One of my least favorite things about Holy Week is the way that the days between Palm Sunday and Easter get sort of lost in the shuffle — incidentally, those are the days that are still a little more complicated/interesting than the typical hosanna!- and trumpet-filled Sundays.
So I asked to participate in the Maundy Thursday service where I work. Apparently their Good Friday service is basically a concert every year, so on Thursday there's a service that starts with the Last Supper and ends with a tenebrae crucifixion sequence. I was pretty apprehensive... I mean, those days get short shrift anyway! Why shorten them even more by squishing them together?
There was a hymn ("Go To Dark Gethsemane") that marked the transition. While we were singing, the clergy stripped the Communion table, the altar girl took the purple hangings down from the pulpit and lectern, the ushers extinguished the candles along the center aisle, and the clergy removed their purple stoles and sat down in the first pew.
There was the standard reading from Matthew – singing – turning out lights process. But the candles that each of the readers put out? Advent candles, arranged in a circle minus the wreath part. Same candles and everything. So cool! I love the bookending of the story like that. Jesus comes, we light candles, Jesus leaves, we extinguish them.
And then at the end, when all the lights are out and the bell is tolling, and the congregation is sitting there in this tense state (described in my mind by a sustained, dramatically discordant violin chord), and the head-altar-guy picks up the Bible, in the pitch dark, and slams it shut. As it said in the program, to echo the closing of the tomb and the departure of the Word.
I was really pleasantly surprised. I'm a big fan of involving multiple senses in worship, and of ritual objects. Generally I'd say the more the better, unless it's done poorly. But they really pulled it out! All of the actions and "drama" were really coordinated and made very clear points. The transition from the cozy upper room into the chaos of the arrest and crucifixion was visually explicit (which is something that can be lost when they're on separate days). And I thought the actions around the tenebrae section were really powerful and added a lot. All while staying in a fairly traditional liturgical format!
If one of the most formal churches I know can use symbolic action and movement in a new and effective way, there is some hope! It is possible to make a service like that into something moving and meaningful. It just takes some work....
