On Holy Week Worship with Kids

(Adapted from a message sent to my congregation's parents and grandparents)

Dear Parents and Grandparents,

Just a word about Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services as it relates to children:

I have no childhood memories of Good Friday or Maundy Thursday. Of course my understanding of the story of Jesus involved the Last Supper, his death, and the cross, but my tangible, communal experience of Holy Week moved from the playful joy of the Palm Sunday processional to the redemptive celebration of the resurrection the next Sunday on Easter.  Other than my mom’s private prayerful practice of fasting half the day on Good Friday, that day didn’t register much for me.  

In retrospect, the experiential, communal, church story of Holy Week for me was mostly positivity and cheer.  It wasn’t until much later that I came to experience the darkness of the cross: the experience of God with us coming into our suffering and bearing it with us. The powerful recognition that the shadows are as much a part of our journey as the light, and that in Christ, the place God most promises to be is in those places of sorrow and suffering.  Truly, we are not only not alone, but God brings life out of the death of us.

The world is filled with fearful things. Kids do not miss this. They feel life’s pain and see it in the world around them.  That Jesus takes all suffering into himself, and into the heart of God, is a promise for all of us, no matter what age.  

My family has been coming to Good Friday service since my children were very young.  At LNPC the service is multi-sensory and moody. We read through the end of Christ's earthly life contrasting the seven last words of Jesus with the seven days of creation.  Many people in the congregation stand to read scripture, and our readers are all dressed in black. It feels different in the sanctuary than it does on Sundays, or on our cozy, warm, candlelit contemplative Saturdays. There is a somberness and solemnity to the evening, it's sad and a little bit uncomfortable, as we extinguish candles one by one and end in darkness. The service ends with a loud bang, and we all leave the sanctuary in silence. 

For my kids’ whole childhood they have attended Good Friday service, and since they were in car seats, we have driven all the way home from church in silence (beginning by hilariously reminding a toddler each time she'd forget - every 90 seconds or so...). We don’t speak until we set foot in the house.  A few years ago, I forgot this.  My kids met me silently at the church door and we walked to the car without speaking, and then I remembered, and felt grateful that they'd held the silence when I’d forgotten.  

 

We’ve talked this Lent about the “liturgies” that shape us (here, here, here, and here). The counter-forming practices of our faith tell us the real story, when so much around us tells us a different story.  God comes into all of it alongside it, to bear it with us and for us. God is not just there when things are going smoothly, or when we feel happy and upbeat.  God comes into the scary and sad parts of life – we are not alone.  This is the real story.

 

I want to encourage you not to avoid bringing kids to Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services, no matter their age. We absorb stories by experiencing them alongside others.  And Easter Sunday feels far more significant when witnessed and felt within the context of our whole salvation story.  

We are all church together, and we worship just as we are, however we are.  These worship services may open up interesting conversations in your family. At the very least, they offer a shared experience that speaks to us in music, darkness, scripture, ritual, and communal practice.

 

Blessings this Holy Week.

 

Kara

Why we call it good

Daily Devotion - April 10

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)  while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

GOOD FRIDAY

Today was a hard day in our household. We've been beaten by school and spent the day quite underwater.  I posted something personal on Facebook for the first time in two years, just expressing how hard it was. I received lovely messages of support and commiseration in response.  Because, oh yeah, we belong to each other.  

Life is hard, for all of us, right now, for a dozen different reasons.  And our struggles and reasons are bumping up against other people's struggles and reasons, and it's all a bit much sometimes.
Sometimes it's all a bit much.

Also, we are doing our best, most of us, most of the time.
So God bless us all.

Today is a special day in our faith.  Good Friday.  And I'm extra emotional about it because we won't be together singing, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" a cappella in the haunting darkness of the sanctuary, and quietly leaving to try to stay silent in the car all the way home.

Our rituals are all messed up this year.  But, thanks be to God, the power and message of this day transcends all our patterns and rituals.

I am grateful for our online gathering this evening. However it happens, I am grateful for the stillness that it ushers in.  I am grateful for a community with whom to retell this deep and ancient story of an improbable truth: that God comes in, that Jesus takes all our suffering, all our death, into the heart of God.

