Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore, let us keep the feast. Alleluia.
Good Friday is one of two designated fast days according to the Book of Common Prayer, the other being Ash Wednesday.
I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had enough fasting for now. The problem especially being that it was an involuntary fast. Fasting from the bread and wine of communion, fasting from gathering for public worship, fasting from programs and activities, fasting from coffee and conversation with my people. Enough fasting that I didn’t ask for, or intentionally plan.
Perhaps the intentionality of fasting from food on Good Friday is an argument for why fasting might be a good thing to do that particular day. Does it make a difference to choose to fast from something while in the midst of involuntary fasting? What does a fasting of choice, in the midst of feeling like all control has been taken away, feel like?
What a strange couple of days the triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter) is in “normal” times as we move from the fasting of Lent into the Feast of Good Friday. There is already a spiritual whiplash in the three days as we feast at the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, remembering Jesus’ meal with his friends and his commandment to love, to the fast and desolation of death on the cross and the loss of Jesus’ presence with us while in the tomb, then back to feast again as we shout “Allelluia The Lord is risen!” on Easter.
This year, we move into the feast of Easter, and yet we still must fast. Still I wonder, isn’t that how we live every day of our lives? We live in the hope of Easter, while we confront the daily suffering and small deaths of being human in this world. We move from moments of fasting, chosen or not, into moments of feasting in the dailyness of our lives. I wonder, do we recognize the feasts when they arrive? How do we continue to feast while we fast?
Although I cannot gather with you in worship right now, you all are in my daily prayers. I keep the directory beside my computer here on my dining room table and turn to a new page each day. Each time I glance down on it, I pray for everyone on that page. I feast on the richness that is our community.
Above my head on my dining room wall hangs all the Christmas cards that you all sent me (yes, I know, they should have come down on Candlemas). Each time I look up and see it, or notice it behind my head while I’m on a zoom call, I smile. I feast on the joy I have through my relationships.
I cannot celebrate the Eucharist with you right now, but each night my family sits down together for dinner. Prior to the pandemic, we might have been able to eat together one or two nights a week. Now, eating together is the rule rather than the exception. I feast on these last moments together as a family before my teenagers fly from the nest.
Therefore, let us keep the feast. We all have different circumstances, different things we might feast upon. As we (finally) enter this Easter season, how will you feast?