Passion play
One of my most cherished gifts came on my birthday in 1988. Marilyn and Bob Adams, philiosophy professors at UCLA and ordained clergy, gave me a book with the somewhat impentrable titleThe Prayer Book Office. It contains the services for Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline (the Daily Office) from The Book of Common Prayer, fleshed out with seasonal variations and prayers (ooh, more rubrics!). It also contains non-scriptural readings for various holy days, drawn from the Church Fathers and other divines. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s reading, from Gregory of Nazianzus (who was, you will likely not recall, chosen Bishop of Constantinople in 380, when a ray of sunlight fell on him on a rainy day in Hagia Sophia). Here, his approach to the Passion seems strikingly modern in the way he invites his listeners to identify with various people at the margins of the Passion narrative. (Does this owe something to his study of rhetoric?)
So let us take our part in the Passover...
If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up your cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God. . . . Enter paradise with Jesus and discover how far you have fallen. Contemplate the glories there, and leave the other scoffing thief to die outside in his blasphemy.
If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ’s body. Make your own the expiation for the sins of the whole world. If you are Nicodemus, like the man who worshipped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ’s body for burial. If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.
So let us take our part in the Passover...
If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up your cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God. . . . Enter paradise with Jesus and discover how far you have fallen. Contemplate the glories there, and leave the other scoffing thief to die outside in his blasphemy.
If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ’s body. Make your own the expiation for the sins of the whole world. If you are Nicodemus, like the man who worshipped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ’s body for burial. If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.