my hands I

bring, simply to the cross, I cling.”1 But knowing

15

that doesn’t necessarily carry enough draw to

open all of my heart in the way I just described.

You see, the temptation here is to enter

into the meaning of Maundy Thursday only

partially. And of course, that’s better than nothing

at all. But the intimacy of what typically happens

here (different this year in our season of social

distancing) in the washing of the feet and even in

the receiving of the bread and wine, where we

ingest into the deepest part of our system that

which we say literally, communicates to us the

very mystery of the presence of Christ: well,

that’s invasive, isn’t it? And yet what will we

miss the most this year? That sense of

invasiveness, that intimacy.

It’s certainly more intimate than almost

anything we even begin to know about human

relationships. So, it’s a leap to go from that place

where I feel like a part of my heart is protected

and to come into a place where I’m being invited

to lay down my arms, to lay down my guard.

Christina Rossetti, the famous Christian

poet, puts it this way: “Am I a stone and not a

sheep/ That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy

cross/ To number drop by drop/ Thy blood’s slow

loss, And yet not weep?/ Not so those women

loved / Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee /

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly/ Not so the

thief was moved/ Not so the Sun and Moon/

Which hid their faces in the starless sky/ A horror

of great darkness at broad noon—I, only I / Yet

give not o’er/ But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd

of the flock/ Greater than Moses, turn and look

once more/ And smite this rock.”2

A Time of Stillness

“This rock”: that place inside of me that

still keeps God at a distance. And I don’t know

about you, but the way I know that place exists in

my life is because of the absence of stillness.

You see, if there is within me the capacity

to be still, that means there is within me the

capacity to contemplate, and if there is within me

the capacity to contemplate, that means there is

within me the capacity, by God’s mercy, to

receive a guest into that silent place. The guest, of

course, is a permanent resident: God.

And there is a part of me that actually

really likes having that onslaught of information,

that sense of, “It’s all right here.” And even in

this season of the coronavirus (maybe especially

because of this season) there’s multitasking, and

there are things to do—the very nature and

character of my life. And I’m sure many of our

habits are actually cultivated against developing

that kind of inner stillness, that contemplation. It

becomes, in fact, a defense from the deepest

things that God might desire to reveal to us, to

impart into us, to allow us to begin to experience

a kind of inner, still tranquility that makes room

for the companionship of His presence. It’s the

experience of, “Lo, I am with you always, even to

the end of the age” [Matthew 28:20].

Dutch-Catholic Priest and Professor Henri

Nouwen writes it this way, in a little book of

devotionals called Bread for the Journey. He said,

“We may think about stillness in contrast to our

noisy world. But perhaps we can go further and

think about an inner stillness, even while we carry

on business, work, music, construction, the

organization of meetings. It is important to keep

stillness in the marketplace and not just in the

monastery.”3

This still place is where God speaks. It is

the place from which also we can speak in a

healing way to the people that we meet in this

very busy world. Without that still space, we start

spinning, we become driven people, running all

over the place without much real direction. But

with stillness, God can be our gentle guide, even

in the midst of the high demand of life, and the

16

realization that I don’t have all the stillness I so

desperately need.

A Place of Security

And so, as the Rosetti poem says, “smite

this rock.” Because what I’m actually being

invited into is a deep place of security, to come to

the table and to receive “the sacrament of his

body and blood,” as the collect says, as a rightful

pledge of our inheritance. In other words, the

Eucharist is meant to communicate, to impart into

us and allow us to experience a tremendous place

of inner security, where we know that we belong,

and that God is committed to never letting us

go—and out of that, even a place where our

conscience is eased. Because all of us have things

we do wrong, even if it’s in the spending and

misspending of the things God has given us. It is

here that we are reaffirmed again not just as

welcomed, but actually cleansed, forgiven

people.

It is here that in that place of knowing that

we are his that we gain new boldness in prayer

because we know we have access to God, and that

access is not somehow qualified or quantified

based on what I do. Grace opens the door for me

to come in. I can come as I am to that table and

know it is in that place that God needs me, even

though metaphorically, or perhaps even literally,

my hands are dirty. And it is in that deep place of

security that I am reminded that I am literally

kept, protected, in the power of God. As Paul

writes, “Nothing can separate us from the love of

God that is in Christ Jesus” (see Rom. 8:38-39).

You see, if all I know is this reassurance of

security, I still don’t have an actual experience of

much of any of it, much less a day-to-day belief

in it. And so, I need more than ever to be able to

come and, in essence, allow God, once again in

the era of social distancing, to remind me of the

willingness of a brother or a sister to wash

between my toes. I need him to show me by that

action that even as Jesus washed the feet of his

disciples, knowing that they would betray him, so

also sisters and brothers in Christ have that

willingness to wash each other’s feet. We do this

knowing that we belong to Jesus, knowing that

there will be times when we betray him, knowing

that nothing can separate us from the love of God

that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, knowing we need

his work in us to strike the rock of our hearts. We

do this knowing he will give us whatever is

necessary to pull down the defenses at least long

enough that we might again be refreshed,

reminded of whose we are and that we are more

than the sum total of our mistakes, and that his

love will never let us go.

Will you enter into that? Would you pray

for God to pull down those places of protection

that you have created, that I have created, that we

might commune with him, not just receive from

him, but commune with him? And allow Maundy

Thursday, perhaps especially this year when

circumstances prevent us from gathering as his

disciples, to remind you of the pledge, the pledge

that God makes to us and reminds us of again and

again, the pledge of eternal life: that we are his,

and he will never let us go. Amen.

___________________

Editor’s Endnotes 1 Bishop Brewer cites the first two lines in stanza three of

“Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” in The United Methodist

Hymnal, Number 361.

2 See in the next article of this journal a discussion of

Rossetti’s poem, “Good Friday,” by journal editor Joan Ray,

PhD (English, Brown), Professor Emerita of English, UCCS.

3 Henry J. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of

Wisdom and Faith. Harper, 1997.

35 17

As you may have noticed in “The Three Grace-Gifts of Maundy Thursday,”

Bishop Brewer quotes the poem “Good Friday” by Victorian (r. 1837-1901)

British poet Christina Rosetti (1830-1894). I wrote about this poem in an

earlier issue of the journal. But I am reprinting my thoughts about the poem

here because of the Bishop’s using it. I’ve also updated some of my earlier

ideas about the poem in this essay.

Christina Rossetti’s “Good Friday”:

A Nuanced Presentation of Christian Faith

by Joan Klingel Ray, PhD (English)

The Book of Common Prayer advises us to

observe Lent “by self-examination and repentance;

by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading

and meditating on God’s holy Word” (265).

Indeed, Good Friday should be a day of spiritual

intimacy for us with Jesus because it marks the day

when all Christian churches mourn Christ’s

crucifixion. But what happens to the Christian who

on Good Friday cannot find it in her heart to mourn,

whose heart is as tearless and emotionless as a

stone?

Literary history regards Christina Rossetti

(1830-1894) as one of England’s great religious

poets. In “Good Friday,” the poet imagines herself

standing tearlessly, unmoved, beneath the cross on

which Jesus hangs and asks, “Am I a stone?” Even

as the poem’s speaker sounds desperate in the first

four words, Rossetti was a deeply religious woman,

committed to High Church Anglicanism.

Readers have long observed Rossetti’s debt

to 17th-century poet and Anglican priest George

Herbert, considered by many to be the greatest

religious poet in British literature. So, it is no

coincidence that her poem “Good Friday” reminds

me of his poem “The Altar,” where we read the

following lines:

A HEART alone

Is such a stone,

As nothing but

Thy pow'r doth cut.

That a stony heart is a rigid heart, an

unimpressionable heart, destitute of spiritual life, is

seen in the Bible. For example, in Ezekiel 36:26, we

read, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new

spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the

heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart

of flesh.” In Romans 2:29, Paul states that “real

circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual

and not literal.”

We now turn to Rossetti, who, like Herbert,

imagines her speaker’s heart as a stone, about which

she is highly self-conscious.

18

“Good Friday”

Am I a stone, and not a sheep, 1

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved 4

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon 8

Which hid their faces in a starless sky.

A horror of great darkness at broad noon –

I, only I.

Yet give not o’er 12

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock. 16

The speaker imagines herself on Good

Friday standing beneath Christ on the cross,

wondering how, without shedding a single tear, she

can still count the drops of blood slowly dripping

from his body. This imagery of Jesus’ blood

drizzling from his agonized, wounded body reminds

us of the gruesome, painfully slow process of

execution by crucifixion: the crucified body hangs

and slowly dies of asphyxiation, blood loss, and

sheer exhaustion. Witnessing this scene should

elicit tears in the observer, particularly as the

observer, a Christian, knows that Christ on the

Cross is suffering and dying for her sins. But our

speaker’s eyes remain dry, for she is hard-hearted.

Yet the speaker also suffers in her own way even as

Christ suffers on the cross. For the Victorian lady

was expected to keep her emotions in check—even

at this scene of physical agony.

Jesus hanged on the cross for six hours

before saying his last words, “‘Father, into your

hands I commend my spirit’” (Luke 23:46) and then

expiring. She questions if she is a stone, which, of

course, cannot weep, rather than a sheep, a follower

of Jesus. And the implicit answer is yes: she is as

hard-hearted as a stone and not one of Christ’s

sheep or followers.

