Tag: Holy Week

7 Words

I made a mistake in service planning this year.  I always prefer working from assigned readings, but the Wednesday midweeks don’t have a formal lectionary.  There are multiple informal ones.  Each LCMS Seminary provides some cheats.  The Synod worship committee itself does so as well. Along with a couple other sources. So I usually just pick up one of those as the assigned reading and run with it. Why? It prevents me from overthinking these things.  Something I am prone to do.  But back in late January when I was forced to think about this – Ash Wednesday was March 4th – I was not yet thinking about Holy Week.  So when the midweeks suggested reading the Passion story over the 7 weeks I said to myself “sure, that sounds good. I’ve done catechism reading the past couple. Something different.” Not thinking, “oops, that will cause the same text to be read at least three times in 10 days.”

Why? Because Palm Sunday has become Palms and Passion.  Why? Because attendance at Good Friday services had dipped significantly. And Going from the King riding into Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna to Resurrection morning seems to skip something significant to the Gospel in between. So the Passion was added to the Palms. And the typical Good Friday service is the dousing of the lights while we read the Passion. If I was thinking, I would have changed that service to an alternate “Seven Last Words” service. Maybe next year.  There are several wonderful choral arrangements around that theme.  Might be an interesting challenge for the choir.  Lutheran Service Book 447 – Jesus, in Your Dying Woes is our hymnbook placeholder for such a service.  It is a wonderfully tight three stanza each meditation on the collection of Jesus’ words from the cross.

So, I’m sorry for the repetition. But, it is something important. And there is enough in there for more than three meditations. So I thought here I’d offer the thumbnail of an alternate mediation – the Seven Last Words.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” – Lk. 23:34

“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”  – Lk. 23:43

“Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!”  – Jn. 19:26

“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Matt. 27:46

“I thirst.”  – Jn. 19:28

“It is finished” – Jn. 19:30

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” – Lk. 23:46

That is the traditional ordering. The first three show Jesus’ continued care for others even while being crucified. From those farthest away who don’t know what they are doing, who he begs forgiveness for, to those closest. Making sure that his mother was cared for. In between comforting the repentant thief whose hours were almost as short as his own. There is something about the order of love in those sayings.  We cannot neglect those far away, while at the same time we have a specific duty of love to those nearest.

The next two reveal something of the split of the Synoptics Jesus who is first human and revealed to be divine, and John where Jesus is always divine, but also shown to be the true man. The synoptic human Jesus suffers everything that we do, including the worries that God has forsaken us.  Luke caps these human worries off with the last words, the great confession of Faith.  “I trust you Father.” We all find ourselves there.  Can God really be with us in suffering and death?  Faith’s response is yes.  “I commit my soul to the Father.”

John’s words are the words of the divine. The thirst of Jesus is not the thirst for the sour wine, it is the thirst for more to be at the table, when he will again drink of the fruit of the vine. His life, his incarnation, his passion, is for all mankind that we might come to the heavenly feast.  And this divine Jesus’ last words for John are the judgement, “It is finished.” Salvation has been secured.  The redemption price has been paid.  The New Adam has withstood his temptation, and sin and death shall rule no more. The Righteous King has been crowned.

God cares for us – those close and those far away. He desires us all to be at the banquet. His salvation is done. The only question is the one of faith.  Do we trust what God has done to commit our spirit to Him? Proofs I see sufficient of it, ‘tis the true and faithful Word.

Notes on a Saturday

(Note: This was a piece I wrote while I was a pastor at St. Mark’s Lutheran in West Henrietta, NY. I forgot to import it over to here when I brought over my sermon file. Luckily it was on the internet archive and I was able to recover it. It came to mind in bible study at Mt. Zion in Peoria, AZ when asked a question dealing with the flood and sheol.)

The scriptures are rather silent about today. The Nicene creed goes from “he suffered and was buried” to “and on the third day he rose”. Notice how the Nicene creed even skips the flat declaration of Good Friday, he died. The apostle’s creed though states it “was crucified, died and was buried”. The east, the seat of the Nicene dealt with what we would call Nestorian sensitivities. The west, the seat of the apostles, was clearer. That apostle’s creed continues with the line “he descended into hell”. It is a line that has baffled moderns for a long time. A bafflement that I think stems from an obscuring of the scriptural teaching. Not a loss but a shift of emphasis. The creedal hope is resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The obscuring is something like my eternal soul goes to be with Jesus. Going to be with Jesus is true, and it is comforting, but it obscures the real hope. Our hope is that in Christ we will attain the resurrection of the dead and life in the age to come. The descent into hell, only really attested to scripturally in 1 Peter 3:18-20, is for a single purpose.

Like I often say about Pentecost, Easter did something. It actually did many things, but I’m focusing on

one thing here. What Peter says is Christ “proclaiming to the spirits in prison”, the artists have a very clear image of. My favorite is the hymn verse from Hark the Glad Sound. He comes the prisoners to release/In Satan’s bondage held/The gates of brass before him burst/the iron fetters yield. (Hark the Glad Sound LSB349). But visually the iconographers have it. I’ve placed a few around this post. This is the harrowing of hell. The psalmist would talk of “going down to the pit”. The word that usually stands behind that is sheol. And it is one of those difficult to translate words because our conceptual framework has shifted. The KJV often just translated it as hell. Except for the pagan undertones you might say underworld or abode of shades. Before Good Friday and Easter that flaming sword keeping us out of Paradise was there. We were in bondage to the spirits of this dark realm. What descent into hell means is the victory parade of the faithful souls out of sheol to be with Christ. Adam and Noah and Abraham and Jacob and David and Sarah and Ruth and Leah and Rahab and you get the picture. In fact look at this picture and you see the crown on the one soul. That is not the “crown of life” which would simply be the nimbus or the halo, but the representation of David, freed by his Royal Son.


The is the harrowing of hell, a term I think that needs to come back into everyday usage. If we talk of a harrowing, it is an escape, a jailbreak by divine means, from situations that we got ourselves into and can’t get out of. When we confess that he descended into hell, we confess that Christ has come to our lowest point and brought us out. That lowest point is death to sin. Appropriately Peter continues in that next verse (1 Peter 3:21-22) to talk about baptism. Baptism is our harrowing. Every remembrance of our baptism (confession & absolution, confirmation, awakenings through life) are a harrowing. We have been harrowed out of the chains we often put ourselves in. This last painting I think gets at the core of this victory parade. That carved out tomb was deeper than we can imagine. But Christ has knocked in the doors. Satan is beaten to the side, and the saints marched out from the tomb with Christ. We too will rest in that tomb. But unlike those in former days, we rest with Christ. And we rest in the certain hope of a resurrection like his. A Harrowing is a victory parade. It goes past Calvary and the grave, but like going to Jerusalem it is uphill all the way singing the Halleluiahs.

Harrowhell3