March and April 2010
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The Holiest Week

This month we celebrate the highlight of the Christian year, the victory of life over death with the resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning. The church will be full, as it should be, for this grand and glorious celebration.

The finding of that empty tomb on that first Easter morning was a dramatic moment. But to fully appreciate the power and meaning of the resurrection, we have to understand what happened in the days before – the betrayal and abandonment of Jesus by his friends, his arrest, torture, and murder.

Every year, the church re-enacts those events from the final days of Jesus life during Holy Week, the week before Easter. The church is not so full for these services, but those who come to them inevitably comment on how moving these liturgies are, and how their journey through Holy Week deepens their appreciation of the miracle of Easter morning.

That first Holy Week, as Jesus prays for deliverance in the Garden of Gethsemane, he sadly asks his friends, “Can you not stay with me one hour?” In reply, they abandon him at the first sign of trouble. This year, come stay with Jesus as we travel through this horrible, holy week.

Palm Sunday (March 28, 8:30 and 10:45 a.m.) We begin the late service in the Beech Grove for the blessing of the palms, then process into church waving our palms and shouting “Hosanna,” as we remember Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. At the gospel reading, the mood of the service changes dramatically as we read the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Note: No Sunday School this day.

Maundy Thursday (April 1, 7 p.m.) Maundy is from the Greek word meaning commandment. At this service we remember Jesus’ final command to his friends – to love one another as he loves them. In this powerful liturgy, we are all invited to participate in washing one another’s feet, as Jesus did for his disciples on that last night of his life. The service continues with the Eucharist, and ends in silence as the altar is stripped bare for Good Friday.

Good Friday (April 2, noon) The service for this most somber day of the Christian year begins at noon with the Good Friday liturgy and continues until 3 p.m. with meditations of the Stations of the Cross, prayers, and music. Please feel free to come to any or all of the service, as you are able.

Easter Vigil (April 3, 7 p.m.) This dramatic service begins in the Beech Grove with the lighting of the new fire, from which the Paschal, or Easter, candle is lit. We process by candlelight into a darkened church to hear scripture stories of God’s acts of salvation. Midway through the service we turn on the light and ring bells as we joyously proclaim that Lent is over and Christ has risen. The celebration continues after the service with a champagne and cake reception.

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Announcements

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Lenten Prayer from Walter Brueggemann

The pushing and shoving of this world is endless.
We are pushed and shoved, and we do our fair share
of pushing and shoving.
And in the middle of that you have sent down your
beloved suffering son who was like a sheep led to slaughter, who opened not his mouth.
We seem not able,
so we ask you to create the space in our lives where we may ponder his suffering
and your summons for us to suffer with him,
suspecting that suffering is the only way to come to newness.
So we pray for your church in these Lenten days,
when we are driven to denial –
not to notice the suffering,
not to engage it,
not to acknowledge it.
So be that way of truth among us
that we should not deceive ourselves.
That we shall see that loss is indeed our gain.
We give you thanks for that mystery from which we live.

Amen

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Events

Special events

• Lenten Lecture Series – March 12 and 13
• Lenten Evensong – Sunday, March 14, 4 p.m.
• Lenten Fellowship – March 19, 6 p.m. – Join us for a fish fry dinner and an evening of fun and games. More details to come.
• Lenten Quiet Day – March 20, 9 a.m. - Noon – Tim Black and his classmate Justin Yawn will lead a quiet day centered on the Stations of the Cross. Participants are asked to bring a journal to write in and to dress warmly to spend time outdoors.
• Special Sunday School: March 21 – Jon Herman, husband of Ellen Gallow and professor of religious studies at Georgia State University, will lead a teaching seder for our elementary and middle school students during the regular Sunday school hour. This will be an opportunity to learn more about the Last Supper, including how it recalls the story of the Exodus which we studied last fall.

Ongoing events

• Adult Sunday School – Sundays, 9:30 a.m. Walking the Path of Jesus – For centuries Christians have prayed the Stations of the Cross, a pilgrimage following the final hours of Jesus’ earthly life. In this class, Tim Black is leading a series on the meanings of the 14 different stations.
• Stations of the Cross – Walk the stations on the grounds of St. Dunstan’s with crosses made by our parishioners. Prayer booklets are available at the first station. Feel free to come any time and walk and pray alone or with others.
• Wednesday Noon Eucharists – Join us each Wednesday at noon during Lent for a celebration of the Eucharist followed by a simple lunch served by the women of the church.
• Wednesday Evening Eucharists – 6 p.m. – Join us for an informal Eucharist in the parish hall followed by a potluck supper.
  

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God on Trial:
The Earthquake in Haiti and the Indictment of God

In an essay “Difficulties in Presenting the Christian Faith to Modern Unbelievers” in 1948, C.S. Lewis writes: “The ancient man approached God as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for beings the god who permits wars, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God in the dock.

Just as in the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the catastrophe in Haiti raises again the perennial questions of theodicy – pain, suffering, death, and a powerful and good God. These presentations consider the specter of God’s indictment and possible justifications. The stakes are as high as they have always been relating to the possibilities of belief itself.

FRIDAY 7 p.m.

St. Bede’s Episcopal Church

The Indictments
Joseph Monti

(Dinner at 6 p.m. by reservation, $7)

SATURDAY 9 a.m.

St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church

Morning Prayer for Haiti

Children of a Lesser God
Joseph Monti

Acts of Hope:
The Hands and Feet of God in Haiti
The Rev. Bill Deneke

(Continental breakfast at 8:30 a.m.)

Joseph Monti, PhD, is Professor of Christian Ethics and Moral Theology, Emeritus at the School of Theology in Sewanee.