The poet will now proceed with a cast of

various Biblical figures. She begins: “Not so”

“those women” (l.5) whom we read about in the

Gospels: they “bewail” and “lament” Jesus as they

follow him to the crucifixion (Luke 23:26-27).

Unlike the speaker, “those women” are crying

uncontrollably, although Jesus instructs them about

the object of the weeping: “But Jesus turning to

them said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping

for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your

children’” (Luke 23:38).1 The loyal Mary

Magdalene was also the first to arrive at the tomb,

and finding it empty, “stood weeping outside” (John

20:13). Perhaps our hard-hearted speaker worries

that lacking the other women’s “exceeding grief,”

she will not witness the resurrected Lord. Our

speaker feels spiritually insufficient because of her

unresponsiveness to the crucifixion.

In line 6, she remembers Peter, who denied

his Lord three times (Luke 22:54-62). Although

Peter told Jesus at the Last Supper, “‘Lord, I am

ready to go with you both to prison and to death’”

(22:33), Jesus foretold accurately, “‘I tell you,

Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you

deny three times that you know me.’” When Jesus is

arrested, Peter, indeed, denies knowing Jesus three

19

times. Remembering what Jesus told him, “[Peter]

went out and wept bitterly” (22:62), overcome with

guilt. Unlike our speaker’s, Peter’s hard heart

softened to weep in remorse, feeling guilty for his

lack of devotion to Christ. Even one of the thieves

who was hanging on the cross next to Jesus

recognized Jesus’ innocence, as well as his own and

the other “malefactor’s” guilt: “‘We indeed [hang]

justly for we receive the due reward of our deeds:

but this man hath done nothing amiss.’” He then

penitently asks Jesus, “‘Jesus, remember me when

you come into your kingdom’” (Luke: 23:41-42), to

which Jesus replies, “‘Today thou shalt be with me

in paradise.’”

Even the sun and moon, inanimate objects,

respond to Christ’s crucifixion: “Not so the Sun and

Moon,” she laments, compared to her unresponsive

self. These objects, the moon (a rock) and the sun (a

star) cannot bear to witness Christ’s suffering and

death. So, a solar eclipse occurs—the moon casts a

shadow over the earth—and the sky becomes dark

with sadness. “I, only I”—emphasizing her feelings

of solitariness and isolation—stand at the cross,

emotionless, without a tear, like a stone. She singles

herself out for failing to grieve

But in the final four lines, our speaker

changes her attitude (signaled by the transitional

word “Yet”) and asks the Lord, the Good Shepherd,

for help: “Yet give not o’er [i.e., don’t give up on

me] / But seek Thy sheep [look after me], true

Shepherd of the flock” (12-13). Our speaker

recognizes that she is, in fact, a lost sheep—

something she denied in line 1. The poet clearly

recalls Ezekiel, where the Lord says, “‘My sheep

were scattered, they wandered over all the

mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were

scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to

search or seek for them’” (Ezekiel 34:6). The

speaker asks the Lord, the true Shepherd, to seek

her.

Our speaker finally realizes that the power

to smite or break her heart belongs only to Jesus:

“Greater than Moses, turn and look once more /

And smite a rock.” Jesus is greater than Moses, who

when there was no water for the Israelites or their

livestock, at God’s direction, “lifted up his hand,

and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the

water came out abundantly, and the congregation

drank, and their beasts also” (Numbers 20:11

KJV).2 Thus, Jesus can smite or break the rock that

is her Victorian heart, causing it to shed the tears—

drops of water—she heretofore could not.

As Jesus states in John 10:14-15: “‘I am the

good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known

of mine. / As the Father knoweth me, even so know

I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.’”

Let us remember to open our hearts to the teachings

of the Good Shepherd, remembering as well that

Christ loves us no matter how perplexed we may be.

As the Psalmist states in 51:17, “The sacrifices of

God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite

heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

_____________________

Endnotes 1 Matthew 27:55-56 states that many women were

“watching from a distance,” specifically citing Mary

Magdalene; Mary, the mother of James and Joses, and

Salome, the mother of Zebedee’s sons. Mark 15:40-41 also

mentions many women, including “Mary Magdalene, Mary

the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome”

viewing the cross from a distance. John states that that

several women and one disciple stood “near the cross,” and

that Jesus spoke to them from the cross. The women are

identified as Jesus’ mother Mary; his mother’s sister, Mary,

the wife of Clophas, and Mary Magdalene. 2 See also Exodus 17:5-6 (KJV) “And the Lord said unto

Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the

elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the

river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before

thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the

rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people

may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of

Israel.”

35 20

A Meditation on Good Friday:

Where Innocence Dies Young

by the Rev. Jeremiah Williamson, Rector,

Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

There is a sadness here—in this space we

call Good Friday. It hangs in the air, an innocence

so brutally assaulted by the pain and the struggle,

the envy and the prejudice, the hatred and the

violence of our world. And we pray that it will pass;

we pray for the pain to be overcome by God's

Easter answer. And as we wait, we find ourselves

confronted by the harsh reality that in this world

innocence too often dies young. And I am reminded

of a poem a young black optometrist, Frank Horne,

wrote in the 1920's, called On Seeing Two Brown

Boys in a Catholic Church1:

It is fitting that you be here,

Little brown boys

With Christ-like eyes

And curling hair.

Look you on yonder crucifix

Where He hangs nailed and pierced

With head hung low

And eyes all blind with blood that drips

From a thorny crown...

Look you well,

You shall know this thing.

Judas’ kiss shall burn your cheek

And you will be denied

By your Peter -

And Gethsemane...

You shall know full well...

Gethsemane...

You, too, will suffer under Pontius Pilate

And feel the rugged cut of rough-hewn cross

Upon your surging shoulder -

They will spit in your face

And laugh...

They will nail you up twixt thieves

And gamble for your garments.

And in this you will exceed God

For on this earth

You shall know Hell -

O little brown boys

With Christ-like eyes

And curling hair,

It is fitting that you be here.

There is a sadness here—in this space we

call Good Friday. That man on the cross, he was

once a child, too: like me and you and those little

brown boys in Horne's poem. For a moment, he was

new with innocent eyes and a simple, unblemished

beauty—worried only about milk and love and

feeling the warmth of human skin. For a moment

that beauty is untouched by the pain and the

struggle, untouched by the envy and the prejudice,

untouched by the hatred and the violence of our

world.

And for a moment it seems as if any future

is possible, as if the possibilities are limitless. And

we like to believe that. But not every parent gets to

see a world of possibility laid out before their

children. Sometimes all a parent's love can muster is

a hope of survival. Because there are places from

which too few ever get out: too few get out of the

old deep South; too few get out of the neighborhood

plagued by violence and poverty and gangs; too few

get out of the war-torn village; too few get out from

under the weight of systemic racism and

oppression; too few get out without food or water or

shelter. Sometimes survival is the big dream.

Because sometimes all of that innocence is born

into a hostile environment where innocence dies

young.

Some mothers have to look at their babies

with an unquenchable sense of dread. Jesus' mother

was one of those mothers. Her baby was hunted

from the day he was born. Her baby was an exile.

21

Her baby inspired prophecies—devastating

prophecies: This child is destined for the falling and

rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be

opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be

revealed. And Mary, please know, a sword will

pierce your own soul too. So much innocence born

into a hostile environment where innocence dies

young. Here is my paraphrase of Frank Horne’s

poem,2 taking us to Good Friday:

Mother Mary's little brown boy hangs nailed and

pierced

With head hung low

And eyes all blind with blood that drips

From a thorny crown...

And today we weep. And we mourn—

because his beauty hangs so disfigured, broken by

the pain and the struggle, by the envy and the

prejudice, by the hatred and the violence of our

world. And we weep. And we mourn—because he

wasn't the last to be so broken. And we weep. And

we mourn—because in this very moment a

beautifully innocent child is born into a hostile

environment where innocence dies young.

But as we weep and mourn, we also wait. In

the pain and the struggle, in the envy and the

prejudice, in the hatred and the violence, in the

shadow of the Cross: we wait for God's Easter

answer.

________________

Endnotes 1 3000 Years of Black Poetry, An Anthology. Ed. Alan Lomax and Raoul Abdul. NY: Dodd and Mead, 1970: 212.

