The Rev. Canon David C. Lord (1926-2009)

Just a week or so ago, while having lunch with our current Minister of Music, Mitchell Edgar-Galloway, and Bill Roberts of Virginia Seminary about our upcoming parish retreat at Shrine Mont, we talked about our enthusiasm for Maurice Duruflé’s choral setting of the Requiem Mass (I know, how typical for church musicians and clergy types).

I had purchased a recording of the Requiem sung by the Corydon Singers a few years ago and had not listened to it in some time.  Our conversation, coming just a few days before the anniversary of my father’s death, piqued my interest and sent me back to listen carefully and deeply once again.

Duruflé’s Requiem is without question an exquisite creation and an extraordinary fusion of disparate elements -­- plainsong, subtle counterpoint, and brilliant harmonies that bring profound depth to the ancient prayers we offer for those we love but see no longer:

May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord, for thou art merciful. Rest eternal grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

As people of faith, we know that life, both its joys and difficulties, comes to us as generous gift.  We know our time is limited and this certainty can change the way we see and live in the present.  St. Benedict was right to remind his monks to “keep death before one’s eyes daily” (4:47).

The background of death is always to be before us, though not in a morbid or depressing way.  Awareness of the relative brevity of physical life is meant to help us appreciate and embrace those things that truly matter in the present.  Cultivation of this awareness in no way minimizes the difficulty of grief when the death of a loved one falls across our path.  But I think it is essential that we keep saying “yes” to life, to celebrating what makes human life distinctively human, to securing our hope in the “eternal now” of God’s kingdom, and bringing healing to a world in need.  St. Benedict also reminded his monks to “look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing” (49.7).

Duruflé’s Requiem is a musical masterpiece that holds St. Benedict’s reminders about death and our longing for fullness of life in perfect tension. Death and life are inseparable.  We lose our lives in order to gain them.  Beyond our physical life there is resurrection life. Some would call this utter foolishness.  But we’ve tasted it, and we’ve recognized it in the lives of countless fellow pilgrims who have loved and inspired us along the way.

My father would have said, “Amen to that!”  I do too.

iTunes Link to Duruflé’s Requiem by Corydon Singers

Last Sunday was an extraordinary celebration of faith and common mission at Holy Comforter. It doesn’t get much better on Pentecost than having a former Bishop of Jerusalem as your celebrant and preacher.  Bishop Samir Kafity graced us with inspiring and confident words as we renewed our baptismal promises to engage God’s mission in the world today.  It was also an added pleasure to welcome Canon John Peterson, former Secretary General of the Anglican Communion and dear friend of Bishop Kafity. I can say that Mthr. Libby, Fr. Jody, and I felt honored to be in the company of such distinguished and globally aware servants of God.  Their joy and sense of humor was infectious!

In Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, the long Arab-Israeli conflict continues to take a dramatic toll on Palestinians. Political turmoil and socio-economic pressures have led to an increasingly sharp decline of the indigenous Palestinian Christian population. By way of comparison, Palestinian Christians represented approximately 23% of the total (non-Jewish) population of pre-1948 Palestine. Now they make up less than 2% of the population and face possible extinction as a result of these sharply declining rates in the course of the next few decades, most notably in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Bishop Kafity reminded us of the importance of preserving a living indigenous Christian presence in the Holy Land and the Middle East. We know all too sadly, that the Christian presence is threatened by those who are consumed with extremism. It is clear that the Christian community in the Holy Land has a crucial role to play as a moderating element in the social and cultural fabric of the Middle East and they deserve our continuing prayers and support.

In gratitude for Bishop Kafity’s ministry, our Diocesan Bishop, The Rt. Rev. Shannon S. Johnston, asked that the loose offering from Sunday’s liturgy be designated to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.  AFEDJ raises funds for and promotes the humanitarian work of the Diocese of Jerusalem and its institutions so that it may better serve in building bridges of dialogue, peace and understanding between East and West, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

It was a Pentecost I shall not long forget.

Tomorrow we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the third great feast of the church year after Christmas and Easter for which the Church of the Holy Comforter is named. It reenacts the story of a small group of disciples who were still confused and adrift after the death and resurrection of their Lord. All they knew to do was to keep their routines, getting together, waiting, and hoping that God would do something new. They did not have to wait long.

