The Grain of Wheat 2018

Saturday, March 31, 2018 - HOLY SATURDAY Commemoration of John Donne, 1631, and Joseph, Patriarch Full Moon, Blue Moon (12:37 UTC) Commemoration of Benedict of Africa, 1589 Vigil of Easter, 8:30 pm Rom. 6:3-11; John 20:1-18 From a sermon by St. Epiphanias of Salamis: Something strange is happening - there is great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh, and has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. God has gone in search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, God has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, He who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight

Friday, March 30, 2018 - GOOD FRIDAY (From “God’s Friday”) Passover begins at sunset Worship: 12 Noon and 7 pm   Is. 52:13-53:12; Ps. 22; Heb. 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42 Sing, my tongue the glorious battle; tell the triumph far and wide; tell aloud the wondrous story of the cross, the Crucified; tell how Christ, the world's Redeemer, vanquished death the day he died. (ELW 355, st. 1: Venantius Fortunatus, tr. John Mason Neale) •        Bake hot cross buns to break the fast (see recipe.) leave the radio and tv off today. Hot Cross Buns        375° oven             In a small bowl, combine: 1 pkg. dry yeast ¼ c. warm water In a small saucepan, scald: 1 c. milk (or soymilk) Add:  1 t. salt ¼ c. sugar ¼ c. butter Pour milk mixture into a large bowl. Let cool to lukewarm. Stir in: 1 c. flour Add: yeast mixture 1 egg, beaten ½ t. ground cinnamon ½ c. raisins or currants Mix well.  Add: 2½ - 3 c. flou

Thursday, March 29, 2018 - MAUNDY THURSDAY (From “ Mandare ” – to command) Worship: 7 pm Ex. 12:1-14; Ps. 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Cor. 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where true charity and love abide, God is dwelling there. We are gathered by the one love of Christ Jesus; let us lift our voices to God and be joyful. In holy wonder let us love the living God, and may our hearts ever be one in faithful love. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. ( ELW 653, st. 1: Latin hymn, 9th c.) •           Clean out a closet. Give away what you don’t need.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018 Worship: 12 Noon I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths against a great thing.             And nothing happens! Nothing…Silence…Waves…             -Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and we are standing now, quietly, in the new life? Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958) •        Take a walk. Look for signs of Spring.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018 Worship: 12 Noon Glory to You! You built your cross as a bridge over death, so that departed souls might pass from the realm of death to the realm of life. Your murderers handled your life like farmers: they sowed it like grain deep in the earth, for it to spring up and raise with itself a multitude of people. Come, let us offer Christ the great, universal sacrifice of our love, and pour out before him our richest hymns and prayers. Ephrem the Syrian (307-363) •        Pray for someone in distress. Send them a card.

Monday, March 26, 2018 Worship: 12 Noon Reading: Mark 11:1-11 "Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut."    (Mark 11:8)             Jesus chose the way of the prophet Zechariah for entering into Jerusalem, on the back of an unridden colt. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth." God of peace, we enter now with Christ into Jerusalem. May we have the same mind among ourselves that was in Christ Jesus. Amen •        Place the palms from the Palm Sunday liturgy on your altar.

Sunday, March 25, 2018 - SUNDAY OF THE PASSION/ PALM SUNDAY Feast of The Annunciation, Is. 7:10-14, Ps. 45; Heb 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38 Worship: 8 & 10:45 am Mt. 21:1-11; Is. 50:4-9a; Ps. 31:9-16;Phil. 2:5-11; Mt. 26:14—27:66 Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God has also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. Gospel Acclamation for Sunday of the Passion     (Phil. 2:8-9) There in God's garden stands the Tree of Wisdom, Whose leaves hold forth the healing of the nations; Tree of all knowledge, Tree of all compassion, Tree of all beauty. Its name is Jesus, name that says, "Our Savior!" There on its branches see the scars of suff'ring; See there the tendrils of our human selfhood Feed on its lifeblood. Thorns not its own are tangled in its foliage; Our greed has starved it, our despite has choked it. Yet, look! it lives! its g

Saturday, March 24, 2018 Commemoration of Oscar Romero, archbishop and martyr, 1980 Reading: Philippians 2:5-11 "Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,…"    (Philippians 2:5) Martin Luther described sin as a person's being "curved in on itself", incurvatus in se , concerned only with one's own needs, desires, one's own puny little world. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, where reaction to his world-upturning teachings and life is building to a deathly confrontation, we see clearly how absolutely faithful he is to his identity as the Christ the Anointed One, Christ the Compassionate One, open and vulnerable to the world. He set his face "like a flint" (Is. 50:7) and turned not backward. How simple it would have been to disappear into the wilderness ravines east of the city. How difficult, to ignore the deep human instinct toward self-preservation and to continue on the road, in spite of risk, in spite of threat.

