Dear Caldwell,
Tomorrow we begin what ancient Christians called the Triduum, or the Three Days, from Maundy Thursday through the mystery of Good Friday and Holy Saturday to the final and conclusive triumph of Easter. This arc, from life to death to new life, offers a chance to reflect on the full human experience we have with God in Christ.
I hope you can attend, in person or online, the Maundy Thursday service at 7 pm, a solemn and reflective time in which we confess that humanity abandoned Christ on the night of his arrest. Yet, despite that failure of his closest disciples and what it may remind us about our own sometimes feeble faith, Christ remained loyal. Thursday night itself has three movements – the symbolic washing of feet and hands, as taught by Jesus, the sharing of communion at table and the reading of the Paschal narrative. We end the evening in the darkness of the tomb itself.
Because we worship a gracious God of second and third and thirty-third chances, we are given the chance to hold vigil, to return the loyalty to Christ that he extended to the disciples (and us) when he said about them from the cross, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Our vigil begins after Thursday night’s service at 8 p.m. and is online until 8 a.m. Friday, when we extend it to the sanctuary until 8 p.m. Click here to learn more about the vigil, its resources for you to use and to sign up.
This gives us the time to dedicate at least an hour or so, if not longer, to stand watch, to seek the nearness of Christ, to reflect on the fullness of God’s love for us that took Christ to the cross. Few occasions in our life of faith are as poignant as these quiet hours, a chance to step away from the frenetic pace of the world to be with God in prayer in silence, meditation, reading and reflection.
The sweep of the Triduum presents the full mystery of our faith. In the poetic opening verses of the Gospel of John, we read that when Jesus came into the world “the world did not know him” and that “his own people did not accept him.” As we heard in Sunday’s psalm, scripture also tells of how the stone that the builders rejected, Christ Jesus, would be redeemed as the cornerstone for God’s new kin’dom. When have we rejected Christ? Why are we, nonetheless, redeemed?
Unspeakable Loss
As we pray, I want to ask you to include a family that Caldwell came to know and love. Katherine Burke and Thomas Reisinger were active members here. Participating in Thomas’ baptism was a true blessing for me as was performing their wedding ceremony. They moved to Mt. Airy a few years ago, where Katherine opened a veterinary practice.
Tuesday night, the deepest mystery of life and death drew tragically near to them. Their 17-month old daughter, Wrenn, died in her sleep. Such loss defies simple words and is worsened by glib attempts at explanation. It reminds us of how much of this life we will not understand. “Now we see as if through a dark glass, but then we will see face to face,” the Apostle Paul wrote about such moments. And we know that God’s heart breaks with Wrenn’s parents’ even as her tiny soul is received into the caring arms of the Divine.
Katherine and Thomas share both a deep bond in love and their strong faith. I ask that you focus your prayers for them, their healing and their peace, if not now, one day. I will represent Caldwell at a service for Wrenn at First Presbyterian Church of Mt. Airy on Saturday at 11. Click here to read about her brief but joy-giving life, honor Wrenn by helping animals in need, and learn how to write a card to the family.
Their loss is hard for most of us to imagine. Their wound too deep for us to fathom. As people of faith, we can hold them up knowing that in these three days we move from the darkness of the tomb on Good Friday to the resurrection promise that we find it empty on Sunday morning.
Read more about our full Easter Sunday schedule in Caldwell This Week on Friday.
In Christ,
John