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| The Rev. Greg Syler |
I had prepared and was set to lead the Prayers of the
People. Such was my liturgical role that Palm Sunday, the year in Divinity
School I was serving as intern.
Looking at the order of service, I saw that the prayers
immediately followed an organ anthem, always a wonderful thing when played on
Rockefeller Chapel’s tremendous E. M. Skinner organ.
I sat in the choir stall, text of the prayers on my lap,
prayers I thought decently inspired and marked by themes I remembered from previous
Palm Sundays: the expectant and joy-filled crowd, the promise of glory to come,
a day of honest celebration. In my Congregationalist church growing up, Palm
Sunday was really a prequel to Easter and had many, if not most, of the same
themes as the Sunday to come. So were my prayers that day about hope, renewal,
celebration and joy.
Then the anthem started.
The master organist began to play the first few measures
of the third movement of Marcel Dupre’s Symphonie-Passion – long, heavy rolls
of low notes and, in time, those jagged, what Dupre himself called “nail
chords” over an impulsive rhythm, driving toward a crescendo which already
stills your soul long before the piece ends in resignation, the musical
equivalent of despair.
Or, at least that morning, it had already quieted mine,
making the prepared sheet on my lap not only useless, but absurd. I don’t know
how I mustered through, and the Chaplain was certainly very kind when her
feedback was equal parts compliment and theological critique: “You showed a good
job of editing while praying,” she said.
There’s something unsettling about Holy Week, deeply
disturbing and raw.
And, to be honest, there’s something equally unsettling
about the Easter season to come – these stories which were a scandal to Jesus’
earliest followers but which they told anyway, of women eyewitnesses at the
tomb, of God dissolving formerly sacred dietary laws, of the Spirit pushing
people out of their comfort zones in order that former enemies become friends,
reconciliation where we least expect it.
In the middle, of course, is resurrection, which is
obviously so much more than contentment or glee or re-assurance that, yes, we
were right after all about that prophet from Nazareth. Resurrection, itself, is
its own unsettling gift, equally raw and profoundly disorienting. That God, as
Athanasius preached in the fourth century, would become human in order that
humans could become God is not just a note about undeserved grace but, just as
well, about the capacity of the human condition and the goodness we can achieve
and the power we have always, already.
And yet still we sit, safely in our figurative choir
stalls, clutching an order which is inspired and good and proper, even holy.
Precisely the opposite of tragedy and emptiness, those
unsettling themes of Holy Week, Easter is its own indictment, but this time of
glory, where we have settled for success; joy, where we have settled for
happiness; forgiveness, where we have settled for getting along. An Easter
church is constantly agitated towards greater holiness, unsettled with apparent
success.
Truth be told, I’ve begun to re-think the importance and,
frankly, the restrictions of that definitively Benedictine ideal of stability. Even Benedict, himself, only
clearly articulates stability as an
essential part of one’s vow near the end of his Rule, placing a greater emphasis in the earlier chapters on
community building and relational norms and hospitality and prayer and
ministry. That is, before we talk about stability we should figure out who
we’re following and why and for what purpose. Perhaps we’ve too quickly turned
stability into something like quaintness; a peace which is the absence of
peace, actually.
Perhaps the relatively de-stabilizing themes of this
current week and season to come are there on purpose, reminding us that ours’
is a much greater purpose, indeed, and that throwing caution to the wind is
merely catching up to what God the Spirit’s already done in advance.
Greg Syler is the rector of St. George's, Valley Lee.