2 Editor’s Note: Frank Smith Horne (1899 Brooklyn, NYC-

1974), a graduate of The City College of NY (B.S., CCNY,

1921) and the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology

(1923), practiced optometry in Harlem, NYC; he was also a

poet, college dean, and housing official when in 1936, he was

called to be a member of President Franklin Roosevelt’s

“Black Cabinet” as Assistant Director of the Division of

Negro Affairs, National Youth Administration in Washington,

D.C. As a poet, he participated in the Harlem Renaissance—

an intellectual revival of African American art and literature

centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, during the

1920’s. His “On Seeing Two Brown Boys in Catholic Church”

first appeared in the December 1925 issue of Opportunity: A

Journal of Negro Life, published by the National Urban

League. For this Editor’s Endnote I consulted Nikka B. Carter,

“Horne, Frank S.” Amistad Research Center

http://amistadresearchcenter.tulane.edu/archon/?p=creators/cre

ator&id=70? Retrieved 1.15.2021. In addition, I examined an

excellent undergraduate History thesis by one Matthew Luther

Ridley, class of 2019, Haverford College, Why The Black

Magazine Needed Harlem’s Literary Scene, pp. 24-25, where I

read Mr. Ridley’s thoughtful idea: “Another theme that is

prevalent across Harlem Renaissance works within these

magazines includes the transformation of struggle, which

captures the ways in which black suffering can be viewed as a

concept greater than itself in order to serve some larger

purpose . . . An opportunity to see this theme shine occurs in

Frank Horne’s poem that debuted in the December 1925 issue

of The Opportunity, ‘On Seeing Two Brown Boys in a

Catholic Church.’”

https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/handle/10

066/21592/2019RidleyM.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Retrieved 1.15.2021.

Frank Smith Horne

35 22

Editor’s Note: The Evolving Study of Jesus’

Appearance

As a participant in the second year of

Education for Ministry (EfM) at our church, my

reading of the NRSV edition of the New Testament

is supplemented by a lively, informative textbook

used in numerous university theology courses: Mark

Allan Powell, PhD, Introducing the New Testament:

A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey, 2nd

ed., Baker Academic, 2018.1 Powell informs us

about the historical Jesus, “the figure of Jesus who

emerges from an analysis of sources in accord with

generally accepted principles of historical science”

(562).

A few years ago, I read on my own a

provocative, well-researched history book by

Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of

Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in

America, University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

This scholarly, yet highly readable work, traces how

the image of Christ as a white man has been used to

justify white supremacy in our country, including

slavery, America’s “original sin.” Professor Harvey

is a colleague in the History Department at UCCS.

The all-time most frequently

reproduced image of Jesus as a white

European is not from the palette of an

Italian Renaissance painter, but from

a commercial artist in Chicago who

painted it in 1940. Warner Sallman

(1892-1968) created his famous

“Head of Christ,” (right) originally as

a charcoal sketch for the cover of the

Covenant Companion (1924), the

magazine for the Evangelical

Covenant Church. In 1940, at the

request of students at the North Park

Theological Seminary (the only graduate seminary

of the Evangelical Covenant Church, Chicago),

Sallman produced an oil painting version, which

was soon widely reproduced and commercially

marketed. When viewed in color, the painting

shows Jesus with a suntanned (from walking,

working, and preaching in mostly rural areas)

Caucasian complexion, dark blond wavy hair

cascading to his shoulders, blue eyes, and an Anglo-

Saxon profile. Some viewers interpret the light

reflected on his forehead as a Communion goblet

and wafer.2 Sallman, of course, was by no means

the first artist to present an imagined Jesus as a

white European. But his is by far the most

frequently reproduced in millions of iterations:

Bible illustrations, prayer cards, and prints in

persons’ homes and churches. Warner Church

Supplies’ subsidiary Warner Press is the owner “of

the most recognized images of Christ worldwide,”

i.e., by Warner Sallman—"the most recognized,”

but not the most historically or ethnically accurate

(https://www.warnerpress.org/churchsupplies/warne

r-sallman-art-collection.html).

In her well researched What Did Jesus Look

Like? (London: T&T Clark: an imprint of

Bloomsbury Publishing: 2018), the distinguished

scholar Joan E. Taylor3 observes of the Sallman

portrait, “While it is a beautiful image, it has

nothing to do with any evidence about what Jesus

looked like, and—like so many other paintings

[showing “the ubiquitous European Jesus”]—it

mispresents his ethnicity” (n.p.

Kindle edition, Figure 9, final

chapter). We know that Mary, the

earthly mother of Jesus, was a young

Jewish girl, raised “in a small town in

Palestinian Galilee.”4 Given Jesus’

Middle Eastern human origins,

archeologists, historians,

anthropologists, and scholars in other

disciplines continue to study the life

and appearance of the historical

Jesus.

For example, Anna

Smartwood House (PhD, Princeton University),

Assistant Professor of Art History at the University

of South Carolina at Columbia, specializes in

Renaissance Baroque art, especially “the evolving

image of Jesus Christ from AD 1350 to 1600.” As

Dr. House observes, “Some of the best-known

depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s

23

‘Last Supper’ to Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ in

the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this

period.” Both masterpieces depict a fair-skinned

Jesus, and Michelangelo’s Jesus is quite muscular.

She continues, “As Europeans colonized

increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a

European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries

established painting schools that taught new

converts Christian art in a European mode.” 5

This short journal essay is by no means

intended to offer an extensive account of how Jesus

came to be misrepresented as a Caucasian male.6

But as scholarly research on the historical Jesus

proceeds, clergy have also asked for a more

accurate image of Jesus, including “Justin Welby,

the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the

Church of England, [who] has said the church

should reconsider its portrayal of Jesus as a White

man.”7

In her article in the BBC News Magazine,

titled like her book, “What Did Jesus Really Look

Like?” Professor Taylor observes that a Jesus fresco

in the Old Church on Crete Island, Greece, shows

Jesus with blue eyes; however, “Jesus was unlikely

to have blue eyes” as a man of the Middle East. 8

Indeed, even to my casual eye, the classical

features of the Jesus depicted in the ancient Greek

fresco in the Old Church in Crete are more

reminiscent of a young Prince Philip of Greece than

a Middle Eastern Christ. Notice, below, especially

the Grecian straight nose with narrow nostrils.

Powell’s textbook presents an image of

Jesus that I find especially convincing as Figure

4.4., p. 87:

This “reconstructed head of Christ” was

produced by Richard Neave,9 a forensic

scientist and medical artist at the

University of Manchester. Dr. Neave

worked with three skulls of Semitic

Galilean men from the first century CE

[i.e., AD] to compose a reasonable

facsimile of what Jesus actually looked

like. Neave further suggests that Jesus

would weigh 110 pounds. He likely had a

beard because this was customary for

teachers [ed. note: rabbi means a Jewish

teacher], but he would have worn his

curly hair roughly cropped because

shoulder-length hair on men was

considered disgraceful (1 Cor. 11:14).

Neave’s image of Jesus discussed in

Powell’s textbook was shown in a three-part BBC

series broadcast as Son of God (also known

as Jesus: The Complete Story and Jesus: The Real

Story) in 2001. The final episode (#3) of the series

featured

a model of a Galilean man [created

by forensic anthropologist Dr.

Richard Neave, who was] working

on the basis of an actual skull found

in the region. He did not claim it was

Jesus’s face. It was simply meant to

prompt people to consider Jesus as

being a man of his time and place,

since we are never told he looked

distinctive. (see endnote 8)

Professor Taylor’s work also rebuts the

cleanshaven Jesus that is so familiar to us: “When

early Christians [i.e., in frescos] were not showing

Christ as heavenly ruler, they showed Jesus as an

actual man like any other: beardless and short-

24

haired.” She adds that “perhaps as a kind of

wandering sage, Jesus would have had a beard, for

the simple reason that he did not go to barbers….

So, Jesus, as a philosopher with the ‘natural’ look,

might well have had a short beard . . . but his hair

was probably not very long.” Taylor also observes,

“That Jesus was a Jew (or Judaean) is certain in that

it is found repeated in diverse literature, including

in the letters of Paul. And, as the Letter to the

Hebrews [7:14] states: ‘It is clear that our Lord was

descended from Judah.’. . So how do we imagine a

Jew at this time, a man ‘about 30 years of age when

he began,’ according to Luke chapter 3 [verse 23]?”

(see endnote 8).

Here is the image produced by Dr. Neave. You can read

about the BBC series in detail at the following link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_God_(TV_series)

Neave’s computer-generated reconstructed face,

based on anthropological findings, certainly

presents a more accurate image of Christ than the

fair skinned, Europeanized, blue-eyed imaginative

portraits of the Lord with which we have long been

familiar. I find Dr. Neave’s and Dr. Taylor’s

research to be provocative and convincing. I hope

that interested readers will consult some of the

resources provided in this journal article to re-

imagine Jesus.

_______________________

Endnotes 1 Mark Powell, PhD (Union Theological Seminary) is Robert

and Phyllis Leatherman Professor of New Testament at Trinity

Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.

2 David Morgan. “Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of

Warren Sallman” Religion and American Culture: A Journal

of Interpretation and Culture. vol. 3 winter 1993: 24-97.

https://www-jstor-

org.libproxy.uccs.edu/stable/1123957?seq=6#metadata_info_t

ab_contents

Retrieved 1.11.2021.

3 Joan E. Taylor (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is Professor

of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s

College, London.

4 Sister M. Danielle Peters. “All About Mary: The Jewish

Identity of Mary” https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/j/jewish-

identity-of-mary.php Retrieved 1.12.2021.

5 Anna Smartwood House. “The long history of how Jesus

came to resemble a white European”

https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2020/07/conversation_white_jesus.p

hp#.X_5wKS9h3Wc Retrieved 1.11.2021.

