Month: March 2024

Sometime in the latter half of the 3rd Century, the Christian church began to observe Holy Week. The gospels describe in considerable detail the final days of Jesus’ life as the intense scrutiny around him heightens to a fevered pitch. Those early church Holy Week observances were dedicated to reading the gospel narratives of Jesus’ betrayal, trial, crucifixion, death, and burial. Participants went to worship in sorrow, penance and fasting, and to linger at the foot of the cross, mindful of the suffering love of God revealed through the person Jesus. By experiencing the full depths of Jesus’ passion, the joy of Easter morning led believers to ecstatic praise.

This evening, you have opportunities to join us for Maundy Thursday communion and tomorrow’s noon and evening Good Friday worship. I encourage you to join in these rituals of discipleship that have formed the church’s Holy Week practice for more than two thousand years.

While biblical scholars and historians have debated aspects of the life of Jesus and of the early church, one thing they agree on is that a Christian is, by definition, someone who believed that the God of ancient Israel raised Jesus from the dead. The pagan world at that time thought this was ridiculous. What is dead stays dead, they postured, but the Christian communion believed something extraordinary, something unnatural, had happened. As the Apostle Paul said, without the resurrection, we really have nothing interesting to say. (1 Cor. 15:14).

Come Sunday, we will celebrate the resurrection in our customary ways at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, at sunrise and in the sanctuary, with the beauty of flowers and extraordinary music, with a full congregation of believers and skeptics, with great joy. I have come to believe that the joy is heightened for those who show up on Thursday and Friday and are willing to ponder the depths of God’s love for the sake of the world.

Join us for these last few days of Holy Week and Easter’s glorious proclamation and praise!

In January 2023, my neighbor, Rachelle Fleming, texted me, inviting me to her home to meet Hugh McElyea, a composer friend. Knowing Rachelle, I knew that we would have a lovely time, but I wasn’t expecting to encounter a composer who was absolutely fascinated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What ensued was a wonderful evening of three musicians engaging in all manner of conversation about all sorts of topics, including that of an oratorio that draws parallels between the crucifixion of Christ and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s death at the hands of the Nazis. By evening’s end, I knew that BMPC would have to perform Hugh’s “Tenebrae: The Passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

Who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who spoke out against the Nazi regime on the day Adolf Hitler came to power. His ties to the July 20, 1944, conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime led to his execution in 1945. His theological writings are regarded as classics throughout the Christian world.

What is Tenebrae?

“Tenebrae” means “Darkness.” In the early church, monks gathered on the eve of Good Friday to remember Jesus’s last days. This became a traditional 4th-century monastic service called “Tenebrae,” meaning “darkness.” During the service, thirteen candles are extinguished one by one as the gospel account of Jesus’s Passion is accompanied by Gregorian Chants. The church is left in total darkness as the service ends.

Who was Maria von Wedemeyer?

A few days before his arrest, Dietrich was engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, a young woman he had taught as a student. He befriended several prison guards who smuggled letters to his family and fiancée, even arranging brief face-to-face meetings. Through his poems and letters, we gain a deeply personal glimpse into the life of the man. In this presentation, the mezzo-soprano also portrays Mary Magdalene.

While setting the ancient service of Tenebrae in wartime Berlin, the music reflects the tragedy of war and the sacrifice of one man who stood up and spoke truth to power. Having made the ultimate sacrifice, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom remains a source of inspiration and a warning in our own time.

As the Allied bombing of Berlin neared, Bonhoeffer realized that he might not survive and opened his Bible to read the Passion of Jesus for the last time. He was taken from Tegel Prison to the Buchenwald concentration camp and later transferred to the Flossenburg prison, where he was tried for treason and hanged on April 9, 1945, just days before the end of World War II. In the end, his final words to a fellow prisoner were, “For me, this is the end, but also the beginning. It is certain that our joy is hidden in our suffering and our life in death.”

“Tenebrae: The Passion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” will take place on Friday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary. The production features Nicholas Provenzale as Bonhoeffer, Rachelle Fleming playing the dual roles of Maria von Wedemeyer and Mary Magdalene, and WRTI host Michael Bolton as the narrator. The Bryn Mawr Chamber Singers and a chamber orchestra round out the cast. You are invited to a pre-performance talk at 6:30 p.m. in the Fullerton room with the composer, Hugh McElyea, and Rev. Rob Schenck, the founder and president of “The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute.” The performance will be live-streamed.

