Holy Week Reflections by Fr. Stephen Hoy
MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK 2020
This Holy Week, we are thinking about colour. Colour is really important to us as humans: it helps to shape and define our perception of the world around us, it brings us pleasure and joy, it offers infinite possibilities as we can see in the many shades of colour we encounter in the stained glass in many of the churches we visit. People with depression often speak of a world which has no colour to it, a black and white world from which colour is drained. And in the church we should be very aware of colour, because colour helps us to give identity to the changing pattern of the seasons, to the shifting balance of our liturgy. Blue, green, purple, red, gold – rainbow colours that speak to us of caring, of growth, of penitence, of sacrifice, of celebration. The colours of the life of Christ in all its wonder reflected in the life of the faithful Christian soul who seeks always to follow in his steps.
So today, our colour is blue. While you read perhaps you would like to find a patch of blue around you in your home to focus on.
Blue is the coolest colour - the colour of the sky, ocean, sleep, twilight. The ancient Egyptians used lapis lazuli to represent heaven. Traditionally a pure blue might suggest inspiration, sincerity and spirituality. It is the colour that the earth appears to be when we see it from space. It is the colour for the National Health Service, and the care and love that that organisation exists for.
We do not have a set of blue vestments or altar covers at St Wilfrid’s (although if anyone would like to donate some...!) but liturgically the colour is associated with Our Lady, Mary, the mother who is the perfect disciple and who is supremely present at the key moments of Our Lord’s life. She it is who first cares for Christ and demonstrates that care by always being present. She, whose womb is the temple of his being, she is there at his first miracle, she is there at his death, she is there at his ascension, she is there. And perhaps that is the most crucial thing we can say about Mary that she is there.
Another Mary is encountered today in our reading. A Mary who is a friend, with her sister Martha and her brother Lazarus, such dear friends that Jesus is prepared to risk everything for them; remember it is the raising of Lazarus that leads to the conspiracy to have Jesus put to death.
Whenever we encounter Mary and Martha, they are caring for Jesus. Martha preparing the meal, Mary gently receiving his words of teaching, Martha serving at the table, Mary gently putting all restraint aside to anoint Jesus in advance for his death and burial. Whereas nearly everyone else in the gospels who encounter Jesus are demanding time, healing, prayer, presence, Mary, the mother of our Lord, Martha and Mary are undemanding, caring for him, nurturing his life so that his ministry may bear much fruit. That caring by women extends to the frantic journey to the cross – Jesus meets his mother and they cling to each other in loving recognition; Veronica wipes his face in his time of need; a few women reach out to comfort, only to find him comforting them.
But how we care for Christ today? It is very easy for us to be like those who wanted everything from him in his lifetime, but were not prepared to give anything back. Remember the 10 lepers who are healed, only one turns back to give him thanks – the other nine, where are they?
So the first step is simple, just turn to him and recognise his presence within you and around you, know him and love him in the depths of your heart. Remember, he told us to consider the lilies, to spend time looking with wonder and love at this miracle of God’s creation. So, in the same way, we are called to cherish him in all his creation and see him in everything around you, the colours of his love glowing in all there is.
Remember he gives us bread and wine, and, as a friend, says to us: take, eat, do this to remember me. So receive him in your hands and know that there lies the very life of God himself, intimate and infinite, which we take into our very souls, there to find a home within us. And in caring for that life, we care for ourselves and in caring for ourselves, we care for others, and in caring for others, we care for Christ and share his priorities. And we are called to care for him in all circumstances, no less as we stand at the foot of our own cross, or the cross of a friend, or the cross that stretches its arms across the whole world or the cross of our own making.
So blue, a colour we link today with the loving care of Mary and through her to the women and other friends who give of themselves to the care of Christ in his need. So this week, I commend to you who follow his path to the cross, space and time to consider how you will care for him and for his people on this road of suffering, in this time of need, in this time of vulnerability, at this time of uncertainty. Amen
TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK
Green is a common colour. We see it all around us in the grass, in the trees, in the budding of the new plants of the spring time. Green tells us of new potential, new possibility. When a forest is devastated by fire and it seems like nothing can survive in such a blasted landscape, it is the tiny touches of new life, of green, that first begin to push through through the ashes, the hope of resurrection. Green is apparently the most restful colour for the human eye and for us it also has a suggestion of safely – when the green man is lit up it is safe for us to cross the road!
And green is our most common liturgical colour in the church. When we have no other reason to celebrate, no major saint’s days, no major festivals, then it is green that we wear, and significantly it is used mainly during the summer months, what my dad, as a gardener, would call the growing season.
So every year during the summer it is a time for us to relax into Christ’s teaching and preaching and to allow the words of the evangelists to guide us and lead us, a time for personal growth in scripture and in faith and love. But if we are to be fully open to this experience, we have to be able to let go of our preconceptions and allow Christ’s words to live in us anew.
And that sense of newness is very much in the air in our gospel today. Some Greek speakers want to see Jesus and approach Philip for an introduction. Philip is the disciple whose job appears to be to grow the church; he it is who brings Nathaniel to Jesus at the beginning of John’s gospel and here he is fulfilling that matchmaking role again. The Greeks want to see Jesus, to see his true nature and to grow in that experience – whether they do or not as a result of this encounter does not appear to interest St John, for he records Jesus’s response to their enquiry in words of death and resurrection. Jesus talks to them about how a seed has to fall to the ground and die before it can bring forth fresh growth, a green shoot full of hope. The words are mysterious in this context, but they touch on an eternal truth.