6 For a readable account of popular Christianity in America,

see Charles H. Lippy. Being Religious, American Style: A

History of Popular Religiosity in the United States. Westport,

CT: Praeger Publishers, an Imprint of Greenwood Publishing

Group. 1994.

https://archive.org/details/beingreligiousam0000lipp_i5f4/pag

e/n7/mode/2up Retrieved 1/12/2021. See also the excellent,

well-researched history by Professor Kristin Kobes du Mez,

PhD. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals

Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright Press, a

Division of W.W. Norton & Co.: 2020.

7 Sara Sparry, CNN. “Archbishop of Canterbury says portrayal

of Jesus as White should be reconsidered” June 27, 2020.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/27/uk/justin-welby-jesus-scli-

intl-gbr/index.html Retrieved 1.12.2021. See also Christena

Cleveland, “Why Jesus’ Skin Color Matters,” March 18, 2016

Christianity Today

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/april/why-jesus-

skin-color-matters.html Retrieved 1.6.2021.

8 Joan Taylor, “What did Jesus really look like?” BBC News,

Dec 24, 2015 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35120965

Retrieved 1/15/2021.

9 Dr. Richard Neave (1936-), formerly a forensic

anthropologist and illustrator in the Department of Medicine at

the University of Manchester, “has withdrawn from the

academic environment and is now working in partnership with

Denise Smith, a former colleague from the University of

Manchester, to develop these skills further within the private

sector using state-of-the-art computer-based technology in

conjunction with traditional imaging methods”

https://www.rn-ds-partnership.com/home.html Retrieved

1/17/2021.

35 25

Holy Saturday: A Day of Patience

by the Rev. Claire Elser, Curate

In Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth1

defines God’s patience as

His will…to allow another . . .

space and time for the

development of its own existence,

thus conceding to this existence a

reality side by side with His own,

and fulfilling His will toward this

other in such a way that He does

not suspend or destroy it as this

other but accompanies and

sustains it and allows it to develop

in freedom.

Holy Saturday is a day of patience. We have

made it through the grief and trauma of Maundy

Thursday and Good Friday and begin to turn toward

the joy of Easter Sunday, but we must wait.

We are not good at waiting—especially

waiting patiently. Even more so when, as we do

during the triduum period [i.e., see Editor’s Note:

Liturgical Season, first article in this journal:

meaning three days, Maundy Thursday, Good

Friday, and Holy Saturday, we are waiting to leave

anguish and mourning to enter into new hope and

the brightness of Easter morning. But we must wait,

which is why Holy Saturday is so important: it

gives us an opportunity and a framework in which

to wait. Waiting tends to bring up images of

doctor’s offices, airports, and the Department of

Motor Vehicles. Waiting when we know we need to

accomplish what we are there to accomplish, but it

feels like there is nothing happening while we wait.

We wait and wait until our name, boarding group,

or number is finally called and we can go about our

day. But that is not the waiting of Holy Saturday.

Waiting on Holy Saturday is the patience

Barth describes. It is developing our existence side

by side with God and accompanying Him through

the entire triduum. If one is baking bread, the rising

phase is the least exciting while it’s happening. You

cover the bowl, walk away, and wait. If you don’t

wait long enough, you get a dense brick that could

possibly taste all right, but its texture will be

unidentifiable as bread. You know that the yeast is

working, even though you can’t see what it is doing,

which makes the waiting much more bearable.

The knowledge of what Jesus is on Holy

Saturday is what makes this kind of waiting

difficult. On that first Holy Saturday, Jesus was

dead. But he is not dead on our Holy Saturday. The

first Holy Saturday was not Holy Saturday at all. It

was entirely a day of mourning. That is not so

anymore. I had a professor in seminary who was

fond of saying, “Jesus is not a groundhog,” by

which he meant that Jesus does not die and rise

again every year. The entirety of Lent, Holy Week,

and Easter matter because he is risen. He died once,

and he rose once and for all.

This makes Holy Saturday more, not less,

difficult because now we are stuck in a paradox,

partway in between death and life, not knowing

whether we are to feel sad or rejoice. The entire

liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer for Holy

Saturday is one page (page 283), and it does not

require much. The first sentence is simply a rubric

stating, “There is no celebration of the Eucharist on

this day.” I served at a parish where they did offer a

Holy Saturday liturgy, and the vast majority of

attendees were the flower guild, who stepped away

from their work preparing the church for Easter for

the 20-minute liturgy to remind themselves that it

was not yet Easter. The Collect of the Day, though,

offers us guidance for what we are to do:

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.

We are to rest with Christ. Anyone who has had

young children can affirm that resting is not a

passive activity. Waiting need not be passive either.

We can wait patiently with God, allowing God’s

will to be fulfilled and develop into freedom

35 26

Editor’s Endnote 1 Karl Barth [pronounced Bart] (1886-1968) was the most

important Swiss theologian of the 20th century, with an

influence far beyond his native country. One of the greatest

thinkers within the history of the Christian tradition, Barth was

the intellectual leader of the German Confessing Church, the

Protestants that resisted the Third Reich. Barth’s writings have

been translated into nearly every European language, as well

as Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Church

Dogmatics was Barth’s magnum opus, a lifetime work that

grew out of his university lectures. Pope Pius XII praised

Barth, a Protestant, as “the greatest theologian since Thomas

Aquinas.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Meditation for The Great Vigil of Easter

by the Rev. Debbie Womack, Deacon

I did not grow up in the Episcopal Church,

and prior to my first Easter Vigil in 1996, I had

never given much thought to what occurred

between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Mostly, it

was an uneventful church week in the

denominational traditions of my youth.

As a new Episcopal parishioner, my

beginning year was full of firsts. Even though I

would not be confirmed until February of 1998, I

remember that initial Easter Vigil with profound

clarity and that experience opened my heart and

mind to a deeper understanding of the power of

scripture, tradition, and liturgy.

That feeling, for me, returns each year as

believers gather at Episcopal churches, around the

world, “between sunset on Holy Saturday and

sunrise on Easter Morning” (BCP 284). Outside and

around a fire the priest blesses and lights the

Paschal Candle. This light symbolizes the Light of

Christ and his unending Resurrection Life. The light

of Christ is then shared with all present, and we

begin the ceremony of Christ’s light entering the

nave. Periodically, the deacon, or other clergy

member, stops and chants, “The Light of Christ.”

Then the people respond with “Thanks be to God.”

This occurs three times. This is the symbolic

movement of coming out of darkness into light. We

are thanking God for what that light represents. This

is God’s life-saving activity. Christ is life, the light

of the world, and darkness is death. One of my

favorite parts of the service is when the Exsultet is

chanted. Exsultet comes from the first word of the

Latin chant Exsúltet jam angélica turba cælórum,

meaning “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs

of angels. . .”

It tells us of the importance of this moment.

We are asked to join with the heavenly angels and

shout the joys of salvation and Christ’s victory over

death. The words in the chant wash over those

present and bring us to a place where we transcend

into a holy and sacred realm. The cantor repeats the

phrase, “This is the night,” which takes us on a

journey of historical remembrance of deliverance by

Christ from sin and restoration to a life of grace by

his passion. Then, we journey through scripture to

the moment when the tone shifts, and when we sing

with joy and exuberance the “Gloria!” The Alleluias

return and our penitential time is at end. What a

glorious celebration! As bells ring, and the church

lights brighten to full, Christ is Risen! The Lord is

Risen Indeed, Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

As we prepare our hearts and minds for this

Easter Vigil, I pray that you will remember your

first, or the most moving and powerful Easter Vigil

you have had. May it fill you with anticipation for

this year’s deliverance from the tomb.

35 27

Our highly respected and beloved Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Michael B.

Curry, preached at The Washington National Cathedral on Easter Sunday, April

12, 2020. We have happy memories of his visiting us at Grace and St. Stephen’s,

preaching from our pulpit, and patiently posing for parishioners’ seemingly endless

selfies with him on May 19, 2019. So, your editor thought it would be inspiring for

us to hear from Bishop Curry on Easter 2021. This sermon is taken by permission

from the Episcopal News Service, with thanks to Lynette Wilson, Managing Editor,

Episcopal News Service, for giving us her permission to reprint Bishop Curry’s

words.

https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/pressreleases/presiding-bishop-michael-currys-

easter-sermon-from-the-livestreamed-service-at-washington-national-cathedral-english-

spanish/

Easter Day, Year A: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, Acts

10:34-43 or Jeremiah 31:1-6, Colossians 3:1-

4 or Acts 10:34-43, John 20:1-18 or Matthew 28:1-

10

It’s Easter Anyway!

And now in the name of our loving, liberating and

life-giving God, father, son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is an old Easter hymn that says this:

“The strife is O’er.

The battle done.

The victory of life is won.

The sound of triumph has begun.

Alleluia!” [Blue Hymnal: 208]

The Bible, in John’s Gospel, chapter 20, verse 1,

says this:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still

dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb…

I

It’s Easter Sunday.

It doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t smell like it. It

doesn’t really feel like it.

But it’s Easter anyway.

Churches are empty.

There’s no sight or smell of lilies.

No children dressed in new clothes for Easter Day.

When I was a child I remember that all the women

would come to church with hats, white and pink,

and flowers and fruit adorning them.

None of that today.

When it happened, in those days,

It was Easter.

And we knew it.

And we would sing.

