On the Wednesday after Easter

I slowly recover from my first Holy Week as the rector at St. Mary Magdalene.

It was an eventful few days. On Maundy Thursday, during the washing of the feet, Karen and I had a rare opportunity to sing together during worship. We sang a duet, "Softly and Tenderly". The words are below.

Karen and I became godparents for the first time on Saturday evening. We gave our two new godgirls bath toys and Bibles. Appropriate enough, I'd say.

After the Easter Vigil Karen and I treated St. Mary Magdalene to champagne, sparkling apple juice, cheese and crackers. Christ is risen! A good enough, if not the best of reasons, to party!

And Sunday morning we flowered the cross. I had never done this before, and it was quite moving. I'm already looking forward to doing it again next year. Pictures of the flowering will be posted soon over at red eggs (the parish blog), and I will direct you all there when the time comes.

If all this wasn't enough, five services and four sermons in eight days, a saint from the parish of St. Margaret's, long known to Karen and I, was dying in the hospital. So Easter afternoon Karen and I sang to her what we sang on Maundy Thursday:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,
Mercies for you and for me?

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me;
Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,
Coming for you and for me.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

O for the wonderful love He has promised,
Promised for you and for me!
Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon,
Pardon for you and for me.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

The meaning of this hymn sure changed as Karen and I sang this to that dying saint - it would probably be a little heavy handed if we didn't know her. One of my memories of her was that she hardly felt like she could worship without confession, so she knew sin along with the great value of pardon. Karen and I couldn't sing it all the way through without choking up.

It was hard to tell how aware she was, but she sure nodded her head when I said after singing that Christ is risen. I'm sure, though she couldn't speak, that she responded "the Lord is risen indeed" in some hidden way. Alleluia.

The word is she has passed away.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Prayer on Good Friday

We just prayed this at our Good Friday service here at St. Mary Magdalene, and it had a particular poingancy for me:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light,
look favourably on your whole Church,
that wonderful and sacred mystery.
By the effectual working of your providence,
carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation.
Let the whole world see and know
that things which were cast down are being raised up,
and things which had grown old are being made new,
and that all things are being brought to their perfection
by him through whom all things were made,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord;
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Our church, the Anglican Communion and the Anglican Church of Canada, is certainly a wonderful and sacred mystery - the mystery to me, so often, is how God might actually work through us in our deeply evident sin and falleness. Will our conflicts never end?

But we don't pray for the end of conflict, though we know that they will come to an end on the last day, through God's mercy. For now we pray for the effectual working of God's providence, and that he carry out the plan of salvation. That our messed up church may somehow be a part of God's effectual providence, that God is bringing all things to perfection despite, or through, but most likely because, of our self-evident inabilities: this is a good word to a broken church indeed.

She's Where?

She's in California, that mythic land of Mickey Mouse and beaches. But wait: she's in Davis, in California's central valley, where the myth dies in the heat and the dust. But still, it looks awfully nice to me:


Here's the same as above, for the metrically deprived (or, alternately, the imperially inclined):


Karen returns tomorrow, and when she steps back out onto the icy parking lot, all I can say is welcome back.