Miranda Writes

Miranda, Phil, and Griffin Hassett, Pam Mueller, and Barbara Filleul spent April 16 to 19^th in Lander and Ethete, Wyoming, attending the Paths Crossing conference – a gathering to explore and deepen partnerships between Native American and non-Native Episcopal congregations. Here are a few moments and memories from Miranda…. (more…)

For the most part, I am happy with our Sunday school curriculum, Seasons of the Spirit. However, I’m troubled by their handling of Palm Sunday. The Gospel text for this Sunday is Mark, chapters 14 and 15 – Jesus’ last supper, praying in the Garden, arrest, trial, execution, and burial. We tell the story, in all its difficulty and emotion and power, up in the nave – as the Passion drama. But Seasons of the Spirit hesitates to tell it to our children.

Palm Sunday’s lesson, for all the kids up to age 8 (three of our five Sunday school classes), covers only the palm procession and the Last Supper. At the end of the supper, Jesus looks sad, anticipating what lies ahead for him – but the lesson doesn’t cover what comes next. (more…)

This is my article for the April edition of the Network – and also much of my March 29 sermon. 

The early Church, in its wisdom, saw that the events of Jesus’ final week were so big that they couldn’t just be described. They had to be enacted and experienced through liturgy, the patterned worship of the Christian community. We know the Holy Week liturgies were fully-developed by the early 380s, thanks to the letters of a Christian woman named Egeria who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and described the liturgies of the church there. The Christians of Jerusalem spent Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday in almost full-time communal worship – walking together through the story of Jesus’ last days, following their Lord from the meal to the garden, to the trial and the cross, to the tomb – the site of resurrection. Our Holy Week liturgies today have roots in the rites Egeria describes. And though we cannot walk the dusty streets of Jerusalem and retrace Jesus’ actual steps, these liturgies invite us to follow him – through grief, fear, disappointment, and pain, into the astonished joy of the empty tomb.

It all begins on Palm Sunday.  (more…)