And that is that the cycle of the seasons depends on growth, blossoming, death and rebirth – and Jesus suggests that is the pattern of his ministry too. His impending passion and death are an essential part of the cycle. Unless he dies, unless he enters the earth and faces the darkness, then the resurrection is not possible. It is in the embracing of the darkness that God will triumph. It is in the black ashes of the burnt forest that the sign of new life is to be found, the green shoot that defies the devastation.
So the message to those who truly want to see Jesus is that we have to look at the totally of who he is and what he does if we are to have any chance of grasping the significance of what it means for God to be present in our midst. St John gets it spot on at the beginning of his gospel, in that great passage in which he tells us about the Word of God – In beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God – God is the light, Jesus is the light, that enters the darkness to show us that even the darkness of death cannot suppress its clarion brightness. It is in the darkness that the light shines most brightly; it is through the cross that the resurrection is possible; it is in the dark valley that the shepherd can truly be our guide.
And here, perhaps is where our growth is difficult, for although we hear the words of Christ, we filter out those that do not chime in sympathy with our understanding. So we have problems when we try to put our faith experience alongside the difficulties we face in our lives – with the voice of the psalmist, we cry why does God allow this? But if we are to be truly open to the Word, then as we grow, we will notice that Jesus never shirks or denies the difficulties that we will face, but what he does do is confront them with the reality of God’s love. And for us to be truly open to the Word means to put aside what we think we know and to long, to yearn to see Christ as he really is, caring for him, listening to his Word and making it our own. Growing in Christ means that we have to allow him to grow in us as we grow in him as well, green shoots of his love blossoming in the barren land of our souls. Amen
WEDNESDAY IN HOLY WEEK
When Christ was tortured by the Roman soldiers after Pilate had pronounced his condemnation, that torture was not simply physical but also mental. On top of whipping and abuse, the soldiers find an old bit of purple cloth and hail him as king. In many illustrations of this scene, Christ is portrayed as wearing a fine, full robe of purple, but that doesn’t ring true with the ad hoc nature of his arrest and the events following it. It is unlikely that the Romans would have kept a fine piece of expensive cloth to one hand just on the off chance it might be needed – it would have long been sold for personal gain! No, this cloth is more likely to be something that is filthy, discarded and just happens to be hanging around. So it becomes all the more poignant that the bleeding, abused figure is forced to wear a dirty and unwanted bit of old purple rag. Purple was the colour of emperors and of victorious generals, a sign of the highest status and those with the wealth to afford the hugely expensive dying process to produce the garments. Even high status Romans could only afford to sport a stripe of the purple on their togas. So the message is clear here from the Roman army – you think you are important, think again; you think you have power, think again; you think you can make a difference, think again; your power lies in a filthy discarded cloth.
Purple as a liturgical colour only occurs twice in the church year. Each time it is in a season of preparation: Advent and Lent, both times when we are encouraged to get ready, to take a long hard look at ourselves, to examine afresh what spiritual clothes we put on and to look again at how we try to clothe Christ. Paul urges us to clothe ourselves with Christ each and every day, to make our whole nature, both inward and outward, an image of Christ. But therein lies danger, for it is all too easy to put on Christ and to pretend to ourselves it is he whom we wear, when in actual fact it is but a projection of our own self.
We can see this in Judas Iscariot, the much maligned villain of the passion story. We tend to forget that he was one of the twelve disciples chosen by Jesus from the mass of his followers, so we need to understand that Jesus saw something in him, something perhaps reflected in his description as the Zealot, a member of the faction that sought to use violence to rid the country of the occupying Roman army. What we also need to understand is that all the information we have about him is written with the knowledge that he is the one who is the betrayer, and the gospel writers pull no punches here – Judas gets universally bad press as far as they are concerned. Perhaps that is unfair – Judas certainly does misread the situation, seeing in Jesus the culmination and completion of his own story, a narrative that requires Jesus to win a military victory, a short term gain to overturn the Roman might, a Judean king to replace a Roman governor. He wants Jesus to wear the purple, not knowing that the purple Jesus will wear is a discarded bit of cloth that is intended to humiliate not exalt. Judas puts on what he wants of Christ, only to find that when the clothes are torn away, when the illusions are stripped, there is nothing there but his own desires, and his own will. When Jesus is stripped for nailing to the cross, he is still fully clothed with the life of God, a life he lives throughout this passion, and a life that survives the darkest night, the deepest brokenness and the profoundest hate. Jesus does wear the purple, but it is the purple of human dignity and love.
