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8.5.1 Easter Sunday Sunrise Service at Prospect Park United Methodist

4/23/2015

I'm not sure what got into me, but for some reason I though it would be a good idea to go to bed at 2am after Easter Vigil, then get up less than 4 hours later for a Easter Sunrise Service with Prospect Park United Methodist. To be honest, I really just wanted to watch the sunrise from my favorite spot in Minneapolis, the Witch's Hat Tower.

And so at 6:30 on a beautiful, clear, not yet morning, I climbed up the Tower Hill with the people of Prospect Park UMC to wait for the both risen Son and the rising Sun. As we stood in the cool pre-dawn air, a group of parishioners wound their way up the trail to where we were gathered by the tower singing as they went "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?". Once they had joined us we read the story of the women finding the empty tomb, the very same story I had heard less than 12 hours previously. Then the pastor offered a brief sermon about tombs, butterflies, and cocoons, and we stood in silent anticipation for the Sun to rise. Once the Sun had risen, we sang "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," which is a cliche, yet wonderful, Easter morning hymn full of Alleluias, which are always welcome on Easter morning.

It was a short and beautiful service. Yet given the fact that I returned home and slept for another six hours sort of defeated the "break of day" nature of the service. Oh well, I'm no morning person. While at the service the thought occurred to me when exactly on Easter the resurrection is supposed to have occurred. Daybreak? Midnight? Sunset the day before? Does it really matter?

Growing up there was a debate in my family as to whether or not you still had to keep your Lenten sacrifices between leaving Easter Vigil Mass (which usually ends shortly before Easter Sunday) and waking up the next day, or if you could begin eating your Easter candy as soon as you got home. I guess one way to resolve this would be to do things the Orthodox way and hold Easter Vigil liturgy from late Saturday night to early Sunday Morning. There's a hint about my next post.

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8.4.1 Easter Vigil at St. Frances Cabrini

4/23/2015

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Easter Vigil at a Catholic church is an amazing and rather long event, but I'll try my best to keep this short.

At the end of Good Friday the church was dark and bare. As we entered the church on Holy Saturday night (holding vigil for the resurrection on Easter morning) the church was still dark, but there were flowers on the altar, and we were each given a candle. About 15 minutes before Mass began, we gathered outside around a bonfire. The celebration began when the priest blessed the bonfire, and using that fire, lit what is know as the Easter Candle, a huge candle which represents the light of God present in the Church. It is lit during the Easter season (50 days after Easter), and also during Baptisms when the child is given a candle lit from the Easter candle representing the light of God coming through the Church and into the child's life. But back to the story. Once the Easter candle is lit on Easter Vigil, the flame is passed around until all the faithful are holding the light of Christ. And then we processed into the darkness of the Church, where a man sang an acclamation of Jesus' glorious defeat of death. How did Jesus defeat death? Without going into atonement theology, let me say that after Jesus died he descended into Hell (or wherever the good souls who died before Jesus were), then carried the souls of the blessed up into Heaven, opening the gates for all of us. Disclaimer: that was super-simplified, and not necessarily true, nor representative of anyone's (including the author) actual beliefs. Regardless of how it actually happened, we were gathered to celebrate God/Jesus saving us.

After 40 days of solemn fasting and preparation, we burst into song with the Gloria, which praises the glory of God (but not Bahá'u'lláh), and is not sung throughout Lent. We then sat and listened to nine readings from the Bible which outline the history of how God saved humanity, also known as Salvation History. The readings were the Creation Story, Abraham and Isaac, Moses parting the Red Sea, God making a covenant with Israel, God's mercy being available to all, Wisdom calling for us to love Her, God promising redemption, Baptism as an joining in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and finally, the story of the women finding the empty tomb.

My personal favorite this year was the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, which was danced by a group of women. The dance incorporated elements from the Jewish Seder meal (which my awesome Jewish friend Hannah skipped to come to church with me!) such as asking "why is this night different from the rest?". Instead of ending with the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea, the women extended the story to include a Midrash (Midrash = Jewish texts which expand and interpret the stories of the Tanakh (Torah (books of Moses), Nevi'im (prophets), and Ketuvim(writings))) about the sorrow God and the Israelites felt at the death of so many of God's children being killed. Instead of responding to this reading with a Psalm as we did for every other reading, we responded with silence.