“Jesus Christ is risen today”

We would sing,

“Hail thee festival day. Blest day that art hallowed

forever.”

We would sing,

“Welcome happy morning age to age shall say.”

We would sing,

“Because he lives I can face tomorrow.”

We would sing,

“The strife is O’er.

The battle done.

The victory of life is won.

The sound of triumph has begun.

Alleluia!”

Oh, we would sing, and we would shout,

“Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Alleluia!”

It’s Easter.

But it doesn’t look like it.

It doesn’t feel like it.

It doesn’t even smell like it.

But it’s Easter anyway!

To be sure, there is no Easter bunny in malls.

To be sure, there are no crosses now adorned with

beautiful flowers by children from Sunday School.

There are no crying babies in churches, no wiggling

28

children, no old and young alike packed into pews

and into seats.

The pews are empty.

The church is quiet.

Even the sounds of trumpets on great organs, even

if they sound, they bounce from wall-to-wall,

echoing in empty churches.

For there is sickness and hardship in the land, there

is death and destruction, there is sadness and fear,

anxiety. As the old slaves used to say there is a

weeping and a wailing.

But it’s Easter anyway!

II

Think for a moment.

That first Easter. It was Easter, but nobody knew it.

The Bible says, early in the morning, Mary

Magdalen got up and went to the tomb while it was

still dark. It was dark, and she wasn’t exactly sure

how to get there, but she went anyway. She didn’t

know for sure that the rumors about soldiers, having

been posted to guard the tomb to prevent anyone

from doing anything, she didn’t know if that was

true. She knew that there was a stone rolled in front

of the entrance of the tomb. She got up and went

anyway.

Luke’s Gospel says that Mary of Magdala

and several other women were well-to-do women,

who actually helped to finance and pay the bills, if

you will, of that Jesus movement. Jesus had touched

her and their lives, and she never forgot. She loved

him. They loved him. They were actually living the

love that he had taught them because they had heard

him. They had heard what he taught.

They had heard him say, “Blessed are the

poor and the poor in spirit.”

They had heard him say, “Blessed are the

peacemakers.”

They had listened.

They were listening when he said, “Blessed are

those who hunger and thirst, that God’s righteous

justice might prevail in all the world.”

They listened to him when he said, “Do unto others

as you would have them do unto you.”

They listened when he said, “Love your enemies.

Bless those who curse you.”

They were listening when he said, “A new

commandment I give you, that you love one

another.”

And Mary and those women followers of

Jesus were there when he was dying on the cross

and they saw him love, even in death.

They probably heard him, “Father, forgive

them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

They probably heard him cry out himself, “My God,

my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

And then they heard him make sure his mother was

cared for, “Woman, behold your son, behold your

mother.”

They had heard him say to that revolutionary thief

on the side of him when he said, “Today you’ll be

with me in paradise.”

They had heard him cry, “I thirst. It is finished.

Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit.”

Oh, they had listened to him.

They learned from him, and they saw in him, as that

old hymn says, “A love that would not let them go.

You shall love the Lord your God, and your

neighbor as yourself. This is the way to life.”

They had listened. They had taken it in.

And so Mary and those women got up in the

dark, not knowing for sure what was going on, just

doing what love does. Love can’t change the fact of

death, but love can live through it and thereby

defeat death. And so, they got up and went to the

tomb just to do what love does. They didn’t

understand what was going on. They just did what

love does. They went to make sure, as folk used to

say, “Make sure Jesus had a proper burial.” They

went to anoint his body and to make sure that the

linen shroud was still clean and to give him a new

29

one if necessary. They went to the tomb that

morning, just to do what love does.

They didn’t know. They really didn’t know

that Easter had happened. He had been raised from

the dead. He was alive, new, transformed, not

walking dead. He was alive, new, the new creation

beginning. He was alive, but they didn’t know that.

III

It was Easter, but it didn’t look like it.

It didn’t smell like it.

It didn’t feel like it.

But it was Easter anyway.

Stay with me. The amazing thing was that it

really was Easter. Jesus really was alive. God had

been somehow behind the scenes all along, working

through the chaos. They just didn’t know it.

All that Mary knew was that Jesus was dead.

She knew where he was buried. She knew the stone

was there. She knew there might be guards there.

She just knew where he was buried, and she just got

up to do what love does. And when she got there,

she found the tomb was empty. The stone had been

rolled away. The soldiers weren’t there. What Mary

didn’t know was that Easter had happened anyway,

in spite of what her eyes could see, her ears could

hear, her nose could smell, her hands could touch.

Easter had happened anyway, and maybe that is the

way of God, that somehow behind the scenes, in

ways that we may not fully behold at the time, God

is there. And not just there, but somehow working

in the midst, even of the mess.

The Psalmist in the Hebrew scriptures,

Isaiah, says, “Surely, God thou art a God who hidest

thyself” [Isaiah 45:15].

William Cowper in the 18th century,

Christian poet, and hymn writer, said it this way:

God moves in a mysterious way.

His wonders to perform.

He plants his footsteps in the sea

And rides upon the storm.

[Ed. Note: This is stanza one of “Light Shining Out

of Darkness.”]

This just seems to be the way of God.

One of my favorite poems from the 19th

century from James Russell Lowell [1819-1891],

who was very much involved in the movement to

end chattel slavery and in movements to right

grievous wrongs, and who stayed with it even when

the odds were against it, wrote a poem in which he

said,

Truth may forever be on the scaffold

Wrong may forever be on the throne

But that scaffold sways the future

And behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow

Keeping watch above his own.

[Ed. Note: The lines are from

Lowell’s poem, “The Present Crisis,”

written in 1844: the crisis is caused

by slavery.]

Easter had happened. Mary didn’t know it,

but she did what love does anyway. She got up,

went to the tomb to do what love does. And though

she and the other women didn’t know it at the time,

because they were acting on their love for Jesus,

their trust in him, even when they didn’t understand,

they found their lives aligned with the very life of

God. The God who the Bible says is love. And in so

doing, discovered faith, hope, and eventually, Mary

would actually see Jesus alive, raised from the dead.

The late Howard Thurman was

arguably one of the great spiritual masters, if

you will, of the 20th century. He was a close

advisor behind the scenes to Dr. Martin

Luther King. And it was greatly Howard

Thurman and the late Rabbi Abraham

Joshua Heschel, who behind the scenes,

were quiet, spiritual counselors to King in

some of his darkest moments. Thurman

30

wrote a book entitled Jesus and the

Disinherited. Dr. King carried a copy of that

book with him wherever he went. In that

book, he tells of a time when he was a little

boy growing up in segregated Florida,

growing up poor in a rural community.

When Halley’s Comet had come, people

didn’t understand what this comet was and what it

meant, and people were frightened, anxious, not

knowing what to do. The store down the street from

where Thurman grew up was selling comet pills that

were supposed to immunize you from the comet.

But most people were just frightened. Late one

night, Thurman was in bed and his mother came and

got him out of bed and asked him if he wanted to

see the comet in the sky. So, he got out of bed and

went outside with his mother, looked up to the dark

sky, saw this comet blazing in the heavens. He said,

“Mama, are we going to die?” And she just said,

“God will take care of us.”

Later he wrote:

“O simple-hearted mother of mine, in one

glorious moment you put your heart on the

ultimate affirmation of the human spirit!

Many things have I seen since that night.

Times without number I have learned that

life is hard, as hard as crucible steel; but as

the years have unfolded, the majestic power

of my mother’s glowing words has come

back again and again, beating out its

rhythmic chant in my own spirit. Here are

the faith and the awareness that overcome

fear and transform the fear into the power to

strive, to achieve, and not to yield.”1

It may not look like Easter.

It may not smell like Easter.

It may not even feel like Easter,

But it’s Easter anyway.

And trusting that, we can make it.

A little song says it this way.

(singing)

He’s got the whole world in his hands,

He’s got the whole world in his hands,

He’s got the whole world in his hands,

He’s got the whole world in his hands

God love you. God bless you. May God hold us all

in those almighty hands of love. It’s Easter. Amen.

Editor’s Note: You can view Bishop Curry present

this sermon on Washington National Cathedral’s

YouTube site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAOdPjSXC5s

__________________________ Bishop’s Endnote 1 Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited. Boston:

Beacon Press, 1976: 46-47. Reprinted with permission from

Beacon Press.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

31

Editor’s Note: On the Second Sunday of Easter, we always hear the Gospel from John 20:24-29 about “Doubting

Thomas,” as the Apostle Thomas has been familiarly remembered:

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other

disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of

the nails and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut,

but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your

finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless but

believing.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed

because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (NRSV)

Thomas’ skepticism earned him the nickname “Doubting Thomas,” becoming a term for someone who requires empirical

proof before believing something. So, I was taken by the Rev. Kate Bradsen’s sermon, “Bad Rap,” about the Gospel

reading that treats Thomas’s doubting.

