Report by John-Peter Gernaat Something that is different in The Christian Community is that we do not begin the preparation for Holy Week and Easter with a period of that is called Lent. We begin the preparation for Holy Week and Easter with a period we call Passiontide. For centuries the preparation for Easter has begun on a day called Ash Wednesday. A period of forty days from Ash Wednesday takes us to the end of Thursday in Holy Week and the Last Supper. These forty days are a representation of a period of preparation. Forty is a significant number; it is the number of weeks of human gestation from conception to birth. The number forty is more important that the unit of time in terms of considering this period as a period of preparation.
We find the number repeatedly in scripture. Noah and his family and a representation of all of creation were in the ark for forty days and forty nights. When the family of Israel left the condition of slavery in Egypt to a new beginning in the ‘Promised Land’ they wandered through the desert for forty years. The current conflict in Gaza has brought to everyone’s attention how very small the area between Egypt and Palestine is in reality, and it would be impossible to wander around in it aimlessly for 40 years, unless this period had less to do with getting to a destination and more to do with the time required for the preparation of arriving in the new land. Elijah journeyed for forty days and forty nights to arrive at the mountain where, at the threshold of a cave – between outer world and the inner world of the cave, he experienced in the ‘slender silence’ the Divine; in the pause that exists between one sound and another, one beat and another. Therefore, in undergoing a period in which something begins for us and needs to grow in us for it to come to birth, this number forty makes sense. Thus, the preparation for Easter was determined to be a period of forty days. To emphasise this very reality for the being of Christ on the earth the first Sunday of Lent has been marked for centuries, including for us, with a reading from the fourth chapter of Matthew: the Temptation. We heard this reading on the second last Sunday of Trinity after Epiphany. After forty days in the desert Jesus bearing the Christ is ready to meet the False Accuser. The week before Holy Week was known in the old tradition, as Passiontide. Our experience in The Christian Community is different. We extend Passiontide to four weeks – a period of a lunar month – and begin Passiontide when other churches are beginning the third week of Lent. The last week of Passiontide for us is Holy Week – the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. We have a different relationship to the period of preparation. It is not a forty day preparation, it is an intense four week preparation that mirrors the four week preparation for Christmas: Advent. It also mirrors the four weeks of Epiphany and of St John's-Tide and of Michaelmas. The experience of a lunar month is a different experience of rhythm and time. It allows us to enter into the preparation for Easter in a modern way, a way that suggests that we have gone through and completed over the centuries our Lenten preparation. We are now ready for a Passiontide preparation expanded to the four weeks before Easter Sunday. When The Christian Community was founded the cycle of the pericopes (the gospel readings from the altar) was set. Some Sunday’s pericopes were set as specified passages while some were indicated as to the content, but the passage left open for the priest to choose. As an example, the reading for the last Sunday of Epiphany is indicated as an appropriate healing to match the contents of the reading of the previous three Sundays, which are passages that are set. There is structure and guidance in the way that the cycle of pericopes is set. Some of the readings echo centuries of tradition. What we are doing in our context is to find a new possibility in our relationship to the Divine out of a form and a structure that has existed for centuries. The structure and the form and pattern are to a large extent maintained. We are looking at what is new in the way in which we approach it. Thus, although we start our preparation for Easter with Passiontide rather than Lent, the pericopes for the two Sundays before Passiontide follow the old tradition of Lent. These are the readings of ‘The Temptation’ and ‘The Transfiguration’. Thus, we prepare for Passiontide in as much as Passiontide is a preparation for Easter. We will follow the old traditions in the pericopes that are set for Passiontide as they continue the Lenten tradition. This will be explored in the next talks and in these talks we will explore what is new for us to understand, that takes us a step further, and is not just a repetition of what has been, but rather a transformation into what can be. In the reading of the last Sunday before Passiontide we hear something of the relationship to fasting from Christ. The disciples ask Jesus why they were unable to cast out the demon from the child who could not hold himself. Jesus points to this kind of healing, being able to move beyond into a new phase of life, one that does not throw one to left and right, into the fire and into the water, but keeps one centred, able to hold