So when we put on Christ, we should be naked and vulnerable to God’s will, putting aside what we want and asking for his presence, for his will to be done, for his Word to be spoken. And that requires us to be ever open to him, to allow him past all the barriers that we put in his way, to gather him into the inner journey we follow with him and to nurture him there. It also means, as the purple in Advent and Lent remind us, we have to put aside our own illusions of self, of power, of ego, and embrace the journey that Christ calls us into, knowing that his is the journey that is worth the following. Amen
MAUNDY THURSDAY
One of my favourite musicals is by Stephen Sondheim, the great American composer, and it is called “Sunday in the Park with George”. It is a show about artistic creation that focuses on the French painter Georges Seurat. It starts with the stage as a blank canvas, a white expanse of nothingness. And into that white blankness the artist speaks words of creation:
White.
A blank page or canvas.
The challenge: bring order to the whole.
Through design.
Composition.
Balance.
Light, and Harmony.
This Holy Week, we are exploring some of the colours of Christ’s ministry that are reflected in the way we use colour in our liturgy. Already this week, we have explored the colour blue and from that how we care for Christ, on Tuesday we looked at the colour green and how we grow in Christ. Yesterday, we considered purple and how we clothe Christ. Today is a bit of a strange day, this Maundy Thursday. The word Maundy suggests a day when we are in sorrow, literally in mourning, but the colour we use for Maundy Thursday is white or gold, the colour of celebration certainly not of sorrow. The word Maundy comes from a Latin word Mandatum, which means commandment, and it reminds us that this day is the day when we remember that Jesus gave us a new commandment, to love one another as he has loved us. So if we were in a position to rename this festival, we might want to call it something along the lines of The New Commandment Thursday.
But this day is also about other things as well – it is day rich in resonance and symbol. Today we remember that Jesus demonstrated to his disciples the nature of his service to them, by kneeling at their feet and washing them. And today is the day of all days when Jesus first shares bread and wine with his disciples and says – this is my body, this is my blood. And today we stand posed on the brink of the cross. What colour can begin to draw all of this together? – none other than the colour of purity, white.
And if we begin to reflect upon the events we remember today, they have a common thread in them. And that thread appears to me to be Jesus’s giving of himself in so many ways. He tells them of the quality of his love, that deep love that knows us through and through and will never let us go. That love that carries on giving even when we cannot understand it or feel it or love it ourselves. He shows the disciples the practicalities of ministry. Look, he says, this is way to do it, and the way to do it is just to get on your knees and wash each other’s feet. That’s it It is like a new baptism. It is like a washing away of sins. It is like a new beginning. Nothing more, nothing less, so simple, but so profound.
And then he takes the simple things of life, bread and wine, and invests them with the meaning and intensity of his earthly ministry and his eternal life, not as something to be admired or revered, but as something to be taken into the very heart of our being, literally placed into our hands. And in all this he is giving to us of his wisdom, of his experience, of his very being.
White.
A blank page or canvas.
The challenge: bring order to the whole.
Through design.
Composition.
Balance.
Light, and Harmony.
And there is a real sense for me here that what Jesus is asking his disciples is to put aside everything they think they know and understand, to wipe the slate clean and on the new white, blank sheet to begin to write once again the story of their life in his love with him as their guide, as their artist, if you like. And that invitation is open to us as well, Jesus constantly asking us to open our hearts to his love, so that through his forgiving, healing nature, we can wipe the slate clean begin once again to strive for his design, his composition, his balance, his harmony in our lives. But that does need us to be ready and willing to open our hands to receive him, to be prepared to find him washing our feet, to be reminded of his way of complete love.
What Christ offers is the totality of who he is, and that infinite and intimate reality comes to us when we open our hands to receive his risen life in the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Here on this Maundy Thursday, Christ offers us a new pattern for living, one based on his life giving love and service, fuelled by the very essence of his divine life. No wonder, at this point of tipping towards the cross, we celebrate that we are invited to make a new start in his love, to begin to fill the blank white canvas of our lives with the colours of his love and the harmonies of his peace. Amen
GOOD FRIDAY
When someone dies you lose their presence with you. But it is more than just physical absence that causes the heart to ache with longing. For in a death, you lose the stories and the memories that are so unique to that person. You lose the vibrancy of their being. You lose the colours of their life. You lose the music of their being. Everything that made that person who they truly were is drained away and the heart aches, the soul mourns, the body hurts.
And here we are today faced with a death. But not just any death, death in a violent and brutal manner, death sanctioned by the state, death carried out with efficient despatch, the death of Jesus, the Son of God. And let’s make no mistake here. This is death, this is not just Jesus having a bad weekend prior to the resurrection, this is the complete draining of the earthly and divine life that came to bring light, colour and hope to a people who, in the end, could not bear the beautiful vision that he was. His mother and his friends come to gather his body into their arms and to commit the limp frame that once spoke of resurrection hope to the finality of the grave.
How do we bear such a vision? This is Jesus, our Lord, our Saviour, our teacher, our healer over whose birth the angels sang their song of glory. This is Jesus who calls us over to join him to consider the lilies and to share with him the beauty and wonder of his creation. This is Jesus who draws us into a world where the colours of God’s love are the colours with which he paints, colours that sing with vibrancy and glow we had never noticed before. This is Jesus at whose feet Mary sits, absorbed in the music of his teaching. This is Jesus, who ticks off her sister for being too busy, but then holds her in her place of grief when her brother dies. All the stories he tells and all the memories he creates for us – look over there, there is someone sowing seeds, what can we learn from him?; and see, there, is a single sheep straying from its flock, what can I tell you of him?– all those stories now stilled as the breath from his body shudders to a halt, all those memories he holds no longer ours to know.