There is nothing God has not suffered:  hopes that crumble, plans that are lost, fear that rises up and comes out in tears of anguish and dread, betrayal and loss, lungs that can't get air, goodbyes unsaid and departures too soon, all we wish could be and can't, all we wish we could do but won't.  It's all held in God and swallowed in love on this day.
There is a place in our faith for hopelessness. A place for all despair.  These things belong in the story of God. They are integral to it. Today is the day for all that.
That is how this most awful of days is Good Friday.

A blessing for this day:

Still
For Good Friday

This day
let all stand still
in silence,
in sorrow.

Sun and moon
be still.

Earth
be still.

Still
the waters.

Still
the wind.

Let the ground
gape in stunned
lamentation.

Let it weep
as it receives
what it thinks
it will not
give up.

Let it groan
as it gathers
the One
who was thought
forever stilled.

Time
be still.

Watch
and wait.

Still.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pause, reflect, and pray in this way, and so join our hearts:

I empty my heart to you this night, O God,
holding nothing back.
Thank you that you receive what I bring.
Bring my soul to stillness.
May I rest in you.
Amen.

Today we will not lie

Good Friday Reflection

TODAY WE WILL NOT LIE
Today is Good Friday. 

A lot has happened since last night's dinner with the disciples, with broken bread and washed feet, that ended with a walk to the garden to pray. During the night Judas led the authorities to Jesus.  He was arrested and interrogated, and this morning dawns with Jesus appearing before the governor, where he is sentenced to death. Around 9 am he is hung on the cross, and the whole sky turns dark from noon to 3 pm, when Jesus breathes his last and dies.

When I was a kid, my mom would fast on Good Friday from noon to three, as her own spiritual discipline.  I didn't realize she did this until I was older, and it made those hours set apart, holy, somehow, with a sense of awareness and sadness hanging over them.  

But we did not go to a Good Friday service at church, and I remember the Easter season mostly jumping from the fanfare and fun of Palm Sunday to the triumph and party feel of Easter, without any kind of dip into the loss or horror of Good Friday.  In my experience, Jesus would have leaped from donkey's back to the empty tomb - only appearing on the cross briefly in the hymns we sang, if it were not for my mom's silent vigil.

How much of our time, these days, do we spend cheering ourselves up? How do we push away the bad feelings, shy away from the difficult conversations, let our fear of vulnerability, sickness and pain keep us from being fully present with each other? Or fully awake in our own lives?

We live close to death. 

Loss, pain, horror, they are right in front of us, or just around the next corner. 

We see, share in, and contribute to, the suffering of this world. 

But we pretend we don't. 

We act like things are ok when they are not.  

We blame other people, we rally to anger or finger-pointing, and then numb ourselves until the next tragedy strikes. 

We race, unthinking, through our days, until one bleeds into the next, punctuated only by fun events and pleasant distractions.  

Maybe we're afraid that if we let ourselves feel the grief we might be overcome and never recover.

Agony is embarrassing. We really are more comfortable skipping from Palm Sunday to Easter. We want our religion to reassure us.

But that is not how the story of God-with-us goes.
Thank God! 
Because that is not how the story of life goes.
And there is no resurrection
without death.

Today is Good Friday.  Today is about the death.
So today we will not lie.

I have felt heaviness and sorrow lately, at the state of the church, the world, our nation, our relationships with each other as people.
I want stories of hope and love, yes.  But right now I find myself longing for Good Friday. Today is a balm to me:
Grief is welcome here.
Sorrow is given space today.
This is agony's brave domain.

Jesus has gone there with us.
We can go there with him.

What invitations call to you this Good Friday?
Where might you tell the truth about death- in your life, in your relationships, in the world - as you await what God will do next?

What might be your holy practice today?
Holy honesty?  Holy silence?
Holy repentance? Holy sorrow?
Holy tending to your losses and disappointments?
If not you, is there someone living closer to death than you are at the moment, that you might draw near to? 