The Rev. Kate Bradsen, Rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Aurora,

CO, is a graduate of Northwestern University (B.A. in Psychology) and

Episcopal Divinity School (Master of Divinity degree with a focus on pastoral

care). She recently received a pastoral study grant from the Louisville

Institute, a Lilly Endowment-funded program at Louisville Seminary, to

research the spiritual practices that inform innovative models of lay

leadership in Episcopal churches. Her ordained ministry experience focuses

on building faith communities, reaching those beyond the church’s walls, and

helping churches and people live into their baptismal ministry. Before

arriving at St. Stephen’s, Kate served as vicar of a diverse, urban

congregation in Tucson, Arizona. Fluent in Spanish, she helped co-found

Casa Mariposa, a faith-based community in Tucson that offers hospitality to

recent immigrants and asylum seekers.

Bad Rap

A Sermon Preached on the 2nd Sunday of Easter,

April 19, 2020

by the Rev. Kate Bradsen, Rector,

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Aurora, CO

Heather Murray Elkins1 wrote a poem

imagining the perspective of Thomas’ twin brother.

In it, his twin claims that he would have touched

Jesus, whereas Thomas didn’t. Have you ever noticed

that? Thomas said he wanted to put his hands in

Jesus’ wounds, but when Jesus shows up and offers

that, Thomas just cries out, “My Lord and my God!”

The gospel doesn’t really tell us if Thomas took Jesus

up on the offer, or if having the offer was all he

needed to believe.

In Elkins’ poem, Thomas’ hypothetical twin

defends his brother’s skepticism. What’s wrong with

having questions? With wanting facts and concrete

evidence? Why would you believe in something you

hadn’t seen yourself? “Don’t settle for someone you

can’t get a hold of,” Thomas’ brother says.

I do think “doubting Thomas” gets a bad rap. When

Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and

yet have come to believe,” it sort of sounds like one

group is better than the other. But that’s not what

Jesus says. He says one group is blessed. “Lucky,”

we might say, in secular parlance. Jesus’ words aren’t

meant to be a condemnation of Thomas, so much as

they are meant to be a reassurance to people like us.

Because most of us have not seen the resurrected

Jesus—not like Thomas and the early apostles did.

And we can still believe.

There was an op-ed piece in the New York

Times on Easter, on what it means for Christians to

celebrate Easter during this current crisis.2 Putting

aside how weird it is to have an op-ed piece on Easter

in the New York Times, and how different the author

of that piece and I are, at least on face value, I

thought it was a great article. The author reminded us

that Christians are people of hope, and that the world

needs hope more than ever now. He said that

Christians have public reputations as people who are

32

bigoted and biased and hypocritical. Our reputation is

not as a people of hope, but as a people of judgment.

We have a bad rap, just like Thomas.

But, the author said, now might be the time

that we could change that. If churches care first and

most, as he put it, as Christians have typically done in

the midst of plagues of the past, people may come to

see us differently. We know a little more about

viruses than we did during the Black Plague. We

don’t need to be foolish and break social distancing

and good hygiene practices. But all these churches,

opening their doors to be hospitals and food banks

and whatever they need to be during this time, send a

message about what we believe. People sewing

masks and dropping off stamps and baked goods and

making phone calls demonstrate that there is more to

our current story than frustration and despair. All of

us, who seek to find reasons to be grateful, to

remember what gives us hope, are showing the world

what Easter really means.

I know that I have said this before, but to me,

the disciples are a greater testimony to the power of

the resurrection than any appearance of the risen

Jesus. How did the bumbling fool who denied Jesus

become a dynamite preacher and the greatest witness

to the resurrected Christ? Suddenly, in today’s

reading from Acts [i.e., Acts 2:14a,22-32] Peter can

tell this story—testify to the truth that death had no

power over Jesus. Suddenly, the man with all the

questions is making connections between what

happened with Jesus and the history and scriptures of

his people.

And Thomas is the same. “My Lord and My

God.” In all the encounters with the Risen Christ

there is no stronger statement of faith—as simple as it

may be. Thomas doesn’t just recognize his old pal

Jesus; he knows that he is face to face with the living

God. I will always wonder why Thomas was set up

like that. Why didn’t Jesus wait until everyone was

there to show up? Why didn’t God give Thomas the

faith to believe without seeing? But Thomas is not

just a doubter; he is also a model for what it means to

live as people of faith, to let ourselves be transformed

by the power of the living God. In this season, most

especially, we don’t always need concrete, well-

crafted statements of faith. We need only recognize

that God is with us—wounded but resurrected all the

same.

It’s possible Thomas didn’t even have a twin.

The name Thomas in Aramaic sounds much like the

word “twin” in Aramaic, so it’s more than possible

they called him Twin the same way we might call

someone named Thomas, Tom. But doubt has a twin.

Kahlil Gibran says, “Doubt is pain too lonely to

know that faith is his twin brother.”3 It’s sort of like

how they say hate isn’t the opposite of love, apathy

is.4 If you hate someone or something, you care

deeply about it, even if those feelings are negative.

And if you are really trying to make your faith real—

really trying to give people something to be hopeful

about—there is bound to be some struggle in that,

some questions. Thomas wanted the resurrection to

be real: I believe that. He wanted to know it was

real—to know it beyond a shadow of a doubt,

precisely because he was a man of great faith.

We believe in things we cannot see. It is part of

the nature of who we are as Christians. We also have

doubts and questions and strongly value our own

reasoning. That’s also a part of our nature. And I

would never ask you to stop asking questions.

Without his doubt, Thomas would not have had such

a strong expression of faith when he did encounter

Christ.

The world needs faith right now. The world

needs hope. And we are witnesses to hope, just as

Peter and Thomas were. During the Easter season, I

want to invite you into another practice of the way of

love: pray. Pray without ceasing. Join us for noon

prayer. Pray for the people on the prayer list. Pray for

first responders and those who are sick or

unemployed. Learn some new prayer practices. Or

practice some old ones that work for you. Pray your

doubts and questions. Pray for things you cannot see

or fully understand. Pray.

Like Thomas, Christians have a reputation that

does not fully reflect who we are. Thomas was not

just a doubter; he was a person of tremendous faith.

And we may be a little “judgier”—a little more

judgmental— than we ought to be, but at our hearts

we are a people of hope. If people want to see the

resurrection, to understand what our faith is, we can

show them. We who are witnesses to these things can

be as great a testimony as those early apostles were.

As our Easter season continues, let us pray that we

can continue to find what brings us hope, and share it

with the world. Amen.

__________________________

Editor’s Endnotes 1 Heather Murray Elkins (M.Div., Duke University Divinity

School, Ph.D., Drew University) recently retired as Frederick

Watson Hannan Professor of Worship Preaching and the Arts

at Drew University Theological School, where both Father

Jeremiah and Pastor Jen studied for their ministries. Both

wrote to me about the Rev. Dr. Elkins with great affection

33

and respect. Prior to teaching at Drew, she was University

Chaplain as an ordained Methodist Pastor. She has

influenced scores of students in her 32 years of teaching at

Drew. She has been a teacher in the first independent

bilingual Navajo school, a rural church pastor, a truck-

stop chaplain, a seminary faculty member, and an

academic dean. In addition to numerous articles in

academic journals and church publications, she is the author

of The Holy Stuff of Life and Worshiping Women: Re-forming

God’s People for Praise. She is a contributing editor

for Wising Up: Ritual Resources for Women of

Faith and Pulpit, Table, and Song. Please see the next article

in this journal for Professor Elkins’ comments about this

“monologue” and a copy of that work, itself. 2 For Peter Wehner’s op-ed, “How Should Christians Act

During a Pandemic,” printed on Easter 2020 in the NYT, see

the online edition in which it appeared two days earlier at

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/opinion/sunday/covid-

easter-christians.html Retrieved 1.7.2021 3 Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), painter, philosopher, and poet,

was born in Lebanon, but lived most of his life in the US

(Boston and NYC). He is well-known for his book, The

Prophet (NY: Alfred A, Knopf, 1923), a collection of 26

prose poetry fables: translated into 100+ languages, it is, at

107 pages, one of the top-selling books of all time and never

out of print. 4 Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) was quoted saying this in U.S.

News and World Report 27 October 1986.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/97801

91826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-

00011516#:~:text=Elie%20Wiesel%201928%E2%80%9320

16&text=The%20opposite%20of%20love%20is,is%20not%

20heresy%2C%20it's%20indifference.> Retrieved 1.7.2021

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Editor’s Note:

Heather Murray Elkins’ “The Younger Brother of Thomas”

When I was an undergraduate, taking Art History 101, I was

curious about the slide of the famous Caravaggio painting

that flashed on the screen, The Incredulity of Thomas

(1602); the painting hangs in the art gallery of the Sanssouci

Palace in Potsdam. You can take a tour of the art collection

at the website https://www.spsg.de/en/palaces-

gardens/object/picture-gallery-of-sanssouci/. I found online

a close-up of the detail in the painting where Thomas probes

Jesus’ wound—an event that does not appear in John’s

Gospel. Call it artistic license.

https://www.artble.com/artists/caravaggi

o/paintings/doubting_thomas

As you’ve observed reading the contribution by the Rev. Kate Bradsen, she begins her sermon for the

Second Sunday of Easter, when we always hear the Gospel of John 20:24-29, referring to a “poem” by

Heather Murray Elkins. By happy coincidence, our very own Rector and Youth Pastor, the

Williamsons, graduated from Drew University Theology School; they knew Professor Elkins well.