We are left with the stories others tell of him and the way in which he changes their lives. A tax collector turns his back on a life of fraud because Jesus calls. A fisherman turns his back to the waves and knows this man who calls him as the Messiah, the Son of the living God. A woman touches the fringe of his coat and is drawn into his healing love. The storms of people’s lives are stilled by a single word.
That vibrancy of his being now hangs on a cross, pinned there by the excess of his love and by the depth of his hope in his creation. And all the colours of his life are drained away, but even in this moment, even at this time he has cared and been cared for, encouraged others to grow in their faith and understanding, forgiven and forgiving.
A woman has held his hand on the road to the cross, another has wiped his face and given a moment of refreshment. They have cared for Christ. A man has shouldered the burden of the cross with him and sharing the journey has come to see Christ and grow in his love. A soldier, wearing the purple, has seen in the dying man the truth of his being and those who wield the hammer have received his forgiveness. The colours of his love continue to glow even in this place because the colours are caught in our reflected gaze on the one who is the light of the world.
And the wonder of it is that our lives are held in his prayer and by his prayer no less as he marvels at the blue skies, the green meadows, the purple flowers, the white clouds, the rainbow colours of his love and asks us to direct our gaze with him to wonder; our lives are held in his prayer and by his prayer as the body sags, the colour drains and the breath ceases and all this is left is the red, turning dark, of the blood which dries on his skin.
This is our Jesus dead on the cross, no more songs to sing of lost sons, and mustard seeds and salt and yeast and how God holds it all in his love. And here we are and here we stay and watch and pray for a world and a people that crucifies the image of the living God because it cannot bear the colours of his love. And we sit at the foot of the cross, maybe the cross of our own making, maybe the cross that life has thrust upon us, maybe the cross that we have taken up willingly, maybe the cross that we share with a friend and we know that from each of those crosses Christ speaks from his cross words of forgiveness, healing, peace and love, the colours of his possibilities always there for us to explore. Amen
EASTER VIGIL
In the former chapel at the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Paraclete in Whitby, there is a cross. It is suspended in the east wall across a window, and it is formed out of transparent squares. On one a head is angled to the right; on two, hands angled pointing slightly upwards, and at the base the feet can be clearly seen. Each square is framed by its own colour. Red for head, hands and feet, blue or green for the body of the cross. It is not clear what the intention of this particular cross is. Is it a picture of a drooping body dying on a cross, or is it rather more subtle? For me, when I look at the cross, and particularly when the light of the sun shine through the window and dances on the transparent squares, what I see is not death, but life. A head bowing gracefully towards you. Hands raised gently in blessing. A figure alive with the wonder of God’s being, a figure that transcends the pinning of the cross and offers life, a life vibrant with the colour of God’s radiance.
And therein is the paradox, of course. How can this man, nailed to a cross, condemned to a lingering death hold for us an image of life, new life, dancing to the tune of God’s love? We have been there at the cross this week, watching as Christ’s life drains away, the pale body taken down from the cross, and we have walked to the tomb to lay him to his rest. This should be a story that holds no blessing, no possibility of emerging from the shadow of death. But it does – the blessing is in the dying man who gives his life uttering words of love, the image of the living God, the life of the Holy Spirit, present in Jesus.
The blessing has always been there: from the angel songs greeting birth, to the stilling of stormy waters, from the gentle touch of healing, to the wonder of his storytelling – all in this life is blessing. And if all, nowhere more so than in the moment of death: Jesus dies blessing those condemned with him, forgiving those who kill him, holding his mother and friends near to his love. And if that had been the end of it, we might well have turned away and got on with our lives without ever knowing the life of God among us. But, and it is a big but, God’s blessing is never finished with us and it breaks from the tomb, painting pictures of a vibrant new colour.
The soil of the garden of new creation is rich indeed – red with the blood of the Son of God, golden with shining light of resurrection, green with the new life He brings. This is the soil into which we are rooted and grounded in God’s love – no ordinary soil, but a soil vibrant with God’s colours, God’s hopes and God’s possibilities.
And when I look at the cross in the chapel at Whitby, I am reminded of the cross of Christ and the sacrifice that he made, of the death of the human body. I see it and I know it. But what I also see and also know is that this cross is one that embraces blessing, offers blessing and is blessing because it speaks of resurrection life. A resurrection life that is ours because Jesus has walked the way with us. A resurrection life that is ours because God loves us just the way we are. A resurrection life that gives us the assurance that the darkest pathway, the deepest shadow, the blackest cloud is still shot through with the colours of God’s blessing. A resurrection life that is not beyond our grasp, but is rooted and grounded where we are and longs to grow the blessing within us.