Besides reading a lot from the Bible, the Easter Vigil Mass also welcomes new members into the Church. Today to join the Catholic Church one must go through something known as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which I know almost nothing about. But back in the day (like Roman times) this period of preparation was the 40 days before Easter. Eventually not only new Christians observed these 40 days of preparation, but even life-long Christians began preparing for Easter, and the season of Lent was born. This year, there was one adult who joined the Catholic Church at my parish. This woman recited a short list of baptismal vows, and then had water poured over her head three times while the priest baptized her in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. After being baptized, she was confirmed, the process through which one receives the Holy Spirit. To do so, the priest used sacred chrism oil to trace a cross on the woman's forehead while saying, "be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit." After the woman was welcomed into the Church, each of us was invited to come forward and renew our baptismal promises by rinsing our hands or face from a basin of holy water.

After that the Mass preceded as normal, well the entire congregation sang the Consecration, which is not normal for a Catholic church, but tradition at St. Frances Cabrini. By the end of the Mass, it was nearly midnight, however we were not tired, but rejuvenated by the excitement of Easter. After the long preparation and expectation of Lent, the light and joy of Easter had finally come.

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8.3.2 Good Friday at St. Frances Cabrini

4/23/2015

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Following on the heels of Holy/Maundy Thursday comes Good Friday, the day on which Christians remember Jesus' death on the cross. Despite the cheery name (Jesus' giving of his life on the cross was a good deed), Good Friday is the most solemn day of the Christian year.

Tradition holds that Jesus hung on the cross for three hours: from noon to 3pm, and so Good Friday services are supposed to happen during this time. Today many churches hold evening services for those who can't get off work in the middle of the day. Such was the service I attended at St. Frances Cabrini (a.k.a. my usual church).

Good Friday services are solemn, dark, and often long. It is also the only day of the year on which Catholics don't celebrate the Mass. To be a Mass, a Catholic service must include the consecration of new communion elements, i.e. the priest must transubstantiate bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus. If communion is served in a Catholic church on Good Friday, it will be from the leftovers from Holy Thursday.

On Good Friday, there's little singing, and what singing there is is mournful and subdued. Instead there's plenty of silence and time for reflection.

The service I attended read the standard Catholic Good Friday readings. The first reading was from Isaiah and described a suffering servant who is either the nation of Israel or the crucified Messiah (Jesus) depending on who you ask. The second was from Hebrews and got too close for my comfort to the idea of Jesus as the perfect sacrificial lamb. The third was the passion according to John. In this context, passion refers to Jesus' betrayal by Judas, Jesus' arrest, trial, carrying of the cross, and final death.

There are two days of the year on which the passion of Jesus is read: Good Friday and Palm Sunday. On Good Friday, the passion according to John is read. On Palm Sunday the passion story comes from whichever Gospel that liturgical year focuses on. The Catholic church goes through a three year cycle of readings for Mass and each year focuses on either the Gospel of Matthew (last year), Mark (this year), or Luke (next year). This collection of readings is known as the Lectionary, and doesn't include the entire Bible.

So this year on Palm Sunday we heard the Passion of Mark which is simple, and cuts to the chase. Mark was, after all, the least educated Gospel writer. In Mark's Gospel Jesus is very human. On the other hand you have the Gospel of John in which Jesus is viewed as the incarnation of the Logos of God. Mark's Gospel begins with Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, John's Gospel begins with "In the begining was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God and the Word was God." Mark's Gospel originally ended with the empty tomb (Mark's resurrection stories were most likely added later), and John's Gospel includes several stories of the physically resurrected Jesus.

Before I go overboard on comparing the canonical Gospels, let me point you in the direction of a helpful guide . I spent Good Friday evening after the service reading all four Passion Narratives at the same time. I highly recommend it. Let me just say one more thing though. One of the worst parts of Christian history is that the idea that the Jewish leaders (or even more horribly, the entire Jewish nation) were to blame for Jesus' death has been used to justify Christian anti-Semitism. I was much relieved that during the service I attended, we paused when we came to the part where the Gospel writer had the Jews crying out "crucify him," and spent a moment in silence to show our sorrow that this passage has been used to justify anti-Semitism.