When I enquired of them about Professor Elkins, Pastor Jen texted me, “She is wonderful,” and Father

Jeremiah texted, “She’s great. She preached at my ordination to the priesthood.” Pastor Jen kindly

assisted me with getting in touch with Professor Elkins, who immediately replied, saying she was

“Delighted to share” her work and its background with me. Rev. Elkins is an ordained minister in the

Methodist Church. I thank her for her generosity.

34

Here are Professor Elkins’ own words about her work (photo, Drew Theological School):

“I’m not sure I'd call it a ‘poem,’ since it was written as a monologue

for a young man in my confirmation class in 1984. He was older than

the rest and very skeptical of the process. To my surprise, he decided

to be confirmed on Easter Sunday. Each confirmand was tasked

with choosing one Easter reading and reading it in the service. I

wrote a monologue for each of them, based on the text as well as

their worldview. There were monologues for the daughter of Jairus,

Zacchaeus’ son, and Thomas’ twin. I decided to simply identify him

as the ‘younger’ since as second-born he would not be in the line of

inheritance or first-born dedication. I called this process of

interpretation, ‘embodying the Word,’ then, and wrote an entire

series of these performance pieces. I understood the form to be

loosely connected to medieval Mystery plays. These days, the term

‘sanctified imagination,’ often used in the Black Church tradition of

preaching, seems most descriptive.” [Elkins to Ray email, 1.11.2021]

The Younger Brother of Thomas

Thomas really didn’t touch him.

I would have.

What can you prove just by looking?

Since when is seeing believing?

They killed my brother’s friend.

That’s fact.

And Thomas just went crazy.

I was there.

It hurt to hear him cry like that.

I don’t want to go crazy like Thomas has.

And then this story starts:

that Jesus isn’t dead,

that he’s been seen

walking through walls,

showing up at supper time.

But nobody, nobody had touched him.

Thomas didn’t buy it.

I wouldn’t have either.

Never listen to an eyewitness.

Get the facts firsthand.

Don’t settle for someone

you can’t get a hold of.

But then this ghost or hoax appeared and called his name.

Thomas took one look

and thought that he’d seen God.

He really didn’t touch him, see.

But doubting Thomas believes.

It would take more than that

to convince me.

Doubting runs in the family.

From Heather Murray Elkins. “The Younger Brother of Thomas,” reprinted in Imaging the Word: An Arts and

Lectionary Resource, Volume 2. United Church Press, 1995: 188.

35

The Rev. Dr. Christopher Wilkins (b.1969) serves as Priest-in-Charge of St.

Mark's Episcopal Church, Fairland, MD. He was ordained to the priesthood

in 2010 in the Diocese of Washington, and has served parishes in Southern

Maryland, Western Pennsylvania, and the DC suburbs. Born and raised

near Pittsburgh, PA, he earned his B.A. from Haverford College, the M.T.S.

at Harvard Divinity School, and the Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Boston

University. His dissertation was entitled T.S. Eliot's Theology of Style. He has

taught English Composition, Rhetoric, and Literature at the College of

Southern Maryland since 2008. Prior to ordination, he served as facilitator

and a founding member of Via Media USA, on the staff of the Association of

Theological Schools, and with Families USA. He writes poetry and fiction

when he has the time and enjoys hiking in the mountains. He and his family

live in Maryland.

So, What’s a Rogation?

A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Christopher I.

Wilkins,

Priest-in-Charge, St. Mark’s Episcopal

Church-Fairland, Silver Springs, Maryland,

May 17, 2020

1 Peter 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

What’s a rogation? First of all, it’s not “a

rogation” but “rogation.” In simplest terms, it

means asking for something. The word “rogation”

comes from the Latin word rogatio, “asking”

and rogare, “to ask.” A Rogation Day is one in

which the people “beseech… God for the

appeasement of his anger and for protection from

calamities.”1 Rogation Sunday, coming between

the Sundays of Easter, Good Shepherd,

Ascension, and Pentecost, reminds us that for all

God’s grace and redemptive glory, that we’re not

out of the woods yet, and that waters as calm as a

mill-pond can stir and roil again.

Rogation, rogatio: asking. Asking God for

help and imagining that God might be angry with

us for some reason, has gone on for a while. We

call it prayer, but it’s a particular kind of prayer,

one we might also call supplication. Prayers can

also focus on thanksgiving, blessing, dedication,

invocation, acknowledgement, celebration, or

remembrance. One does not always pray, for

example, “Jesus, take the wheel,” but instead

“Jesus, thank God you’re driving.”

Before people prayed as we now do to

God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one and

undivided Trinity for release from calamity, they

prayed to such gods as the ancient Romans’

Robigus, “the deity of agricultural disease.”2 to

do it. A Robigalia was a procession asking this

god to remove various forms of wheat rust fungi

and involved sacrificing—of all things—a dog.

Why? I have no idea. Nowadays farmers use and

cultivate for rust-resistant genes to do the trick,

though if the various dogs in your life make

themselves scarce on Rogation Days, and

particularly during Rogation Processions, which

the church adapted from the Robigalia, now you

know why.

Rogation Days make their appearance

every April and May, much as do dogwood

flowers, bullfrogs, and oak pollen. The first of

those months, April, as T.S. Eliot wrote in The

Waste Land, “is the cruelest month” [l.1]. Why?

Well, to him it was because that month breeds, as

he put it, “lilacs out of the dead land” [l.2],

returning life with all its pains and trials to a

world that had been resting peacefully in the dead

of winter, when there ain’t much goin’ on. While

it may take a bitter or shattered mind to see in

spring flowers a sign of the cycle of life-as-

misery, rebirth and suffering, that is what Eliot

36

saw; all this has happened before, and all this will

happen again.

One can see the point, as others have, in

rage and grief. “Get thee to a nunnery,” Hamlet

rails at Ophelia, his once and eternal beloved.

“Why would’st thou be a breeder of sinners?”

[Act 3, scene 1]. Well, when you look at it that

way…but even Paul said it were better to marry

than to burn [1 Corinthians 7:9]]—and where

there’s life, there’s hope, even if also loss, grief,

confusion, and tears.

April and May can be cruel months, if

only because of the changeable weather and the

pollen, but it is the absence or slowness of life in

springtime that can cause the most suffering. In

northern Europe, springtime wasn’t so much a

time to worry about wheat rust, say, but famine—

reminding me of Gandhi’s insight that “there are

some people in the world who are so hungry, that

God cannot appear to them except in the form of

bread.”3 In the north, spring comes late, and in

times of scarcity—almost every year,

historically—food from the last harvest was

running out, and none of the new crops had

produced much to eat. Such food as there was,

was young—lambs or goat-kids, if you were

lucky—and scarce. Springtime was the time of

famine—and, with rising temperatures, the time

for diseases to burst their icy winter confines as

well.

So, what to do? Figure out who or what is

responsible and get them to fix it. Gods,

particularly in their role as metaphors for things

we can’t understand or control, are convenient to

place in this role—though they can be hard to

appease. However, once we find or imagine some

wrong to be somehow the fault, or at least the

work, of a god, we would naturally spend a lot of

energy trying to figure out how to appease him,

her, it, them, whatever. Perhaps for this reason

Rogation Processions, and the various prayers and

supplications offered on Rogation Days, go on.

During these, priests typically wear violet

vestments and go out to bless new-sown fields

and crops, and walk about with sticks “beating the

bounds,” or boundaries, of the parish to ensure its

protection for the coming year. Better beat the

bounds than the dogs, I agree—but from what did

the parish need protection?

You name it: angry gods, vicious pests,

hail, fungi, bacteria, viruses, war, too much rain,

too little rain, incompetent rulers, malevolent

leaders, bad cooks, wild horses, banks calling

loans in when people can’t pay—and, perhaps

most of all, human weakness, malice, and folly.

Too many people live and work selfishly and to

others’ harm—as armed and angry protestors of

late have reminded us, people carrying signs

saying, “My freedom is worth more than your

safety,” or forcing the legislature of Michigan to

shut down with behavior that anywhere else and

by anyone else would be treated as armed

rebellion and terrorism.4 Too many live foolishly,

crying out without any sense of irony, “Give me

liberty or give me death” as they insist an ice

cream parlor or nail salon reopen for their

convenience, risking the deaths as well as the

freedoms of those whom they’d force back to

work. Too many live in hate, as those did who

stalked and murdered a jogger out for a run near

his own home—a man who was doing nothing

wrong.5 Too many of us live in fear, not knowing

what to do in the face of divisiveness and lies, of

the politics of gaslighting, polarization,

distraction, and division—in the face of those

who have looked the unpleasant truths of this

pandemic and the US response to it in the face

and decided to pretend all is well and blame

everybody else for problems they created or

exacerbated and now refuse to solve or even

address. We’ve done worse at this on the national

level than almost any other country on earth, and

those most responsible for this situation have (as

far as I can tell) paid no price, given no quarter,

suffered almost nothing, and show no signs of

changing or trying to be helpful, honest,

37

forthright, or even humane. If the gods were

angry at us for tolerating all this, and had cursed

us for it, one could hardly blame them. Yet

viruses do not need the gods to help them do their

dirty work—just human weakness, malice, and

folly:” O Lord, make speed to save us, we pray

during Compline. O Lord, make haste to help us.