Can we hear that blessing, can we look to the ground around us and see the roots of God’s love? Can we do it in joy and in sorrow, in laughter and in tears...because that is what Christ did, even on the cross, and that is the resurrection life he calls us into today. To be alive with God, to live his vibrancy and to rejoice in the colours of his love. The chapel cross blazes today in the light of the new dawn, and our God is there, is here, drawing us to paint the rainbow colours of his love in our lives, in our families, in our world. Amen
This Holy Week, we are thinking about colour. Colour is really important to us as humans: it helps to shape and define our perception of the world around us, it brings us pleasure and joy, it offers infinite possibilities as we can see in the many shades of colour we encounter in the stained glass in many of the churches we visit. People with depression often speak of a world which has no colour to it, a black and white world from which colour is drained. And in the church we should be very aware of colour, because colour helps us to give identity to the changing pattern of the seasons, to the shifting balance of our liturgy. Blue, green, purple, red, gold – rainbow colours that speak to us of caring, of growth, of penitence, of sacrifice, of celebration. The colours of the life of Christ in all its wonder reflected in the life of the faithful Christian soul who seeks always to follow in his steps.
So today, our colour is blue. While you read perhaps you would like to find a patch of blue around you in your home to focus on.
Blue is the coolest colour - the colour of the sky, ocean, sleep, twilight. The ancient Egyptians used lapis lazuli to represent heaven. Traditionally a pure blue might suggest inspiration, sincerity and spirituality. It is the colour that the earth appears to be when we see it from space. It is the colour for the National Health Service, and the care and love that that organisation exists for.
We do not have a set of blue vestments or altar covers at St Wilfrid’s (although if anyone would like to donate some...!) but liturgically the colour is associated with Our Lady, Mary, the mother who is the perfect disciple and who is supremely present at the key moments of Our Lord’s life. She it is who first cares for Christ and demonstrates that care by always being present. She, whose womb is the temple of his being, she is there at his first miracle, she is there at his death, she is there at his ascension, she is there. And perhaps that is the most crucial thing we can say about Mary that she is there.
Another Mary is encountered today in our reading. A Mary who is a friend, with her sister Martha and her brother Lazarus, such dear friends that Jesus is prepared to risk everything for them; remember it is the raising of Lazarus that leads to the conspiracy to have Jesus put to death.
Whenever we encounter Mary and Martha, they are caring for Jesus. Martha preparing the meal, Mary gently receiving his words of teaching, Martha serving at the table, Mary gently putting all restraint aside to anoint Jesus in advance for his death and burial. Whereas nearly everyone else in the gospels who encounter Jesus are demanding time, healing, prayer, presence, Mary, the mother of our Lord, Martha and Mary are undemanding, caring for him, nurturing his life so that his ministry may bear much fruit. That caring by women extends to the frantic journey to the cross – Jesus meets his mother and they cling to each other in loving recognition; Veronica wipes his face in his time of need; a few women reach out to comfort, only to find him comforting them.
But how we care for Christ today? It is very easy for us to be like those who wanted everything from him in his lifetime, but were not prepared to give anything back. Remember the 10 lepers who are healed, only one turns back to give him thanks – the other nine, where are they?
So the first step is simple, just turn to him and recognise his presence within you and around you, know him and love him in the depths of your heart. Remember, he told us to consider the lilies, to spend time looking with wonder and love at this miracle of God’s creation. So, in the same way, we are called to cherish him in all his creation and see him in everything around you, the colours of his love glowing in all there is.
Remember he gives us bread and wine, and, as a friend, says to us: take, eat, do this to remember me. So receive him in your hands and know that there lies the very life of God himself, intimate and infinite, which we take into our very souls, there to find a home within us. And in caring for that life, we care for ourselves and in caring for ourselves, we care for others, and in caring for others, we care for Christ and share his priorities. And we are called to care for him in all circumstances, no less as we stand at the foot of our own cross, or the cross of a friend, or the cross that stretches its arms across the whole world or the cross of our own making.
So blue, a colour we link today with the loving care of Mary and through her to the women and other friends who give of themselves to the care of Christ in his need. So this week, I commend to you who follow his path to the cross, space and time to consider how you will care for him and for his people on this road of suffering, in this time of need, in this time of vulnerability, at this time of uncertainty. Amen
TUESDAY IN HOLY WEEK
Green is a common colour. We see it all around us in the grass, in the trees, in the budding of the new plants of the spring time. Green tells us of new potential, new possibility. When a forest is devastated by fire and it seems like nothing can survive in such a blasted landscape, it is the tiny touches of new life, of green, that first begin to push through through the ashes, the hope of resurrection. Green is apparently the most restful colour for the human eye and for us it also has a suggestion of safely – when the green man is lit up it is safe for us to cross the road!
And green is our most common liturgical colour in the church. When we have no other reason to celebrate, no major saint’s days, no major festivals, then it is green that we wear, and significantly it is used mainly during the summer months, what my dad, as a gardener, would call the growing season.
So every year during the summer it is a time for us to relax into Christ’s teaching and preaching and to allow the words of the evangelists to guide us and lead us, a time for personal growth in scripture and in faith and love. But if we are to be fully open to this experience, we have to be able to let go of our preconceptions and allow Christ’s words to live in us anew.
And that sense of newness is very much in the air in our gospel today. Some Greek speakers want to see Jesus and approach Philip for an introduction. Philip is the disciple whose job appears to be to grow the church; he it is who brings Nathaniel to Jesus at the beginning of John’s gospel and here he is fulfilling that matchmaking role again. The Greeks want to see Jesus, to see his true nature and to grow in that experience – whether they do or not as a result of this encounter does not appear to interest St John, for he records Jesus’s response to their enquiry in words of death and resurrection. Jesus talks to them about how a seed has to fall to the ground and die before it can bring forth fresh growth, a green shoot full of hope. The words are mysterious in this context, but they touch on an eternal truth.
