Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain. Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)
Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80
Scripture for the Day: Matthew 28:1-20
Reading for Reflection:
One
of the consequences of having been sick enough to die once myself is that I am
now much more interested in any celebrations regarding being raised from the
dead than I once was.
For some years, I prepared for Easter by
attending a Good Friday service and watching the cross go out the back door,
its ominous and unsettling black veil flowing in the breeze, trying to summon
up the courage to imagine and to face some semblance of the sense of loss the
disciples must have felt on that day, trying to come to grips with what it
means if there is another word after good-bye and what it means if there is
not. Being close to being draped in
black and carried out the same door myself has, shall we say, made the whole
thing a bit easier for me to imagine.
I was in the hospital around Easter, and the
doctors gave me a pass to go to church on Easter morning. My sister came to pick me up and help me get
there. Sitting in the pew that morning,
barely two blocks from the hospital where I was told I might well have been
dead instead of alive on this Easter morning, it came to me that the
resurrection is a theological concept that may well be ignored unless one’s
death cannot be.
It follows that forgiveness is not much of
a concept without something for which to forgive and be forgiven. Healing has no meaning in the absence of
illness. Peace is no treasure at all to
those who have known no war and no strife.
Saying hello has no joy in it without the saying of good-bye.
I am coming to believe that the thing God
said just before “Let there be light” was “Good-bye, dark.” And that Noah could not say hello to the
rainbow without first having said good-bye to the world as it disappeared
beneath the waters of the flood. And
that something deep and mysterious about saying good-bye from the bottom of the
pit made the hello that Joseph spoke to his father all those years later all
the more wondrous. “Good-bye, Egypt ” turned out to be another way for the
Israelites to say “Hello, Canaan .”
“Good-bye, Jesus of Nazareth,” whispers
Mary through her tears at the foot of the cross on Friday afternoon. “Hello, Lord of the Universe,” she murmurs to
the one she mistakes for a gardener, on Sunday morning. (Between the Dreaming and the
Coming True by Robert Benson)
Reflection
and Listening: silent and written
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise
Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.
He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.
Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!
My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.
Closing Prayer:
O God, who by your One and
only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life;
grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in
his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.
Amen.
~Gelasian Sacramentary