If you read the passion stories in the order in which they were written (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) you will find each progressive Gospel places more and more of the blame for Jesus' false conviction on the Jewish authorities instead of the Roman authorities i.e. Pontius Pilate. By the time you get to the Gospel of John, Pilate is practically begging the Jews to let Jesus go, which is strange considering Emperor Tiberius once chastened Pilate for being so execution happy. So why do the Gospel writers put the blame on the Jews instead of the Romans? Politics. By the time the Gospels were written, Christianity had pretty much split from Judaism. Jews were not on the best terms with the Roman authorities, but now that Christians were no longer grouped with the Jews, they stood a chance at being treated well by the Romans. To improve their chances, the Gospel writers placed the blame for Jesus' death on the Jews and not on the Romans, who were actually the ones responsible. Long digression, but it is important to understand that the Romans killed Jesus, NOT the Jews.

Back to the service, as the passion of John was read a cross was slowly, piece by piece, brought into the center of the church and erected. Once the reading of the passion was finished, and several prayers had been offered, the people were invited to come forward and show their respect for the cross. One-by-one, in very dim light, people came forward to kneel before the cross, touch it reverently, or even kiss it. I stayed a few minutes later reflecting on the power this story still holds two thousand years later.

While it was very dark in the church, I knew, if I waited one more day, the light would return.

What's with the odd picture in this post? It's called Station 3 from Lema Sabachtani, a series of 14 paintings by Barnett Newman, based on the Stations of the Cross.

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8.3.1 Good Jumu'ah

4/23/2015

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It was about noon on Good Friday. And so I, a Christian, went to Friday prayer with the Muslim students on the University of Minnesota's campus.

Muslims pray five times a day: dawn, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and night. These prayers, (salat in Arabic) make up one of the five pillars of Islam. (The other four are faith in God and the Prophet, alms giving, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca). Prayer in Islam is a simple and beautiful thing. It involves the entirety of your mind, soul, and body. I've prayed the Islamic way a handful of times, and each time I have felt a sense of peace and unity with humanity.

What does Islamic prayer (salat) involve? First you must perform a short ritual washing known as wudu. Through wudu you wash away your sins and prepare yourself to pray. Once you've performed wudu, you stand and face toward Mecca, this direction is know as qibla. Muslims face qibla as a symbol of unity. Instead of having Indonesian Muslims face Jakarta, Canadian Muslims face the North Pole, and Texan Muslims face the Cowboys Stadium; all Muslims face toward the holiest place on Earth, the Kaaba, a small building located in Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca. Muslims do not worship the Kaaba, just like Christians do not worship the front of their church. By the way, early Christian churches used to face Jerusalem, and Muslims used to face Jerusalem when they prayed.

Alright, once you're facing qibla (roughly Northeast in Minneapolis), you make a series of motions while reciting certain phrases. This series of motions is known as a raka'ah and takes about one minute. It involves standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting while reciting short prayers praising God. Depending on the time of day, the raka'ah is repeated two to four times. The noon prayer (dhuhr) has four raka'ah. This paragraph will make more sense if you click this link.

On Friday, Jumu'ah in Arabic, Muslims gather together to pray the noontime prayer (dhurh) as a community. Since Islam hasn't been plague by denominationalism Muslims pretty much just head to whichever masjid (mosque) is closest, and pray dhurh with their Muslim brothers and sisters.

What is it like at a salat al-Jumu'ah (Friday prayer)? You gather in a large, open prayer room (such as the fellowship room at Grace University Lutheran Church), sitting in rows facing qibla. In a masjid (mosque), there would be a decorative niche in a wall, known as a mihrab, which points in the direction of Mecca. The service begins when someone makes the iqama, the call to prayer given right before prayer starts. There is also another call to prayer known as the adhan which is given a little while before the prayer begins.

The noon prayer involves four raka'ah, except on Friday when two raka'ah are replaced by a sermon. The sermon (khutbah) lasts about 30 minutes and is broken into two 15 minute segments. At the end of the sermon, the khateeb (the sermon giver) leads those gathered in supplication prayers known as duas. After the duas, everyone stands shoulder to shoulder in straight rows and begins salat. After salat, the service is over. The whole thing lasts less than 40 minutes.