Friday, March 23, 2018 Reading: Psalm 31:9-16 "Into your hand I commend my spirit: you have redeemed me, O LORD God of truth."   (Psalm 31:5)             The antiphon chosen for the psalm on the approaching Sunday of the Passion is from verse 5, not from among the verses chosen for chanting on this day. But we sing this phrase from Psalm 31:5 every time we use the office of Compline, or Prayer At the Close of Day. It is a beautiful prayer to use to end the day, before lying down to rest: "Into your hand, O LORD, I commend my spirit." Only in the Gospel of Luke do we hear these words from Jesus on the cross at the end of his life, contrary to what composites like the Seven Last Words would lead us to think. In the passion account according to Mark, which we will hear in two days' time, Jesus cries out using words from Psalm 22, as he does also in Matthew's account. Why, we could wonder, did Luke choose Psalm 31:5? Merciful God, into your

Thursday, March 22, 2018 Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a "The LORD God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;   therefore I have set my face like flint,   and I know I will not be put to shame."    (Isaiah 50:7)             The Hebrew scriptures do not generally use specific words for emotions, but rather use descriptive words related to the effects on the human body, especially the face. When Jesus overthrew the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple, Psalm 69:9 was quoted: "Zeal for your house has consumed me." The word for "zeal" actually means "intensively red", as "to be red in the face". The word generally translated as anger is to be "short of nose", for the way the nose crinkles short and the nostrils flare in anger. In the Ash Wednesday reading Joel 2:13, where God is said to be "slow to anger" (KJV "longsuffering"), the Hebrew says God is "long of nose", that is, cal

Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Commemoration of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury,1556 Reading: Isaiah 58:5 "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?"             It is not out of character during Lent to talk about almsgiving, or acts of justice, or acts of compassion , one of the disciplines of Lent. Mary's great hymn of praise, the Magnificat (pronounced not at the Annunciation, but, rather, at the Visitation to Elizabeth…), has at its center the raising up of those of low degree. "Those of low degree" can include any one of us at any time as well as the stranger. Those who are in poverty as well as those who are in a state of spiritual impoverishment. Those who are homeless as well as those who are seeking, seeking, seeking. Those on the brink of despair as well as those of "low degree" known only to God. There is no

Tuesday, March 20, 2018 Spring Equinox, 11:15 a.m. I have no wit, no words, no tears;             My heart within me like a stone Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;             Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief             No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf:             O Jesus, quicken me. My life is like a faded leaf,             My harvest dwindled to a husk; Truly my life is void and brief             And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing,             No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall - the sap of Spring;             O Jesus, rise in me.                  Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), "A Better Resurrection" Most loving God, your ways are not our ways; calm our hearts and soothe our questing minds with your wisdom.    Amen •        Memorize a scripture verse.

Monday, March 19, 2018 Joseph, Guardian of Jesus Reading: John 12:20-33 "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit."    (John 12:24)             Spiritual truths are not limited to books of Scripture or theology or liturgies or to Bach cantatas or the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, spiritual truths find us in many places. Take the musical The Fantasticks (Schmidt/Jones). The protagonist El Gallo takes the young, naive, head-over-heels couple Matt and Luisa out to experience real world hurts, temptations, and tragedies. The action pauses. El Gallo faces the audience and says:             There is a curious paradox that no one can explain:             Who understands the secret of the reaping of the grain? Who understands why spring is born out of winter's laboring pain?             Or why we must all die a bit, before we live again?          

Sunday, March 18, 2018 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT Commemoration of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem Worship: 8 & 10:45 am Jer. 31:31-34; Ps. 51:1-12; Heb. 5:5-11; John 12:20-33 Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Gospel Acclamation for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (John 12:24) Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain. Laid in the earth, my risen Lord is seen: Love is come again, like wheat arising green. In the grave they laid him, Love by hatred slain; Thinking that he would never wake again; Raised from the dead, my living Lord is seen; Love is come again like wheat arising green. Forth he came at Easter like the risen grain, He that for three days in the grave had lain; Raised from the dead, my living Lord is seen; Love is come again like wheat arising green. When our hearts are wintry, grieving or

Saturday, March 17, 2018 New Moon Commemoration of Patrick, bishop and missionary to Ireland, 461 Reading: Hebrews 5:5-11 "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered…"    (Hebrews 5:8) When hardship comes to us, as it always will, we often want to flee, and quickly. But quite often, as years pass, we discover that hardship has taught us important lessons: trust in God, trust in our own mysterious inner strength, compassion toward others, release of fear and anxiety, gratitude, wonder. Help does not always come in the form we momentarily desire. What may come may simply be an increased capacity for endurance. But God pleads with us not to harden our hearts - to remain hopeful, God-trusting, open, and loving. God wills for us abundant life. Hear our voices when we call, O God, and strengthen us to release all that keeps us from abundant life in you. Amen •        Take a gratefulness walk. Gather something for your altar.

Friday, March 16, 2018 Reading: Psalm 51:1-12 "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me."    (Psalm 51:10) “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” we sing as the season of Lent begins. “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” we sing in the liturgy at the Great Entrance of the Eucharist. A clean heart. The heart, as has been said before, is where the whole person comes together – body, spirit, mind. What is intended by the mind takes up residence in the body and spirit. What is done with the body takes residence in the spirit and the mind. All are interwoven. In the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke over and over again about intention. How crucial are the intentions of the heart! Other people see our actions which may seem just, but God sees the motivations, the intentions, the energy behind our acts. In T.S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral , Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket struggles with the p