Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy
Behold! The Bridegroom Comes!
Essay on the Bridegroom Services of Holy Week
April 27, 2005
As I write this, it is halfway through Holy Week. From now until Sunday the worship services at Eastern Orthodox Churches will become longer and more intense. Before this final burst toward Pascha, I want to pause and look back. Over fifteen years ago we participated in Lent and Pascha at a very small Orthodox church in Lincoln, Neb. The priest served two congregations in two towns, that meant neither church had the full compliment of services that is “normal” in a Byzantine church. My experience is limited to Holy Archangels in Lincoln, St. Thomas in Sioux City, and what I read on the internet, so I don't know what the average or typical Orthodox congregation does in the week leading up to Pascha, but I do know that “normal” is a Wednesday and Friday evening service during Lent and a service every night during Holy Week. I also know that St. Thomas has followed this pattern pretty closely, so this is the first Orthodox Lent and Pascha that I've experienced where the normal compliment of services are prayed.
Orthodox services, as well as Lent and Holy Week in general, are more intense and difficult than anything I am acquainted with in the western church. But, that being said, I am struck at the familiarity of the underlying dynamics. Baptist, Church of Christ, and Christian churches have their week long revival services. Bible, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches have their Missionary, Bible, and Christian Life conferences. Over the years I have served on planning committees for a number of these events. These conferences and revivals, typically lasting about one week, are designed to be immersion experiences. The idea is to trim back your daily schedule as much as possible so that the week becomes a group effort at setting aside the cares of the world and focusing on Jesus Christ. Individually our devotion dims over time, but through the special week-long discipline of the revival or conference, our passions for Christ are both renewed and strengthened. This is the same social dynamic that occurs during Holy Week in an Orthodox service. One could call it the Revival Meeting of the early church, or a really old time revival meeting.
While the social dynamic is the same, the preparation for a Baptist Revival or Presbyterian Christian Life Conference is completely different than the preparation for Holy Week in the Orthodox Church. Holy Week is preceded by the forty day fast of Lent. The guidelines for the Lenten fast are to abstain from meat, dairy, oil, and alcohol. Furthermore, one should always leave the table a bit hungry. When I first became acquainted with the Orthodox discipline of fasting I discovered that it is not about purification or sorrow or making up for past wrongs. Salvation is by grace, after all, and that sort of mentality is antithetical to the Gospel; but grace doesn't mean salvation is easy. I came to call the fasts of the Orthodox church Boot Camp. Fasting is training for the spiritual battle. It is the pain and suffering of summer football camp in preparation for the joy of the regular season to come. Fasting is a spiritual eye exam to make sure that we can see beyond just bodily functions and desires and are not blinded to the Kingdom of God. But there's a catch. “Boot Camp” or “Training Camp” sounds challenging, invigorating, and it appeals to many people's sense of Christian duty. Fasting, on the other hand, is very private, mundane, and oh so long. As Deacon James, who preached a couple of weeks ago described it (and exaggerating only a little bit), strictly adhering to the fast means six weeks of nothing but boiled potatoes and vegetables while driving by the Burger King every day smelling the smoke from flame broiled beef. Again, my experience is very limited, but I don't know anyone who does a very good job of keeping the fast. It is too austere and too long.
And the Lenten Fast has to be put into perspective. If we look ahead to Pascha and look back on the fast from the feast, we discover that everyone has always known it's pretty much impossible to keep. Arguably the second most famous sermon ever preached in Christendom (the most famous being Stephen's sermon before his martyrdom), was John Chrysostom's Paschal sermon. It was a homiletical standard that I read in preaching classes both in Bible College and Presbyterian Seminary. It is one of the most beautiful expositions of grace ever preached. What I discovered long after graduating Bible college and seminary is that the sermon is still read every Pascha in every Orthodox church. And what is particularly amazing about it, is that it's just over 500 words long. (If Baptist preachers could figure that out, their congregations would be the first in the buffet line every Sunday!) It begins in this manner:
If any one be devout and loveth God, Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast! If any man be a wise servant, Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have laboured long in fasting, Let him now receive his recompense.
In short, if you've been faithful in your fasting through Lent, you are welcome and encouraged to join us for the absolutely decadent champaign breakfast in the Fellowship Hall following the Divine Liturgy in celebration of the resurrection. But Chrysostom doesn't stop there. He also says:
If any have come at the third hour, Let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, Let him have no misgivings . . . And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness, For the Lord . . . giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour, Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour. And He showeth mercy upon the last, And careth for the first. . . . Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord . . . Let no one bewail his poverty, For the universal Kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
What this bishop and pastor of what was one of the largest congregations in the history of Christianity (Holy Wisdom Cathedral in Constantinople) said on Pascha was, “The fast is over; I know most of you managed to muck up the fast in a big way, but God's grace is bigger than all of that, so come on over to the Fellowship Hall and join in the festivities.