There are three things I would like to say about my experience at Friday prayer with my Muslim gopher friends. First, standing, sitting, and prostrating next to people who are all doing the same thing is neat enough, but then add on the fact that the motions we were doing are done by 1.6 billion Muslims everyday, always facing the same direction, just as they have done for the last 1400 years. That delivers powerful sense of unity. And although everyone was praying the same way, each person did so as their own personal prayer to God. It was an amazing combination of personal and communal prayer.

Second, the khutbah was about about Jesus. According to Islam Jesus was a Prophet, just like Muhammed, Noah, and Moses. The sermon focused on how Muslims should navigate the differences in how Christians and Muslims understand Jesus. According to Islam, Jesus was just a man, and he wasn't crucified. For how could God allow something so horrible to happen to one of His Prophets? The khateeb's punch-line was that most Christians view Jesus' death and resurrection as more important than his divinity, and I totally agree with him. The khateeb wanted those gathered to understand, not only the way Islam views Jesus, but also the way Christians view Jesus. I was thoroughly impressed.

I was also incredibly intrigued when the khateeb mentioned an idea in Islam that each Prophet has been given a prayer which God will answer no matter what. The khateeb raised the idea that perhaps Jesus used this prayer during the Agony in the Garden when he fell with his face on the ground and asked God to "take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will." And what if the khateeb was right? What if it really was a look-a-like crucified instead of Jesus? I have no idea... but it's fun to think about.

Third, it was absolutely wonderful to visit Muslim Friday prayers on Good Friday, and have the sermon be about Jesus. That was awesome. Absolutely awesome. In sha Allah, the next time I visit a church on Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha, the sermon will be about Muhammed (pbuh).

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8.2 Maundy Thursday with Univ. Baptist Church/Wesley Foundation

4/19/2015

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Four days into Holy Week and you have Holy Thursday which is also known as Maundy Thursday. What's Maundy? I'll tell you in just a bit. This night celebrates the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples. It also celebrates the Maundy of Jesus. Still don't know what Maundy means? I'll tell you in just a bit.

Jesus was a Jew. And if you've ever celebrated a Shabbat dinner you will have broken challah bread and shared wine. And so, what would Jesus have done to celebrate his last meal with his friends? Broken bread and shared wine I suppose. And this is, according to three of the Gospels, what Jesus did during the Last Supper. If we believe the gospels, Jesus had a unique way of breaking bread, and this act is what Christians remember each time they celebrate communion. Growing up as a Catholic, the Last Supper/Holy Thursday was viewed as the first Mass (Catholic church service where bread and wine are made into the body and blood of Jesus) and the institution of the Eucharist. Christian disagree greatly on what exactly happens during communion: is it literally Jesus' body and blood?, is God mysteriously present?, is it symbolic?, is it just plain bread and wine? Regardless of denomination, today Christians still follow Jesus' command to "do this in memory of me," and continue this tradition as an act of community and a reminder of our roots in Jesus.

The Gospel of John, however, leaves out the story of bread and wine entirely. Instead at the last supper, Jesus washes his disciples feet. This action is known as the Maundy of Jesus, hence the term "Maundy Thursday." Fun Fact: Seventh Day adventists don't serve bread-and-wine communion, but wash each others' feet as an act of communion.

On Holy/Maundy Thursday, Christians gather to remember the events of Jesus' last supper. This year I attended a Maundy Thursday service at University Baptist Church which was led by the Wesley Foundation (aka where I work). We built the service around a meal. As people entered they were invited to have their feet washed. During the meal we read the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet which, hearing how it is an example of how we are to love each other.

As usual we celebrated communion, and concluded the service by reading the story of Jesus leaving the meal with his disciples, praying in the garden of Gethsemene, and ultimately being arrested. Had this been a Catholic Holy Thursday Mass, all decorations would have been removed from the church and all consecrated communion elements would have been carried outside of the sanctuary to symbolize the absence the disciples felt after Jesus was arrested. While this symbolism is beautiful and moving, the sense of community present at this particular Maundy Thursday service was equally beautiful and moving, yet real, not symbolic.

