Dispatches From Dean Dane

“Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Collect at the Liturgy of the Palms
The Book of Common Prayer

“That we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts...” That is what we prayed for on Palm Sunday. That is what the whole of Holy Week is about. And that is what we will do over the course of the next 72 hours. As we step into the Triduum–the Great Three Days–on this Maundy Thursday, let’s consider each element of the petition we made to God in that prayer.

We have asked the Lord that what we do in the days ahead we may do with joy. How critical it is to remember this! As we contemplate the events of this week–our Lord’s Last Supper with his friends, Judas’s betrayal with a kiss, the arrest and sham trial, the scourging and the mocking, the cross and the nails, the last breath and the spear-piercing, the burial shroud and the cold tomb–we can find ourselves inclined to affect a downcast disposition. To be sure, we are entering upon the contemplation of some dark, dire deeds.

But we contemplate them with joy! We contemplate them with joy because we know the end of the story. We contemplate with joy because in the suffering of Jesus we see manifested the unsearchable, inexhaustible love of God. We contemplate with joy because Christ has passed through Death into everlasting life–and by the Holy Ghost that life lives now in us. The readings are somber, the hymns are solemn, and the liturgies of the next few days are deeply moving. But we enter them with joy.

That brings us to the next important word in our prayer for this week: contemplation. Through the services of Holy Week, we contemplate what Jesus has already done. This, too, is key. We are not ourselves actually doing anything. The most sublime perfection of liturgy–or, for that matter, the most awful flop of a liturgy–cannot add to or subtract from Christ’s work. When we come to the foot of the cross set up in the Cathedral on Good Friday we will remember the Cross of Calvary and recall that Jesus “made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.” In our worship, we are merely contemplating what God has accomplished.

But “merely” is the wrong word. Contemplation of–intentional, sustained reflection upon–God’s love and grace is never wasted. Indeed, it is the highest activity in which we can engage, especially when the Lord uses it to inspire us to live actively, visibly, and meaningfully as his people in the world. To contemplate Christ’s passion and crucifixion is to stand at the pivot point of cosmic history. To rejoice in his resurrection is to reassert God’s dominion over a world that so often seems still stuck in the grip of Sin and Death. To worship the Lord in these holy days does not add to the salvation he has given us. But it does impel us to go forth and show forth his salvation in our deeds for one another, and for those who have not yet believed.

When we act to show forth God’s salvation in the way we live our lives, we walk in the way of Christ’s own mighty acts. The astonishing announcement of Scripture and of this holy Passiontide is that the surpassing might of what Jesus has done has actually been made known through his weakness. To wash the feet of others, to be betrayed by a friend, to stand silent before accusers, to endure shame and spitting, to suffer and die the death of a criminal, to be buried in a borrowed tomb–these are not acts considered mighty by the world. But at the heart of our faith is the marvelous paradox that these are the mightiest acts that have ever or can ever be achieved.

So it is that Saint Paul exhorted the Christians at Philippi: “Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who, though in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, and took on the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human likeness, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

This is the cosmos-conquering strength in which we share through our baptism. These are the creation-redeeming mighty acts that we contemplate with joy this week. In the apparent defeat of the cross, God has accomplished a victory beyond what any violence or oppression or earthly strength can muster. Christ has triumphed over powers and principalities by his self-emptying, self-offering love.

“And therefore God has highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

So, beloved, in the Great Three Days ahead and most especially in the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ on this Sunday, may we enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts by which God has won for us–for you and for me, and for all who call upon the exalted Name of Jesus–life and salvation.