And that is that the cycle of the seasons depends on growth, blossoming, death and rebirth – and Jesus suggests that is the pattern of his ministry too. His impending passion and death are an essential part of the cycle. Unless he dies, unless he enters the earth and faces the darkness, then the resurrection is not possible. It is in the embracing of the darkness that God will triumph. It is in the black ashes of the burnt forest that the sign of new life is to be found, the green shoot that defies the devastation.
So the message to those who truly want to see Jesus is that we have to look at the totally of who he is and what he does if we are to have any chance of grasping the significance of what it means for God to be present in our midst. St John gets it spot on at the beginning of his gospel, in that great passage in which he tells us about the Word of God – In beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God – God is the light, Jesus is the light, that enters the darkness to show us that even the darkness of death cannot suppress its clarion brightness. It is in the darkness that the light shines most brightly; it is through the cross that the resurrection is possible; it is in the dark valley that the shepherd can truly be our guide.
And here, perhaps is where our growth is difficult, for although we hear the words of Christ, we filter out those that do not chime in sympathy with our understanding. So we have problems when we try to put our faith experience alongside the difficulties we face in our lives – with the voice of the psalmist, we cry why does God allow this? But if we are to be truly open to the Word, then as we grow, we will notice that Jesus never shirks or denies the difficulties that we will face, but what he does do is confront them with the reality of God’s love. And for us to be truly open to the Word means to put aside what we think we know and to long, to yearn to see Christ as he really is, caring for him, listening to his Word and making it our own. Growing in Christ means that we have to allow him to grow in us as we grow in him as well, green shoots of his love blossoming in the barren land of our souls. Amen
WEDNESDAY IN HOLY WEEK
When Christ was tortured by the Roman soldiers after Pilate had pronounced his condemnation, that torture was not simply physical but also mental. On top of whipping and abuse, the soldiers find an old bit of purple cloth and hail him as king. In many illustrations of this scene, Christ is portrayed as wearing a fine, full robe of purple, but that doesn’t ring true with the ad hoc nature of his arrest and the events following it. It is unlikely that the Romans would have kept a fine piece of expensive cloth to one hand just on the off chance it might be needed – it would have long been sold for personal gain! No, this cloth is more likely to be something that is filthy, discarded and just happens to be hanging around. So it becomes all the more poignant that the bleeding, abused figure is forced to wear a dirty and unwanted bit of old purple rag. Purple was the colour of emperors and of victorious generals, a sign of the highest status and those with the wealth to afford the hugely expensive dying process to produce the garments. Even high status Romans could only afford to sport a stripe of the purple on their togas. So the message is clear here from the Roman army – you think you are important, think again; you think you have power, think again; you think you can make a difference, think again; your power lies in a filthy discarded cloth.
Purple as a liturgical colour only occurs twice in the church year. Each time it is in a season of preparation: Advent and Lent, both times when we are encouraged to get ready, to take a long hard look at ourselves, to examine afresh what spiritual clothes we put on and to look again at how we try to clothe Christ. Paul urges us to clothe ourselves with Christ each and every day, to make our whole nature, both inward and outward, an image of Christ. But therein lies danger, for it is all too easy to put on Christ and to pretend to ourselves it is he whom we wear, when in actual fact it is but a projection of our own self.
We can see this in Judas Iscariot, the much maligned villain of the passion story. We tend to forget that he was one of the twelve disciples chosen by Jesus from the mass of his followers, so we need to understand that Jesus saw something in him, something perhaps reflected in his description as the Zealot, a member of the faction that sought to use violence to rid the country of the occupying Roman army. What we also need to understand is that all the information we have about him is written with the knowledge that he is the one who is the betrayer, and the gospel writers pull no punches here – Judas gets universally bad press as far as they are concerned. Perhaps that is unfair – Judas certainly does misread the situation, seeing in Jesus the culmination and completion of his own story, a narrative that requires Jesus to win a military victory, a short term gain to overturn the Roman might, a Judean king to replace a Roman governor. He wants Jesus to wear the purple, not knowing that the purple Jesus will wear is a discarded bit of cloth that is intended to humiliate not exalt. Judas puts on what he wants of Christ, only to find that when the clothes are torn away, when the illusions are stripped, there is nothing there but his own desires, and his own will. When Jesus is stripped for nailing to the cross, he is still fully clothed with the life of God, a life he lives throughout this passion, and a life that survives the darkest night, the deepest brokenness and the profoundest hate. Jesus does wear the purple, but it is the purple of human dignity and love.
So when we put on Christ, we should be naked and vulnerable to God’s will, putting aside what we want and asking for his presence, for his will to be done, for his Word to be spoken. And that requires us to be ever open to him, to allow him past all the barriers that we put in his way, to gather him into the inner journey we follow with him and to nurture him there. It also means, as the purple in Advent and Lent remind us, we have to put aside our own illusions of self, of power, of ego, and embrace the journey that Christ calls us into, knowing that his is the journey that is worth the following. Amen
MAUNDY THURSDAY
One of my favourite musicals is by Stephen Sondheim, the great American composer, and it is called “Sunday in the Park with George”. It is a show about artistic creation that focuses on the French painter Georges Seurat. It starts with the stage as a blank canvas, a white expanse of nothingness. And into that white blankness the artist speaks words of creation:
White.
