Good Friday Musings

I seem to be a bit premature today - I've brought my laptop 'back from the dead' this afternoon. :-) I'm at a local chain coffeeshop/bakery this afternoon, working on my dialogue sermon with the pastor of our 'other' church at the Lutheran Center in Ames, and while I await her next bit of writing I'm going to blog for a bit. Hope you don't mind.

I've dropped the BBC Top 100 Books list for right now in favor of a historic fiction series by Morgan Llywelyn about the Irish War for Independence. Last week I read 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion and currently I'm reading 1921: The War for Independence. Though Llywelyn is obviously sympathetic to the Irish, and the necessary introduction of Nationalist philosophy through invented conversations gets a bit stilted at times, I still find the series fascinating and I imagine I'll continue to enjoy her writing. Reading about the Easter Monday Rising on St. Patrick's Day was certainly interesting - it almost made up for not being able to toast the day with a pint of stout (due to my Lenten discipline of no alcohol). I continue to be fascinated with Irish history - if anyone out there can recommend a good volume that covers ancient Ireland's history, please do so!

In my Friday Five post earlier today, I mentioned a few hymns that bring this holy day to reality for me. On a whim I tried something that had been recommended to me: I got Bach's St. Matthew's Passion on iTunes. I've been listening to it as I work this afternoon - it's quite incredible. I need to brush up on my Deutsche, naturlich, but it is wonderful music nonetheless.

The week continues to be a bit bizarre for me, with Spring Break and Holy Week coinciding. My crack about bringing back the laptop was in jest, of course, but the concern that was its genesis was not. Without a community with which to celebrate this Holy Week, I've been feeling unrooted and notably 'in limbo.' Our not-so-great worship experience at a Twin Cities church this past weekend didn't help. We went to a Lutheran church which has gone to display screens and praise music, which would have been agonizing on a normal Sunday but was even more so on Palm Sunday. Between the mostly-unsingable praise music (how do you rhyme and metrically match "I just wanna be yours, Jesus?"), the woeful drama/children's sermon that tried to pass itself off as proclamation of the gospel and my daughter's restlessness, it was a worship experience utterly lacking in worship and meaningful experience. Man, it's hard to believe how spoiled I've become by our worship practice in the short time I've been at the Lutheran Center.

Anyway, without a Palm Sunday worship, it's been hard to get myself in the Holy Week frame of mind. Last night we tried to attend a Maundy Thursday service as a family, only to be foiled yet again by the shortest member of our crew. Ainsley has been fussy at the nursery in our new church, and last night we no more than walked down the hall to the nursery and she started screaming and crying. So, we tried to make it through worship as a family. Yeah - ever tried to attend a service of silence and prayer with a 14 month-old? Strike two for the Holy Week experience.

Finally, I went to our church's Good Friday service by myself early this afternoon, and I "got it." It was a devotional service centered on the cross and the church's continuing charge to remember both Christ's suffering and the world's suffering. I was so thankful as I drove away from the church after the service: I finally felt like a Christian again. It's more than just feeling penitential, of course - I was STARVING for the good bread and meat of the Cross, and the poor substitutes I'd gotten until today just weren't doing the work of the gospel, bringing death and life as the full impact of the good news is wont to do. It's no wonder I'd struggled to write my sermon until this afternoon: I'd been on a spiritual bread-and-water diet all week, and being in that kind of situation, you can only survive - you can't proclaim the gospel on an empty spiritual stomach.

Anyhoo, that's the week in a nutshell. Not sure if I'll post the sermon on Sunday or not, since it won't be entirely my work, but you'll be seeing me a bit more often in days to come (I know, all three of you are jumping for joy now!). Until then, I bid you a blessed Good Friday.

Healed by his wounds,
Scott