|
WERE YOU THERE?
(Note: we had
permission to print the text during Lent but have had to remove the
text after Lent. Refer to your hymnal for the text.)
This
African-American spiritual compels us to bridge time and space, and
place ourselves squarely in events central to the Christian faith.
“Were you there,” the song asks rhetorically, knowing full well
we were. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?... when
they nailed him to the tree?...when they pierced him in the side?...
when the sun refused to shine?... when they laid him in the tomb?”
I remember many
Good Friday services, some at Reformation, when the central focus
was a large wooden cross. This hymn was sung with deep emotion in a
dimly lit sanctuary as we contemplated the death of Jesus. And there
was little doubt that somehow, by faith, what had taken place back
then in Bible times was really part of the present. And the present,
filled with burden and guilt, somehow was transported back to the
day when Christ himself was lifted up.
The liturgy says,
“In baptism our gracious heavenly Father frees us from sin and death
by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” (p. 227, Evangelical Lutheran Worship) In the
mystery of God, time ceases. The past is made present and the
present is taken to the past. Even now in faith we are given a
foretaste of the future.
Holy Week, indeed
the whole of the church year, is not simply the remembering of the
teachings and events of Jesus’ life in the past. The liturgies take
us deeply into the life of Jesus, into the mysteries of God and the
gift of salvation. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”
Yes, and most importantly, we were there receiving life and
salvation from our Lord.
The Rev. Gerald
Mansholt,
Bishop, Central
States Synod |