In his celebrated work, Moral Man and Immoral Society, the 20th-century theologian and political philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “Religion is always a citadel of hope, which is built on the edge of despair.” It came to mind a couple of weekends ago when I went to see Dune: Part Two on opening weekend.

The film, an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction magnum opus of the same name, tells the story of a young aristocrat, Paul Atreides, whose father, Leto, has been given as a fiefdom the inhospitable desert planet Arrakis. There on its sandy surface is the spice melange, harvested like oil to power travel across the known universe. Its indigenous people survive the harsh conditions of the planet with a deep reverence for water and the massive worms that move through the sand like sharks in open water.

Paul’s mother belongs to a secretive group that plays universe-wide politics from the shadows. They have been at work on Arrakis for years, preparing the native population through a prophetic promise to expect a messiah that would come to save them. When Paul arrives, many see him as the fulfillment of the prophecy.

I won’t give away the ending, but suffice it to say that Paul decides to play the part. The story continues in subsequent novels, and Paul’s followers unleash their radical devotion in horrific ways across galaxies. Herbert’s message is clear: be careful following messiahs who promise to save you.

There are many messiahs who call for our allegiance. Even those of us who follow Jesus Christ are tempted by the voices of those in religion, politics, economics, and the like who entice us with their cry as the vehicle for salvation. But as a recent primer on Christian ethics notes, “The Bible assumes that all persons are moral agents.” Created in God’s image and recipients of God’s grace in Christ, we are all endowed participants in the restoring acts of God in creation. We have already been found by the Messiah, and our job now is to live like it.

I’m grateful for that on days when the world seems to spin with all its madness, wondering if we aren’t all just one step away from being swallowed by a giant sandworm. Together, we caution one another and quell our excesses. We temper our extremes and moderate our self-righteousness. We share in each other’s joys and bear each other’s burdens. We make of our inhospitable culture of individualism a new kind of community we call the church; a citadel of hope built on the edge of despair.

“Little Things with Great Love” is a song by Porter’s Gate—a group of musicians, pastors, and theologians who meet and write faithful, biblical, and beautiful worship music. This song is one of my favorites. I invite you to watch the video and/or read the lyrics, listening for the Spirit’s stirrings within you.

In the garden of our Savior, no flower grows unseen;

His kindness rains like water on every humble seed.

No simple act of mercy escapes His watchful eye —

for there is One who loves me: His hand is over mine.

In the kingdom of the heavens, no suff’ring is unknown;

each tear that falls is holy, each breaking heart a throne.

There is a song of beauty on ev’ry weeping eye —

for there is One who loves me: His heart, it breaks with mine.

Oh, the deeds forgotten; oh, the works unseen,

every drink of water flowing graciously,

every tender mercy, You’re making glorious.

This You have asked us: do little things with great love,

little things with great love.

At the table of our Savior, no mouth will go unfed;

His children in the shadows stream in and raise their heads.

Oh give us ears to hear them and give us eyes that see —

for there is One who loves them: I am His hands and feet.

I love this piece, the simplicity of guitar and vocals to begin, the slow addition of street sounds and strings, the softness at the lyric, “little things with great love,” and the final build-up in the last stanza with all the strings and guitar. The line “His heart, it breaks with mine” reminds me of the story of Jesus weeping with Mary and Martha after the death of their brother, Lazarus. I particularly love the last stanza, where we are reminded that at the Table of Jesus, all are fed, that God’s children who dwell in shadow are invited to that Table, “for there is one who loves them,” we are “his hands and feet.”

Sometimes, I think of music and art as something separate, something that doesn’t necessarily connect me to God or my faith life. But worship music like this, worship like the hymns we sing on Sundays, art like we see in the gallery, poetry that we read together and alone, recall me to the worship of our just and loving God. Art, I’ve learned, is a vehicle that brings us closer to ourselves, one another, and God.

This coming weekend, we’re taking a group of our youth to Johnsonburg Camp and Retreat Center for their annual all-youth retreat. This year, we’ll be led by Lady Z, the founder and director of Poets for Justice. When I think of poets for justice, I think of songs like “Little Things with Great Love” or the poetry of Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and more, poetry that inspires me to participate in God’s just and loving action in the world. I can’t wait to see what our youth learn from Lady Z about responding to injustice through creativity and art.

As our youth learn this weekend what it means to seek and experience justice through poetry, I invite you to encounter God through art in some small way this week. Seek out the God who calls for “justice to roll down like rivers” (Amos 5:24), taught in stories and parables, and knew the poetry of the psalms by heart, and who daily calls us to lives of holiness, justice, and peace.