one’s self, happening at hand of prayer and fasting. Our understanding of prayer and fasting will be investigated in the next talk. Today, fasting does not necessarily require the abstinence of food and we will investigate what this means and what fasting today can mean. The pericopes for the two Sundays before Passiontide establish a pattern that we must understand. In both the readings there is the possibility of jumping ahead and not fulfilling what must come. What must come is hard, what must come is that the Son of Man, the Son of the Future Human Being – this human being bearing the full expression of Divinity in him (this is what the voice from the radiant cloud says: “This is my Son, in whom I am fully expressed”) – must undergo suffering and death. We express this in the Act of Consecration of Man, that what thinks in us is His Suffering and Death, His Resurrection and His Revelation through all Ages of the Earth to come. The old translation of the Act of Consecration used the word ‘passion’ where we now translate it as ‘suffering’. Passiontide is the time in which we learn how to manage suffering. We cannot escape it. We learn and grow through suffering in life. In the penultimate pericope of Trinity time between Epiphany and Passiontide we hear the False Accuser say to Christ that He should turn the stone to bread. The great power that involves bread is not the turning of stones to bread but rather the turning of bread into the Body of Christ. That is the great change that cannot occur until Easter, through the Mystery of Life and Death and the Mystery of Resurrection. Then the False Accuser tempts Jesus to throw himself off the temple and the angels will bear him up so that his foot does not touch a stone. What is needed is that the body will be lifted onto the cross and the feet nailed to it. Lastly, the False Accuser shows Jesus the glittering kingdoms of the world, but the real Kingdom is the Kingdom within us, and this does not happen without Whitsun. Whitsun does not happen without the Resurrection. Everything depends on the great Mystery of Easter to happen. It is not possible to jump ahead of it so that it does not happen. In ‘The Transfiguration’ Peter sees a spiritual conversation happening between the Law, the Prophets and the Christ – Moses and Elijah and the shining, radiant Jesus bearing the Christ. Peter thinks that this is the conclusion and wishes to establish it through the reference to the Festival of Tabernacles, and now inaugurate a permanent set of tent-canopies. As they come down the mountain Jesus reminds the trio of disciples that the Son of Man, the Son of the Future Human Being, must suffer. Passiontide is about understanding why we must suffer and knowing that we cannot avoid it. These two pericopes prepare us for Passiontide, knowing that we cannot jump ahead no matter the alure of the temptation. We must face the world. Nothing in the world changes except through the human being and the world is in a state of chaos because nothing changes in us. The changes must take place through our actions. Our activity in the world requires a certain suffering to be endured. We grow and learn through suffering. Yet, our task – for the one who follows in the path of Christ – is to relieve suffering for the other. The path of Passiontide is not so much giving up something but rather giving freely of ourselves. We replace fasting with a different form of giving. We have the traditional readings of the Lenten period in the structure of The Christian Community, but at hand of a new way of experiencing the preparation for Easter. This allows us to reflect on what it means for the outer form to remain as it was but for our inner experience to change. The form remains but the content is new. The structure remains but the experience is renewed. There is tension between the two poles of that which is formed and the formless. There is another tension between renewal and repetition. We work with renewal in form, not just repetition in form, nor do we try to find renewal in the formless. The form is needed to renew something. The structure is needed to embody it with new meaning. The tension we carry in this community of Christians is to find renewal in the form. It is not to change the form but rather to change the experience of the substance within the form. This is the tension that we have with our new understanding of the preparation for Easter with Passiontide. We also have the beautiful sequence of readings that have been with us for centuries and we must find new meaning within them. That is the amazing reality of a living scripture. The scripture must be telling us what must be happening for us today. They must speak into the experience of our lives, not just speak about the experience of the disciples at the time of the occurrences in Palestine. When we read the story, we should not be reading a story of what occurred then, but rather the story should help us come to terms with what is happening in our world now. Scripture must address how we must be today. Otherwise, scripture is the past without meaning for the present. It lives when it is available to us in the present in order to prepare us for the future. Passiontide is a preparation for our future.
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