The Rev. Bill Deneke is rector of Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur. He has been active in Food for the Poor and the Water-Life-Hope Water Project in Haiti. Bill and other members of the congregation were in Haiti in December.

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Christian Education

Everyone a Star
A Lenten Discipline

“Jesus would have treated everyone like they had a star on their back.”

Last Sunday, as part of our concluding class on ‘non-violence,’ the elementary and middle school students, with their teachers, participated in an exercise designed to spark reflection on what it feels like to be different and left out. On the back of each child and teacher I placed a sticky name tag; some name tags had a star, others a circle, and others were blank. No one knew which type of name tag they had. Everyone was instructed to mill around and greet one another, first looking at the person’s back. If the person had a star on their back, they were to be greeted as though they were very important. If the person had a circle, they were to be greeted casually. If the person had a name tag which was blank, they were to be ignored, not greeted at all. After greeting or ignoring each other for a little while, we sat to discuss what we had experienced, especially what it was like to be ignored. We talked about people we knew who were ignored or avoided, why that was so, and what we might do about it. I asked the group, “If Jesus were here, playing this game with us, and he broke the rules – because that’s what Jesus did, he broke rules – how might he have behaved in this game?” That’s when Meg Withers put it beautifully: “Jesus would have treated everyone like they had a star on their back.” What a great image, Jesus, in our Sunday school class, in our lives, greeting each of us with the recognition of our inherent worth. Every one of us a star, not because we are wealthy or famous, but because we are each a beloved child of God’s.

At this point I suggested to our Sunday school students that they spend the next week treating everyone in their lives, especially the ‘outcasts’ that they had identified, as though they had a star on their back. Our kids are great… they are so honest! They protested: what if they didn’t want to treat someone that way because they didn’t like the person or because other kids would make fun of them for being friendly to the outcast? “OK”, I said, “if you can’t treat them like they have a star on their back, at least imagine that they have a star on their back.” I figured that was a first step! We’ll see how it goes. I’ll check in with them next Sunday. If they forgot to do it, I’ll remind them, and we’ll try it again, perhaps for the entirety of Lent, perhaps beyond.

This Lent, is there a person that you would like to imagine with a star on his or her back?

Peace,
Ellen

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Music Notes

Evensong

St. Dunstan’s Choir will offer Evensong on Sunday, March 14, beginning at 4 p.m. The service lasts less than an hour, and it provides an opportunity for some stillness, some quiet time, and some prayerful reflection. And it is a bit misleading to say that the Choir will offer Evensong, because it is a service in which we all take part—common prayer, as we Episcopalians say. Please come to Evensong; sing and pray together; and give other people someone to sit beside.

Looking ahead

Harmony: Atlanta’s International Youth Chorus will give a concert at St. Dunstan’s on Sunday, April 25, at 4 p.m. Meg Withers is a member of this group, and she will be one of the featured soloists. The concert is free, with donations gladly accepted.

Music and the Stations of the Cross

The tradition of Fourteen Stations of the Cross is clearly a central part of our Lenten observance at St. Dunstan’s. We have the outdoor path with its stations that have been lovingly crafted by parishioners and friends. Tim Black is leading an Adult Christian Education series dealing with the Stations. And following the noontime Liturgy for Good Friday, we gather for an extended period of reflection on the Stations, with scriptures, devotions, prayers, responses, silence, and music.

What, exactly, does music have to offer to the Stations of the Cross? How can it help in expressing the themes that are at the core of this Good Friday tradition? I am interested in exploring these and similar questions, since they eventually lead us to the basic question, why is music an important part of our worship? What does music do? What is it for? I am going to offer some ideas about all this at the music link on our parish website. For right now, here are some things to think about.

Our Good Friday Stations of the Cross will begin with Helen Bealer singing “Were you there when the crucified my Lord?” Helen’s is a voice of experience and wisdom, and with these words of questioning, she offers us a compelling invitation to be a part of the afternoon’s journey. The melody probably came from that body of music composed by slaves in the early nineteenth century. Do we honor them by using this melody? I hope so.

The men of the choir will sing an ancient text and melody that asks, “O my people,…how have I offended you?” This bare, stark bit of music and text connects us with our earliest Christian musical traditions; it is a way of asserting Apostolic Succession with music.

We will be singing five hymns together: 675, 610, 170, and 159 have words that connect us with particular Stations, putting us and our contemporary world into the ancient pictures. Hymn 474 offers a final look at all that we have just experienced.

Short anthems by the choir have words that connect with particular Stations as well. All of the music is quiet, short, and plain. Music that has these characteristics can also be beautiful, but we ought to ask what sort of musical “beauty” is appropriate in these scenes that are dominated by human sinfulness, cruelty, suffering, and injustice? This music’s beauty is not decorative or “pretty,” rather it is beauty that compels us to draw closer, to absorb it at all possible levels of our consciousness, and to see through its plainness into meaning that for each of us will be unique and different.

Geoff Walker will sing some of the familiar scriptural texts set by Handel in Messiah, beginning with “Thy rebuke hath broken his heart.” Laura Withers will sing a Medieval lyric set to music by Samuel Barber that begins, “At the cry of the first bird, they began to crucify Thee….” John Morgan will sing an excerpt from Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew. The words describe the evening scene of Joseph of Arimathea taking the body of Jesus away for burial. Each of these three solo pieces combines powerful words with appropriate music in particularly meaningful ways.

There will be one short organ piece by Johannes Brahms. Instrumental music has many functions in worship; here, it offers a quiet moment for meditation, and it communicates in ways that words do not.

~ Tom

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