A blank page or canvas.
The challenge: bring order to the whole.
Through design.
Composition.
Balance.
Light, and Harmony.
This Holy Week, we are exploring some of the colours of Christ’s ministry that are reflected in the way we use colour in our liturgy. Already this week, we have explored the colour blue and from that how we care for Christ, on Tuesday we looked at the colour green and how we grow in Christ. Yesterday, we considered purple and how we clothe Christ. Today is a bit of a strange day, this Maundy Thursday. The word Maundy suggests a day when we are in sorrow, literally in mourning, but the colour we use for Maundy Thursday is white or gold, the colour of celebration certainly not of sorrow. The word Maundy comes from a Latin word Mandatum, which means commandment, and it reminds us that this day is the day when we remember that Jesus gave us a new commandment, to love one another as he has loved us. So if we were in a position to rename this festival, we might want to call it something along the lines of The New Commandment Thursday.
But this day is also about other things as well – it is day rich in resonance and symbol. Today we remember that Jesus demonstrated to his disciples the nature of his service to them, by kneeling at their feet and washing them. And today is the day of all days when Jesus first shares bread and wine with his disciples and says – this is my body, this is my blood. And today we stand posed on the brink of the cross. What colour can begin to draw all of this together? – none other than the colour of purity, white.
And if we begin to reflect upon the events we remember today, they have a common thread in them. And that thread appears to me to be Jesus’s giving of himself in so many ways. He tells them of the quality of his love, that deep love that knows us through and through and will never let us go. That love that carries on giving even when we cannot understand it or feel it or love it ourselves. He shows the disciples the practicalities of ministry. Look, he says, this is way to do it, and the way to do it is just to get on your knees and wash each other’s feet. That’s it It is like a new baptism. It is like a washing away of sins. It is like a new beginning. Nothing more, nothing less, so simple, but so profound.
And then he takes the simple things of life, bread and wine, and invests them with the meaning and intensity of his earthly ministry and his eternal life, not as something to be admired or revered, but as something to be taken into the very heart of our being, literally placed into our hands. And in all this he is giving to us of his wisdom, of his experience, of his very being.
White.
A blank page or canvas.
The challenge: bring order to the whole.
Through design.
Composition.
Balance.
Light, and Harmony.
And there is a real sense for me here that what Jesus is asking his disciples is to put aside everything they think they know and understand, to wipe the slate clean and on the new white, blank sheet to begin to write once again the story of their life in his love with him as their guide, as their artist, if you like. And that invitation is open to us as well, Jesus constantly asking us to open our hearts to his love, so that through his forgiving, healing nature, we can wipe the slate clean begin once again to strive for his design, his composition, his balance, his harmony in our lives. But that does need us to be ready and willing to open our hands to receive him, to be prepared to find him washing our feet, to be reminded of his way of complete love.
What Christ offers is the totality of who he is, and that infinite and intimate reality comes to us when we open our hands to receive his risen life in the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Here on this Maundy Thursday, Christ offers us a new pattern for living, one based on his life giving love and service, fuelled by the very essence of his divine life. No wonder, at this point of tipping towards the cross, we celebrate that we are invited to make a new start in his love, to begin to fill the blank white canvas of our lives with the colours of his love and the harmonies of his peace. Amen
GOOD FRIDAY
When someone dies you lose their presence with you. But it is more than just physical absence that causes the heart to ache with longing. For in a death, you lose the stories and the memories that are so unique to that person. You lose the vibrancy of their being. You lose the colours of their life. You lose the music of their being. Everything that made that person who they truly were is drained away and the heart aches, the soul mourns, the body hurts.
And here we are today faced with a death. But not just any death, death in a violent and brutal manner, death sanctioned by the state, death carried out with efficient despatch, the death of Jesus, the Son of God. And let’s make no mistake here. This is death, this is not just Jesus having a bad weekend prior to the resurrection, this is the complete draining of the earthly and divine life that came to bring light, colour and hope to a people who, in the end, could not bear the beautiful vision that he was. His mother and his friends come to gather his body into their arms and to commit the limp frame that once spoke of resurrection hope to the finality of the grave.
How do we bear such a vision? This is Jesus, our Lord, our Saviour, our teacher, our healer over whose birth the angels sang their song of glory. This is Jesus who calls us over to join him to consider the lilies and to share with him the beauty and wonder of his creation. This is Jesus who draws us into a world where the colours of God’s love are the colours with which he paints, colours that sing with vibrancy and glow we had never noticed before. This is Jesus at whose feet Mary sits, absorbed in the music of his teaching. This is Jesus, who ticks off her sister for being too busy, but then holds her in her place of grief when her brother dies. All the stories he tells and all the memories he creates for us – look over there, there is someone sowing seeds, what can we learn from him?; and see, there, is a single sheep straying from its flock, what can I tell you of him?– all those stories now stilled as the breath from his body shudders to a halt, all those memories he holds no longer ours to know.