Maybe it's just that I'm not good at it (after all, the Fast takes practice, I am told), but, as I said before, it seems to me that the Fast is so strict that it is designed to make most people fail. The fast is not about atoning for sin, it is about demonstrating in a most acute and afflictive way, the weakness of our wills and the overwhelming power of the flesh controlled by sin. The fast is no vanity diet: It isn't designed to make us look good to God, it's designed to make us cry out in abject despair over our failures. Such a one is ready to receive God's grace; “blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
And this is the context leading up to the oldest by far of the Old Fashioned Revival Weeks: Holy Week in the Orthodox Church. The week starts with three consecutive nights of “Bridegroom Services,” where Christ is celebrated as the Bridegroom coming for his bride. My first impression of these three services is from the perspective of someone who has done worship planning and sermon preparation for twenty years. All three services are built around a leading metaphor which is powerful and aesthetically pleasing. There is no sermon so the priest can't mess up the simple power of the metaphor with his own convoluted thoughts. (Not that Fr Tom would ever do that, but in twenty years, I did it plenty of times!) The text of the service is set. Most of it is chanted by the chanters. The combination of the powerful and poetic leading metaphor supported by the elegantly simple texts that support it leave a content-rich emotional impact that even the very best of preachers can hope to achieve only a small percentage of the time. These services embody both timely and beautiful truth.
The three metaphors of the Bridegroom services are the cursing of the fig tree (on Sunday night), the ten virgins awaiting the bridegroom (on Monday night), and the contrast between the harlot who anointed Jesus with outrageously expensive spikenard (showing no care for riches) and the disciple Judas, who was offended at her waste of money, later betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. On Sunday night the worshiper is reminded that God takes fruit very seriously. Those that bear no fruit are pruned from the tree. This is a painful reminder since almost everyone in attendance at the service just spent forty days failing to keep the fast, forty days being reminded of just how foreign and uncomfortable it is for us sinful humans to bear spiritual fruit. On Monday night our attention is turned to the ten virgins. Five of them were prepared for a long vigil and brought extra oil for their lamps. Five did not. Having just failed at the forty day fast, the idea of preparation for the long haul hits home. And then on Tuesday night we hear the story of Judas, who had been with Jesus for three years. Having received the grace of God, he was one of that inner circle of twelve people that Jesus focused his whole ministry on. We are reminded that even he failed. Overflowing thanksgiving (as expressed by the harlot) is not the birthright of people who spend their lives in church. Outward righteousness (whether expressed by keeping the fast, attending church, being a good neighbor and upstanding citizen, or witnessing) is no guarantee of the inner wellspring of thanksgiving that is the root of true righteousness. Each service, like a surgeon, carefully cutting out a malignancy, is a spiritual incision reaching down into the sin-diseased soul, laying bare the darkest secrets of the last forty days.
The three bridegroom services are exercises in humility. One comes to Holy Week with a palpable sense of the impossibility of the holy life that we are called to. These services don't gloss over past sin and failure. In fact they pick at those sins and failures with these powerful poetic metaphors of barrenness, lack of spiritual stamina and pride. But woven throughout the services are calls to humble acceptance of God's grace that can be exhibited through strength and power, even in our sin-weakened bodies. And not only are there calls to humility, there are countless examples of humility, so at the end of the first three days one is left in a truly proper frame of mind: deeply aware of our failings but not overwhelmed by failure; deeply aware of our sinfulness, but not beaten down by sin. This is true meekness—knowing who we are; nothing less, nothing more. And in that posture we are ready for big services of the latter half of the week.
A prayer that is offered at nearly every Lenten Orthodox service is the Prayer of St. Ephrem (or Ephraim) the Syrian, but its placement at the very end of the three Bridegroom services brings the worshiper back from discouragement into the bottomless well of the grace of God: “O Lord and Master of my life, keep from me the spirit of indifference and discouragement, lust of power and idle chatter. Instead, grant to me, Your servant, the spirit of wholeness of being, humble-mindedness, patience, and love. O Lord and King, grant me the grace to be aware of my sins and not to judge my brother; for You are blessed now and forever. Amen.”
Copyright © 2006 James E. Nelson (Just Another Jim). All Rights Reserved.
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