Into that quiet room where the disciples gathered, St. Luke tells us there came a sound like the rush of an irresistible wind, tongues of fire in the air, and a startling capacity for the disciples to be able to speak in other languages (Acts 2:1-13). It was as if the life of the Spirit had been smoldering within them all along, waiting to be released. God breathed on the disciples and they knew the Holy Spirit as God’s energizing presence among them. They found themselves growing. Such “spirited Christianity” began at Pentecost. This does not mean that we must undergo some ecstatic Pentecostal experience in order to become a spirited follower of God.  It does mean that we can receive and continually know Christ’s personal presence, awakening our minds and hearts to the adventure, wisdom, and peace that moves us beyond ourselves into engagement with God’s mission in the world. Anglican priest and author, Dave Tomlinson writes:

Our postmodern world longs for numinosity: for a sense of awe and mystery, for sacredness, spirituality and enchantment, for something ‘more’ than the purely rational or cerebral. If the Church fails to engage and cater to this longing, it has no real future (From “Re-enchanting Christianity“).

At Holy Comforter, we are growing in our awareness that we cannot simply rest and wait for people to cross our threshold. We are called to engage with those in our immediate surroundings who are longing for something ‘more’ in their lives.  As Episcopalians we know we must become better conversation partners with those who want to explore questions of faith and purpose. We have a unique balance of mystery and rootedness to offer those who seek a spirituality that grapples honestly with our contemporary experience in the world. We often conclude the liturgy with these words: “Let us go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Oh, that it were so!

Working Preacher.org sponsored by Luther Seminary offers this Video with insightful commentary that a certain preacher may include in his sermon this Sunday.

From Hymn 211 in the Hymnal 1982.

The whole bright world rejoices now, Hilariter, hilariter!
The birds do sing on every bough, Alleluia, alleluia!

Then shout beneath the racing skies, Hilariter, hilariter!
To him who rose that we might rise, Alleluia, alleluia!

And all you living things make praise, Hilariter, hilariter!
He guideth you on all your ways, Alleluia, alleluia!

To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Hilariter, hilariter!
Our God most high, our joy and boast. Allelluia, alleluia!

Listen to a recording from St. John’s Ottawa:

Download audio file (Hilariter.mp3)

Hilariter is latin for joyfully and is pronounced “hi-lair-i-tair.”

There is no more important or life-changing week in the liturgical year than the one we embark on this coming Sunday.  It is a week of extraordinary importance for Christians around the world.

I recently came across a quote from one of the addresses in Archbishop Rowan Williams’s book, A Ray of Darkness.  In his address entitled “Keeping Time,” the Archbishop writes:

Each year, the church renews its understanding of itself and its world in the process, the story, of the Christian Year.  Above all, in Holy Week and Easter, it takes us inexorably through a series of changing relationships, shifting perspectives, that cannot be rushed: it leads us through the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, which is the centre and well spring of what we are.  We can’t do this with selected highlights, saving time; this is a contemplation, a feeding, that requires our flesh and blood, our patience, our passion.  It requires that things are done to us, that we allow ourselves to be changed and enlarged.

The Archbishop rightly reminds us that this week is not one that can be rushed, nor can we really know its power to transform our lives if we do not take it in as a whole.  It requires our presence, our contemplation, our flesh and blood.

In the week ahead, we will relive the specific hours during which Jesus shared a meal with his disciples, was taken by his enemies, endured the horror of crucifixion, died, and moved through and beyond death to be present with his disciples once again.  Far from being an ending, those days so long ago were only the beginning.  What began would grow and spread through the world and through time, until it would come to you and me as the gift of the Way of Christ and the community of faith we call the Church.

In most churches I know, attendance at the  Great Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are historically nowhere near the attendance on the bookends of Palm/Passion Sunday and Easter Sunday.   We are the poorer for it.  Imagine only reading the first and last chapter of a great novel and expecting it to have any impact on your life.  Liturgically, we do the same when we choose not to participate in the Great Triduum of Holy Week.  We continue our routine in chronological time, unaware of kairos time, the eternal now where God’s revelation and love await us.

For parents, this is an extraordinary opportunity to shape the souls of children through sign and symbol, story and song, holy movement and sacred meal.  As “ambassadors” for Christ, we should be aware of friends and neighbors who may be willing, if only invited, to participate in the events that so powerfully reveal the core of Christian faith and practice.  Whatever our schedule allows, I pray we will arrive at Easter inspired and filled with the life that Christ is living now—for the Great Triduum reveals that Easter is far more than a day, it is a way of seeing and living that can transform the world.

