The Window
Our Church is going through a period of turmoil at this time. Our new building is just days away from final completion and occupancy. Our Minister of Music has lung cancer and looks worse every time I see him. He is very weak and cannot fulfill his duties in running choir rehearsal and playing the organ. In normal practice, he has other pastoral duties, but not at the present. Our senior pastor and our associate for children and youth are working overtime to fill in.
Tomorrow morning we will have a guest organist. We, in the choir, do not know who it is. So we will meet him at 10:30 in the choir loft in robes to rehearse the 11:00 service. Normally we have our in-house back-up, but our backup organist is recovering from knee surgery and a severe virus which kept her hospitalized for a week after surgery. This delayed her PT/rehab for her knee and has left her weak. She will need time to heal. Our in house director will fill-in to direct.
In the midst of this, some plans have changed at the last minute leaving those of us in choir in the dark. Music rehearsed is set aside for something different. Wednesday night rehearsal was interrupted by our associate pastor with last minute changes. She apologized. I said, “We are all mushrooms.” This in reference to the well-known mushroom theory of management which is to keep your people in the dark and feed them BS. At this point, the choir is weary too. We keep praying for our director, but we do not know what his prognosis is at this time. Judy and I fear he is dying, but it may be that he is just battered by chemo. (He has an inoperable tumor close to his spine.)
So this sets the stage for what I experienced at our sunset Maundy Thursday service. My service folder was filled with the wrong music, because I was a few minutes late for warm-up in the choir room. So without hymns or anything else, I find myself in the choir loft to sing tenor for the first time in years. I sang the whole service from memory matching pitch with our one and only tenor.
Our service was a Tenebrae with scripture read by the youth in costume reading the words from the Gospels in character.
One of our stained glass windows is only visible from the pulpit and the choir loft. It is a triptych of the Transfiguration with one panel for Moses on the left, Jesus in the middle with Peter, James and John at his feet. Elisha is in the right panel.
The service started as the setting sun came into perfect alignment with the top of the middle panel which represents a red tapestry. I have never seen it more red. As the service progressed the full light of the sun fell on a lower portion of the window. After each lesson and music selection, the bell tolled and a candle was extinguished. The window got darker as the sun set, but not without lighting up Jesus’ face, then his red stole, then his feet. At the service concluded, the window was dark, but the light in the sanctuary reflected off the lead between the pieces of glass. It was like looking at an underexposed film negative. If you knew what to look for, you could still see the image. The light had gone out on Jesus. He was in the tomb.
Tomorrow is Easter and the light will shine again.
Alleluia!