Co-missioners,
Here with a series of notes from our editor.
Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community
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Pre-Holy Week Notes and Comments, 2025
by Jerome Burce
Andrea di Bartolo (1360–1428) – Four Saints
From Wikimedia Commons
An Easter Vigil Detail
George Heider, a former chair of Valparaiso University’s theology department, sent me a note of appreciation for Steve Kuhl’s comments about the Triduum in last week’s Thursday Theology. I passed this on to Steve, of course. Then I lingered for a little over some further thoughts George shared about those liturgies. One of them was focused on a passage in the Exultet, an extended proclamation preferably sung by an assisting minister to launch the Easter Vigil. Here I quote from the version that appears in the Lutheran Book of Worship, Minister’s Edition:
O necessary sin of Adam that is wiped away by the death of Christ!
O happy fault that was worthy to have so great a Redeemer!
George’s comment:
“Call it a little thing, but I really object to the ELW’s omission of the felix culpa [“happy fault”] language in the Exultet…. I spent a career teaching that this was arguably THE overarching theme of the Scriptures (see Gen. 50:20 and Rom 8:28), only to have the ELW pull the rug out from under the concept for reasons never explained.”
I pass this along as something well worth mulling over this Holy Week. And if you’re an ELCA worship leader who plans to offer the Vigil, perhaps you make a point of reverting for once to the LBW text. That way someone else’s ear can be snagged by this astonishing phrase and the idea it adorns. Imagine: a Savior so splendid than we can praise God even for the sin that drew him to us!
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From Canva
Two Notes About Good Friday
And there was more in George’s note. Much more—
- First and foremost, he sent a link to an article he published in The Cresset fifteen years ago. It’s entitled “What Makes Good Friday Good: Telling the Whole Story.” I can’t urge you enough to read this between now and Sunday when Holy Week begins. You might share it with others who are planning to spend an extra hour or two attending to Jesus’ Passion, whether in church or in private devotion.
Among several things George gives us in the article are snapshots of the distinct theological angles that shape the telling of the passion in each of the four gospels. I won’t rehearse them here. You’ll find them quickly when you use the link. I did some “aha”-ing as I read. Then I filed this away for future reference. You will too, methinks.
- What I also got was an account of why, in the liturgical overhauling of the 1970’s, St. John’s gospel became the main feature of the LBW’s Good Friday service. There was thoughtful theology involved—of course. Thanks be to God. But there was also some age-old behavioral stuff going on—there always is. To put it cynically, the cognoscenti were once again intent on elevating the rubes. Not that the rubes wished to be so elevated. They rarely are, nor were they at a Valparaiso Liturgical Conference in 2009 where the topic was “The Three Days.” Here’s how George describes the response to a panel discussion about Good Friday :
“Question after question asked the panel members in one way or another why their churches couldn’t continue their beloved tradition of a Tenebre (or “shadows”) service on Good Friday, in which a succession of candles are extinguished one-by-one following solemn hymns, readings, and prayers, all focused on our part in necessitating Jesus’ suffering and death and the extraordinary lengths to which God went to bring humanity back to himself. The panel’s responses said, in essence, that it was time to move beyond such medieval, maudlin displays to a proper focus on what makes Good Friday good.”
I smell lots of condescension in the materials emanating from today’s set of liturgical specialists. I can’t help but encounter it. The little congregations I attend or serve in my retirement tend to download their Sunday bulletins from “churchwide” sources, and it’s impossible to miss the didactic pokes embedded in most everything that flows from there. But more on this after Easter, maybe.
For now, enough with grinding teeth. We all have something far more pressing to ponder for the next many days, as in the Passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. “Come, Holy Spirit. Open ears, eyes, hearts!” Thank you, George, for your help with this.
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Three Community Notes
Sue Westhorp
First, a significant ordination is set to take place in Melbourne, Australia on the Second Sunday of Easter. The ordinand will be Sue Westhorp, one of the several compelling speakers who graced our 2020 Crossings conference. When we met her, Sue had been serving for twenty years as a theologically trained lay worker at a Lutheran congregation in suburban Melbourne. She was also hoping for the day when the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand might approve the ordination of women. This finally happened at the LCANZ’s General Synod (i.e. convention/churchwide assembly) last October. Sue and one other woman were quickly authorized for ordination by the church’s theological institution and its college of bishops. Keep them both in your prayers, please, and Sue in particular. Thanks to God are very much in order.
Second: also called for right now are prayers for the Church everywhere in its ongoing addiction to fractious dispute. This was recently exhibited in Australia—well, of course—by the immediate withdrawal from the LCANZ of congregations whose opposition to the ordination of women remains adamant. A new group called “Lutheran Mission—Australia” has since been formed with what I understand is the hearty encouragement and support of the LCMS. I began high school in 1966 at a Lutheran boarding school in Adelaide, Australia. I faintly recall some joy in the air that year when a century-old division between Australian Lutherans was ended by the amalgamation (as they called it) of two existing bodies, one linked to Missouri, the other to the old Iowa Synod and similar groups with a Wilhelm Loehe connection. That unity was hard-won, or so I heard. It was jealously guarded for sixty years. Comes now the inevitable splinter over the same underlying issue that fractured Missouri in my seminary days. Not women’s ordination, but “verbal inspiration” etc.; though even that I think of as an ostensible issue which masked still deeper matters that really drove the division in Missouri. So too in Australia, right now? I don’t know, though I wouldn’t be surprised. The point of sorrow is the disappointment Christ must feel on seeing yet again how ready his saints are to break away from the other. As if he, our Lord, is not glue enough to hold us together. Aargh.
Third: two years ago Crossings received an unexpected gift from the Neeb Family Foundation to develop a program to mentor preachers. We launched this in the fall of 2023 with five pastors participating. A second round followed last year. Six pastors took part. Results in both years were such that the Foundation has agreed to fund a third round this fall. The mentoring team met yesterday to begin planning for this. We will have seven openings this year. Three of these are already accounted for. If you’re interested in participating yourself or know of someone else who might be, drop a note as soon as possible to the program coordinator. This happens to be me: Jerry Burce. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
Finally, both last and first: blessings to all in the days to come.
