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"Were you there?"
The end of my training for priesthood helpfully coincided with the pandemic which meant that our Easter School, which was a big deal and was supposed to be a week away completely immersed in the mystery of Holy Week, was conducted entirely via Zoom. To be honest, as much as I understood that it had to be done this way, and was hugely grateful for all the hard work by college staff to make it as special as it could be, I was gutted.
It may seem silly, self-absorbed even, that I felt bereft of a ‘proper’ Easter School, but it had been something we had been working towards since day one of our training and it felt like a rite of passage had been watered down. As it was, the teaching sessions worked out okay and the worship throughout the week was faithful too, but as we neared Good Friday, I really felt like we were being robbed.
Many of us were given things to do during the various acts of worship and prayer offices, and I was asked to sing at some services; one of which was the Good Friday Liturgy, at which I was to sing ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord’. I was to sing it unaccompanied from the stillness of my study into the homes of fellow ordinands and the college staff, you might think it less nerve-racking but it was quite the opposite!
I rehearsed several times and was happy with how it sounded, just another ‘performance’, nerves aside, all was well. On the day however, I was hit by a huge wave of emotion, in fact it was a visceral feeling throughout my body as I sang the song. The hairs on my neck and arms stood on end when I sang the line that repeats in every verse “Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble”.
In that line is the reality of my simple faith, sometimes it causes me to tremble! But that trembling doesn’t come from a place of fear, rather it comes out of the mystery and sheer ‘awesomeness’ of what Christ did for us and is for us.
The song is widely understood to be an ‘African American Spiritual’, probably sung by those enslaved and working on the cotton plantations and I am profoundly struck by the faith of those people who were dealt the most heinous hand. They may well have forsaken a faith in God; how could God allow this inequality, this barbarism? But they did not, instead as they worked, they sang, literally worshipping as they worked, singing of their Saviour, the one who knew their suffering and hardship, the one who knew because in his nailing to the tree, he comes alongside all who suffer.
But I suspect they sang it also because of the promise it offers, “were you there when God raised him from the tomb?” it goes. And didn’t they need the hope of that promise, the promise that after the nailing to the tree comes the rest of the tomb and from that rest comes the new life; the promise that is for everyone.
Jesus is with us all when we suffer, and not from a distance but right there on the spot. Our wounds are his wounds, our pain his pain and our sorrow his sorrow. But as the song reminds us there is hope, and out of the bleakness comes new life. This is the promise of Easter.
This African American Spiritual has been such a blessing to me since that Good Friday when I stood alone in my study and sang it, and the truth is that I was not alone, there were of course others in Zoom space, but I was not alone, because with Him I never am!
May we all have a blessed Eastertide, and may the mystery and awesomeness of the Lord that causes us to tremble, tremble, tremble, ever be our strength and our hope.
Paul.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when God raised him from the tomb? Were you there when God raised him from the tomb? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?
(first published in William Eleazar Barton's 1899 Old Plantation Hymns)
(https://www.classical-music.com/articles/were-you-there-when-they-crucified-my-lord-lyrics )
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"The Importance of the Journey..."
I remember one Holy Week when I was a teenager. My mum is a priest and I used to play the piano at church so we were both very involved in the services of Holy Week. We’d done Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and a vigil service on Holy Saturday evening - only to return home that night and find water coming through the lounge ceiling. My dad (who is not so into church) would normally deal with such things. However, he was away in the Isle of Man visiting my Grandma. After frantic phone calls to him and a visit from a helpful friend, we managed to drain the leaking water tank, turn the water off and eliminate the immediate risk of the ceiling falling in. But we were without heating or hot water and so Easter Sunday morning was spent not in church but at home waiting for a very expensive emergency plumber. We had journeyed with Jesus from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to the Upper Room and then to the cross, but we never made it to the joy of the resurrection. We were stuck at the emptiness of Holy Saturday.
Then there was Holy Week at theological College in Mirfield. We had four Offices each day (Morning Prayer, Midday Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer) as well as the Holy Week liturgies. We were in silence from Maundy Thursday evening until Easter Day, when our worship began at about 4.30am and finished at about 8 am, followed by prosecco and chocolate in the church grounds. The journey that week was intense but awesome – literally. Words can’t do it justice. And, of course, the nature of theological college meant we’d done that journey as an enclosed community together, with none of the distractions of the outside world.
The year after was my first Holy Week in the parish after ordination. Like this year, schools were in right up until Maundy Thursday and so there was a funny mix throughout the week of celebrating Easter with our schools when we were still at Maundy Thursday in church. And, of course, I was experiencing everything for the first time as an ordained person: washing feet on Maundy Thursday, carrying the paschal candle and singing the exultet as a deacon on Holy Saturday. After the experience of the previous year there were some frustrations: the organist practicing ‘Thine be the glory’ for Easter Day just a few minutes after we’d finished the Good Friday liturgy rather spoilt the mood! But it was, and has been ever since, a huge privilege to lead people on that journey through the week.
Those are the most memorable Holy Weeks I’ve experienced. There have been many more that, although slightly less memorable, are still very important. But each of these examples I’ve given, in their own way, demonstrate the importance of the journey that we go on during Holy Week.
All of us are invited to take part in this journey during Holy Week this year and I encourage you to do so as fully as you can. Jesus told his disciples that they must take up their cross and follow him. We too, must take up our cross; we should not, if we can possibly help it, move straight from the Hosannas of Palm Sunday to the Alleluias of Easter Day without first walking the way of the cross.
So, my friends, come with us on the journey. It is not an easy journey to make but it is so so worth it. We will begin on Palm Sunday with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem as we shout ‘Hosanna’. On Maundy Thursday we will move through the footwashing and the Last Supper to keep watch in the Garden of Gethsemane. On Good Friday we will go with Jesus to the cross and then we will wait in the emptiness of Holy Saturday before we finally reach the triumph of Easter Day. And then, how great our rejoicing will be when we proclaim once again that Jesus Christ is risen. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!