At our Advent Lessons and Carols last evening both the adult and children’s choir sang Elizabeth Poston’s carol, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree – a carol we’ve not heard at Holy Comforter in some time (thank you to Michael Painter for choosing it).  Poston credits the poem to a New Englander named  Joshua Smith (1784).  Her hauntingly beautiful setting is extraordinary and it moved me deeply last night.  The last two verses are worth quoting for this third week of Advent:

I’m weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
I’m weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Here is the choir of Kings College Cambridge singing it in about 1993:

Here are a number of good online Advent Resources to explore:

The Church of England has its own online Advent calendar

The Episcopal Diocese of Washington’s 2009 version begins with a brilliantly-colored nativity scene that is actually a child’s puzzle by a Sri Lankan cooperative working with SERRV International.

The Diocese of Maryland’s 2009 calendar features daily mediations from diocesan leaders, centered Advent themes and the church’s calendar of saints.

Beliefnet Interactive Advent Calendar. Popular online Advent calendar.

Trinity Church Wall Street’s 2009 calendar offers a video each day produced by Trinity Wall Street as part of a series called Anglican Communion Stories.

Love Blooms Bright: An Advent blog from the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The online community of i-church, founded by the Diocese of Oxford in the United Kingdom, has a calendar that includes contributions written, created, sung and chosen by i-church members and friends, according to an explanation on the community’s “gatehouse” page.

A Bach Christmas Calendar. BBC Radio 3 provides this attractive online calendar for the month of December.

A stained-glass window Advent calendar from Grace Cathedral (San Francisco) with audio clips, articles and books.

Full Homely Divinity is a ‘website for the Anglican at the Altar and especially for the Anglican in the pew.’ It has expanded its offering of Advent material, and has a new page on the Saints of Advent, as well as another called Rediscovering Advent.

An Advent page from King of Peace Episcopal Church (Georgia, USA) with explanations, dates, traditions, the text of a wreath service, and so forth.

Archbishop’s Reflections on Advent. Rowan Williams reflects on YouTube about calendars, self-examination, chocolate, hope, repentance, quiet, and waiting.

Love Blooms Bright: This Advent blog from the Scottish Episcopal Church, launched in 2007, returns again this year

Praying Advent. This site offers simple ways to enter into this Advent season, week by week, in the midst of our everyday lives.’ From Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

St Nicholas: Discovering the Truth about Santa Claus. A wonderful website. ‘St. Nicholas Center is a virtual center, a website, where people can learn about St. Nicholas; it provides resources for families, churches, and schools.

Saint Nicholas Tradition. Canon Jim Rosenthal, founder of the St Nicholas Society, spoke on 19 December 2008 issue of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly programme about the sainted Bishop of Myra. Video and text are now available online.

HT to Anglicans Online

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, reflects on the celebration of Easter:

“At Easter we celebrate just not the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, as if that were an interesting fact that happened many centuries ago.  We celebrate the fact that in words from the Bible, because he is alive, we are alive.  We know that we are held in God’s hands.  That our lives are held firmly and lovingly forever by the mercy of God.  We know we have a future in his love and that nothing can take that away.”

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday,  is a strange day.  At Holy Comforter, we process through a long Narthex to the symbolic Jerusalem of the Sanctuary as our children wave palms for passing pilgrims hailing Jesus as their true and rightful king.

Just as quickly, we are confronted with Mark’s Passion Narrative, a Narrative that Borg and Crossan remind us has everything to do with the confrontation of Jesus’ passion for God’s reign of justice and Caesar’s passion for the domination and power of Rome.  With breathtaking speed the exuberance of the parade turns to tragedy and we soon find ourselves at the foot of the Cross—in the presence of a man who gave everything for God, for the truth, for the sins of the world, for you and me.  That’s the power of the passion of Jesus–it exposes our human capacity for both self-giving love and violent betrayal with immense depth and complexity.

We are being invited to walk differently this week–to walk as if this were the holiest week of our lives.  We walk in the steps of Jesus’ suffering and bring ourselves as best we can to that place where we can be still and take in the mystery of a man, dare we say it, of a God whose love for you and for me transcends the worst that we can possibly do.

The power of  participating in the liturgies of this week, especially the three Great Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Day of Resurrection, is that we recover our conviction that  God suffers from the inside of the human journey as one of us.  There is on Maundy Thursday, the experience of companionship, breaking bread together and seeing one another as brothers and sisters who share in the Agape feast of Christ.  There is the humility and care of serving one another in the washing of feet.  There is on Good Friday the mystery of undying love made tangible on the hard wood of the cross for the sake of the world.  And beyond suffering and death there is Easter–the transforming evidence that the worst that can happen to us in this life is never the last thing that can happen.  Jesus takes our human nature through the experience we call death and shows us beyond it, in ways we might never have dreamed, there is resurrection life here and now.  It is this story, this inbreaking reality, that Holy Week proclaims.