Author and artist Jan Richardson reflects on Good Friday:

All too quickly the breaking of the bread becomes the breaking of the flesh.

All too soon the cup offered at the table becomes the life poured out at the cross.

After the rending, after the emptying: an impossible stillness, an aching silence, an incomprehensible hollow for which no word will ever be adequate.

And now? How will we meet this silence? What will we do with this ache?

Still
For Good Friday

This day
let all stand still
in silence,
in sorrow.

Sun and moon
be still.

Earth
be still.

Still
the waters.

Still
the wind.

Let the ground
gape in stunned
lamentation.

Let it weep
as it receives
what it thinks
it will not
give up.

Let it groan
as it gathers
the One
who was thought
forever stilled.

Time
be still.

Watch
and wait.

Still.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Join us this evening at 6:30 at LNPC for our Good Friday Tenebrae Service, that tells the story of today - walking with Jesus from the garden to the cross.  Tonight we will be still.

Good Friday...good?

You asked me today what makes Good Friday good.

And I remembered this.

Several years ago, when you were just a baby, I was teaching a class of four and five year olds, preparing them to sit in worship with their parents.  So far things had gone fairly well, the wiggling and giggling posse had learned about worship, had sung a few hymns, had talked about baptism and we were on to communion.  

Then out of nowhere, little Bria Fisher in all her pig-tailed glory scrunched up her nose at me and shot her hand up in the air and said, ardently and honestly, 

"Miss Kara, Why is it a GOOD thing that Jesus died?"
Why indeed, Bria!

The whole class suddenly stopped squirming and listened intently as I bumbled and stumbled, suddenly starkly aware of the utter foolishness of our claim in faith.  Why is it a good thing that Jesus died? (What was I doing talking about death and body and blood with a room full of four year olds??)

It took me a week to have a real answer for Bria.  

The following Sunday I sat down with Bria and her mom and I told Bria that she had really thrown me last week and I was not happy with how I had answered her very good question.  

Why is it a good thing that Jesus died? 

If she would allow me, I said, I would like to give it another try.

And then I asked Bria, Do you know anyone who has lived forever?

No, she answered.

Can you think of anyone who will never die? 

Will your grandpa die?

Yes.

Will your mom someday die?

Yes.

Will you and I die someday?

Yes we will. 

Everyone dies. 

Everyone has to die.

Death is part of being human.

As sad as it is, it’s part of what it means to be alive.

 

But what about God? I asked. 

God doesn’t die! She answered. 

No God doesn’t die! God is forever!  God doesn’t have to die!

But here’s what is so amazing about God: God chose to die. 

God loved us so much that God wanted to be there for us, and with us, because we belong to God.

So God chose to become human with us.  To live life just the same as you and me.  All the good parts and the hard parts, right with us.

And that meant that God also chose to die, just like us. 

But you know what else that means?

What?

It means that now there is nothing, nothing scary, nothing sad, nothing ugly or wrong, that will happen to us in life without God being there, loving us. 

When we are afraid, God is there.

When we are sad, God is there, loving us. 

And what about when we are angry?

And what about when we hurt other people and say mean things?

Does God still love us then?

Yes, always, no matter what.

We belong to God. 

Always and forever, through our whole lives. And one day when we do die, God is with us, loving us, forever and ever. 

This, my beloved, is power. This is the power to face reality and live honestly.  To look at the darkness in the world, and in ourselves, and call it what is.  Because God went there, God is there. To the places of total godforsakeness, that's where Jesus goes.  Life is hard and scary, and filled with pain and sadness.  But we are not alone.

What will separate us from the love of Christ? asks the Apostle Paul. 

Will hardship, or distress, 

or persecution or famine 

or nakedness or perile or sword? 

No, I am convinced that neither death nor life 

nor angels nor demons nor rulers 

nor anything present or things to come 

nor powers nor heights nor depths 

nor anything else in all creation 

will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

So here we will sit, my dear, in the terrible goodness of Good Friday.  

We will sit here together, noticing all the death - and there is so much!- we will notice it, and we will call it what it is, and we will know that God is in it too. 

And we will wait. 

We will wait for the hope of Easter.