We are left with the stories others tell of him and the way in which he changes their lives. A tax collector turns his back on a life of fraud because Jesus calls. A fisherman turns his back to the waves and knows this man who calls him as the Messiah, the Son of the living God. A woman touches the fringe of his coat and is drawn into his healing love. The storms of people’s lives are stilled by a single word.
That vibrancy of his being now hangs on a cross, pinned there by the excess of his love and by the depth of his hope in his creation. And all the colours of his life are drained away, but even in this moment, even at this time he has cared and been cared for, encouraged others to grow in their faith and understanding, forgiven and forgiving.
A woman has held his hand on the road to the cross, another has wiped his face and given a moment of refreshment. They have cared for Christ. A man has shouldered the burden of the cross with him and sharing the journey has come to see Christ and grow in his love. A soldier, wearing the purple, has seen in the dying man the truth of his being and those who wield the hammer have received his forgiveness. The colours of his love continue to glow even in this place because the colours are caught in our reflected gaze on the one who is the light of the world.
And the wonder of it is that our lives are held in his prayer and by his prayer no less as he marvels at the blue skies, the green meadows, the purple flowers, the white clouds, the rainbow colours of his love and asks us to direct our gaze with him to wonder; our lives are held in his prayer and by his prayer as the body sags, the colour drains and the breath ceases and all this is left is the red, turning dark, of the blood which dries on his skin.
This is our Jesus dead on the cross, no more songs to sing of lost sons, and mustard seeds and salt and yeast and how God holds it all in his love. And here we are and here we stay and watch and pray for a world and a people that crucifies the image of the living God because it cannot bear the colours of his love. And we sit at the foot of the cross, maybe the cross of our own making, maybe the cross that life has thrust upon us, maybe the cross that we have taken up willingly, maybe the cross that we share with a friend and we know that from each of those crosses Christ speaks from his cross words of forgiveness, healing, peace and love, the colours of his possibilities always there for us to explore. Amen
EASTER VIGIL
In the former chapel at the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Paraclete in Whitby, there is a cross. It is suspended in the east wall across a window, and it is formed out of transparent squares. On one a head is angled to the right; on two, hands angled pointing slightly upwards, and at the base the feet can be clearly seen. Each square is framed by its own colour. Red for head, hands and feet, blue or green for the body of the cross. It is not clear what the intention of this particular cross is. Is it a picture of a drooping body dying on a cross, or is it rather more subtle? For me, when I look at the cross, and particularly when the light of the sun shine through the window and dances on the transparent squares, what I see is not death, but life. A head bowing gracefully towards you. Hands raised gently in blessing. A figure alive with the wonder of God’s being, a figure that transcends the pinning of the cross and offers life, a life vibrant with the colour of God’s radiance.
And therein is the paradox, of course. How can this man, nailed to a cross, condemned to a lingering death hold for us an image of life, new life, dancing to the tune of God’s love? We have been there at the cross this week, watching as Christ’s life drains away, the pale body taken down from the cross, and we have walked to the tomb to lay him to his rest. This should be a story that holds no blessing, no possibility of emerging from the shadow of death. But it does – the blessing is in the dying man who gives his life uttering words of love, the image of the living God, the life of the Holy Spirit, present in Jesus.
The blessing has always been there: from the angel songs greeting birth, to the stilling of stormy waters, from the gentle touch of healing, to the wonder of his storytelling – all in this life is blessing. And if all, nowhere more so than in the moment of death: Jesus dies blessing those condemned with him, forgiving those who kill him, holding his mother and friends near to his love. And if that had been the end of it, we might well have turned away and got on with our lives without ever knowing the life of God among us. But, and it is a big but, God’s blessing is never finished with us and it breaks from the tomb, painting pictures of a vibrant new colour.
The soil of the garden of new creation is rich indeed – red with the blood of the Son of God, golden with shining light of resurrection, green with the new life He brings. This is the soil into which we are rooted and grounded in God’s love – no ordinary soil, but a soil vibrant with God’s colours, God’s hopes and God’s possibilities.
And when I look at the cross in the chapel at Whitby, I am reminded of the cross of Christ and the sacrifice that he made, of the death of the human body. I see it and I know it. But what I also see and also know is that this cross is one that embraces blessing, offers blessing and is blessing because it speaks of resurrection life. A resurrection life that is ours because Jesus has walked the way with us. A resurrection life that is ours because God loves us just the way we are. A resurrection life that gives us the assurance that the darkest pathway, the deepest shadow, the blackest cloud is still shot through with the colours of God’s blessing. A resurrection life that is not beyond our grasp, but is rooted and grounded where we are and longs to grow the blessing within us.
Can we hear that blessing, can we look to the ground around us and see the roots of God’s love? Can we do it in joy and in sorrow, in laughter and in tears...because that is what Christ did, even on the cross, and that is the resurrection life he calls us into today. To be alive with God, to live his vibrancy and to rejoice in the colours of his love. The chapel cross blazes today in the light of the new dawn, and our God is there, is here, drawing us to paint the rainbow colours of his love in our lives, in our families, in our world. Amen