On Rogation Sunday, and every day, this is our

prayer.”

People of faith, or those who wish they

had faith, have for centuries in times like these

turned to prayer, asking whatever God or gods

they believed in for help, and asking what they

had to do to make bad things or people stop. Was

God angry? If so, at what? Did God’s inscrutable

will and mercy extend to allowing famines,

pandemics, and other catastrophes to strike

people—and, if so, why? What are we to do about

it? If you’re trying to get our attention, Lord, you

got it. But, please, when you have a moment, tell

us: what exactly do you want us to do?

We confess each week, now, that “God is

love.” When we read our questions in that light,

they sound bizarre. Can Love be angry? If so, at

what? Does Love will that we starve, contract

diseases, suffer from earthquakes or fall down

wells? Of course, it doesn’t. Therefore, we

understand, God doesn’t. We might rail with all

propriety against weakness, malice, and folly

when we see our loved ones suffer and die, or see

the wicked prosper, justice fail, or the good done

wrong. Love would have us do so, and therefore

God would have us do so.

But the question remains: what else are we

to do? One clue—actually, many clues —lie in

the words of 1st Peter: “Finally, all of you, have

unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a

tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay

evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the

contrary, repay with a blessing” (1 Peter 3:8).

Or, as the Gospel of John has it: “Love one

another, as I [Jesus] have loved you” and “If you

abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for

whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

We must build communities and

relationships with all of this at their center.

Cultivating this spirit and these virtues remains

my highest priority, as does figuring out how to

bear effective witness to it and to them, against

those forces, be they malicious or despairing, that

sap our strength and befuddle our will.

We start with something small. Here is a

beautiful mask-wearing blessing which a

parishioner shared online, and which I share here.

It’s in a style typical of Jewish prayers; I’ll do my

best with the Hebrew: “It is always a mitzvah—a

good thing—to do what we can to help people

live well. It is always a good thing, as well as a

command, to save a life where we can, or at least

to try.”

We have seen various parts of the US and around

the world lift some or all of the conditions of physical

and social distancing that scientists and public health

officials continue to warn us are essential to fighting the

spread of Covid-19. This is happening even as polls

show most people want the protective measures to

continue, and effective measures taken to make testing

and contact tracing more widely available and to use our

nation’s wealth to alleviate the suffering of those who are

ill and of those who don’t have enough money right now

to meet their needs. We are blessed that our state, local,

and church leaders continue to maximize health and

safety, trusting us and enabling us to protect ourselves as

well as we can from a disease with few effective

treatments and no known cure. We must continue to do

what we can to stay safe at home, and as safe as we can

be when we must go out to work or shop or exercise,

tend to those in need, or clear our minds, mindful that we

do so to protect the most vulnerable among us, not only

ourselves. We must strengthen our communities and

relationships in ways that are compatible with doing so.

Also, as an article this week by George

Monbiot in the British newspaper The

Guardian said, as we live into the new realities of

the pandemic and its aftermath, we may well need

38

to change our ways of thinking, teaching, and

training to better match reality and human needs.

He writes: “In an age in which we urgently need

to cooperate, we are educated for individual

success in competition with others.” Education,

we’re told, is for getting ahead, individually and

as a nation, and the devil take the hindmost. “But”

the article goes on, “nobody wins the human race.

What we are encouraged to see as economic

success ultimately means planetary ruin.”6 The

article proceeds to say that a significant majority

of people want education to “prioritize health and

wellbeing ahead of growth when we emerge from

the pandemic,” and to this end the author offers

insights on how to craft an ecological education.

The concept is to put “ecology and Earth systems

at the heart of learning, just as they are at the

heart of life,” and the focus is on “project-based

learning, centered on the living world.”

We enjoy in the US and many other

societies shaped by the Enlightenment a freedom

of religion, and a freedom of speech, that are as

welcome as they have been, historically, rare.

This means we have the freedom to choose when

to speak and when to be silent, which God or

gods to worship, if any, and by what reasonable

means we wish. This is in so many ways a

blessing that it can make us forget an imperative

that is at the heart of those freedoms: to treat one

another as we would be treated, to use no one as a

means to an end, but to understand that each

person has intrinsic value, inherent worth, is a

person, not a thing. It is to remember that, though

our lives are mortal, with their beginnings and

their endings, no life is unnecessary, none

expendable, none superfluous, and none worth

risking so that others might live in ease or in

murderous luxury. I am as guilty as the next

person of wanting my ease and my creature

comforts and rationalizing why it’s alright for me

to have them in a world where many cannot.

Sometimes I am shocked by how quickly humor

or solidarity in railing against what I cannot stand

eases my mind and makes it easy to do no more

than speak out in relative safety; laugh in scorn at

things I maybe, just maybe could change if I

wasn’t satisfied with just laughing; and in the

privilege of staying-at-home in this sunlit, open

space believe I’m making a difference.

To the extent that physical distancing

helps slow the spread of the virus, I am. To the

extent that our worship and gatherings help

nourish all of you, I hope I am. Yet I am

increasingly mindful of the many things in our

society that this virus has revealed are not as they

ought to be, and of how the faith we share and the

Enlightened polity we inherited compel us to

challenge and repair them.

For now, however, wearing a mask around

others and keeping six feet away, staying aware

of what’s going on and helping others do so, and

reminding us all to love one another with a tender

heart and a humble mind will have to do. It’s a

start.

Let me end with a prayer: Almighty and

merciful God, on this Rogation Sunday, I ask you

for the strength to do as you command, to follow

where you lead, to love our fellow human beings

as you love us. As we beat the metaphorical

bounds of our parish, let us flush out all manner

of wrongs, reminding the world that we are here

to serve you, whose love protects us, and whose

grace makes us whole. Amen.

Endnotes [Editor’s endnotes are bracketed.] 1 Wikipedia, “Rogation Days.” 2 Wikipedia, “Rogation Days” 3 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40054-there-are-

people-in-the-world-so-hungry-that-god 4 [David Welch, “Michigan Cancels Legislative Session to

Avoid Armed Protestors,” May 14, 2020

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-

14/michigan-cancels-legislative-session-to-avoid-armed-

protesters Retrieved 1.13.2021.] 5 [Readers will recall from Feb. 2020 that two armed white

residents of a south Georgia neighborhood chased and

killed an unarmed jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old

Black man.] 6 George Monbiot, “Coronavirus shows us it’s time to

rethink. Let’s start with education.” The Guardian, May 12,

2020.

39

A Meditation for Ascension Day, Forty Days after Easter

by Pastor Jennifer Williamson,

Youth Minister

Some glad morning when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away; to a home on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly

away. I’ll fly away, O glory, I’ll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.

When the shadows of this life have gone, I’ll fly away; like a bird from prison bars has flown, I’ll fly

away. I’ll fly away, O glory, I’ll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.

Just a few more weary days and then, I’ll fly away; to a land where joy shall never end, I’ll fly away. I’ll

fly away, O glory, I’ll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.

[Ed. Note: You can listen to lively a capella version of this hymn on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DNdRUOitO0]

This popular folk hymn by Albert Brumley—composed in 1929 and first published in 1932— is found

in a supplement to The United Methodist Hymnal called The Faith We Sing. We often sang it during chapel

services while I was in seminary. Our seminary musician always had everyone (even the high church

Episcopalians) standing, clapping, and belting their hearts out, and so I have fond memories attached to it. I

found myself occasionally humming this hymn to myself on long days of being stuck at home and having no

idea when COVID numbers would ever decrease. From our homes we watched filled hospitals, climbing case

numbers, racial injustices, angry protests, slow election results, and even violence in our nation’s capital.

During all of this I wonder…did you ever start singing to yourself “I’ll fly away” or find yourself watching the

birds outside glide across the sky with a bit of envy in your heart?

I wonder if the seeds of this hymn of longing began in the hearts of those disciples gazing up at the sky

as Christ ascended into heaven. They had seen violence; they had felt doubt, they had seen angry mobs,

oppression, death, suffering and they had felt the weight of the unknown. The darkness of Good Friday was

over and off Jesus went…flying away. They are soon reminded by “two men in white robes” that while Jesus

has ascended, they are still firmly planted on the ground. Still subject to gravity, there was much work for them

to do. There would still be struggle and days when the confines of earthly existence felt daunting.

Yet, the ascension is good news. The good news of Christ’s Ascension is that he did not actually leave

us. In fact, the ascension enables him to be not just in one place but in all places. He is sticking with us as we

are stuck to the ground. The love of Christ is here with us right where we are.

Perhaps, then, being held to the ground is not such a terrible thing. A habit I have developed during this

past year is to pause when I am outside, close my eyes, feel the sunshine on my face, let the breeze carry my

hair, fill my lungs with the fresh air, and remember what a beautiful thing it is to be here…alive…firmly

planted. During our outdoor worship services, I take time to appreciate that we are all here together: praying,

breathing, loving, hoping, and growing. And in those moments, even when my feet are held down to the earth, I

feel somehow like I am the gentle breeze, like I am as free as the birds: I feel ascended as the love of Christ

enfolds me. Hallelujah by and by…

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