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#8.1 St. Constantine Ukraininan Catholic

4/19/2015

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A few weeks ago, the Christian world celebrated Holy Week, the holiest 7 days in the Christian year. These seven days start with Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, four days later Christians remember Jesus' last supper with his disciples on Holy/Maundy Thursday; the next day marks the death of Jesus on Good Friday; and on Saturday many Christians hold vigil for the glory of the resurrection on Easter Sunday Morning. Being me, I tried to experience these holy days at as many different churches as possible. I'm going to post a shorter post for each of these days and give a brief introduction to that particular day, and say a bit about how the community I visited celebrated that day.

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday which celebrates Jesus' triumphant-ish entry into Jerusalem. For most of his ministry, Jesus lived and preached in Galilee, which was sort of the backwater of Roman-occupied Palestine. Eventually Jesus and his followers took his message to Jerusalem, the religious/political center of the region. According to the Gospels, Jesus pretty much walked everywhere, except that when he entered Jerusalem, he rode in on a colt as the people of Jerusalem waved palm branches (hence Palm Sunday) and spread their cloaks in front of Jesus. Perhaps the Gospel writers wanted to show how Jesus did not enter with an army, a band, and a throng of supporters like the Roman Emperors would have, or maybe they wanted to suggest Jesus brought a new order where rulers would drive Chevys, not Cadillacs, or maybe the people of Jerusalem really did give Jesus a royal welcome. I don't know.

The important fact is, two thousand years later, Christians still remember this event. How? By reading the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and handing out palm leafs for children to play with... err hold reverently throughout the service. Some churches gather outside the church doors and then process into the church waving palm branches and singing a jubilant song.

And so I expected something similar at St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church, which is after all, a Catholic church, just under the "Byzantine" branch. However, that is not what I found. In fact, I spent most of the liturgy wondering whether I was in a Catholic or an Orthodox church. The liturgy was the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is the same (ancient) liturgy which the Orthodox church uses. Everything about the art and architecture looked Orthodox: there were icons everywhere, there was a gate separating the altar from the rest of the church, there was an icon of Jesus in the central dome, there were some more icons, and the priest even mentioned in a prayer "all orthodox Christians." In fact, I could only find three tiny details which which suggested I was in a Catholic church.

First there was no "bishop's chair," a highly decorated chair on the altar which symbolizes the individual church's connection to the broader church. Second, and I had to listen really carefully to catch this, during the creed everyone recited belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. In Orthodox churches, this would have just been "proceeds from the Father." (Big difference, right? But this was official reason for the great schism back in the 11th century.) Third, while communion was distributed by blending bread and wine together and spooning it into congregants' mouths, there was no distribution of blessed bread as found in Orthodox churches. In the end I double checked the sign outside, yes it read St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church (to differentiate it from St. Michael's and St. George's Ukrainian Orthodox Church across the street.)

There was nothing in the liturgy which signalled to me that it was Palm Sunday, until the very end of the service when the priest distributed cuttings of pussy willow branches. Pussy willow branches? Yep. Ukrainian churches celebrate Pussy Willow Sunday, not Palm Sunday. Why? Palm trees don't grow in Ukraine, and pussy willows begin to bud around the time of Easter, so on the Sunday before Easter, Ukrainians carry pussy willow branches as a symbol of the new life coming with Easter. As I walked back to the bus stop, I passed a Polish church and saw people carrying pussy willow branches, so apparently this tradition isn't limited to Ukraine.

I found celebrating Pussy Willow Sunday at St. Constantine's beautiful, yet not the jubilant start to Holy Week I'm used to. Mostly I was struck by how Orthodox the liturgy felt. This visit demonstrated to me that the Orthodox and Catholic traditions clearly have overlap in their liturgies, and if these traditions each embrace the other's liturgies, then politics surely plays the larger role in why they remain divided.

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8.5.1 Easter Sunday Sunrise Service at Prospect Park United Methodist

8.4.1 Easter Vigil at St. Frances Cabrini

8.3.2 Good Friday at St. Frances Cabrini

8.3.1 Good Jumu'ah

8.2 Maundy Thursday with Univ. Baptist Church/Wesley Foundation

#8.1 St. Constantine Ukraininan Catholic

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