Magyar Egyház, 1960 (39. évfolyam, 1-9. szám)
1960-03-01 / 3. szám
8 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ CHARLES DAROCY: Good Friday: Holiday or Holy Day? The Easter season is the high point in American church life. It seems as if everyone finds the Church on Easter Sunday. Preachers address vast congregations and ruefully await the following Sunday, known in most ecclesiastical circles as “low Sunday”, low because the crowds are gone and the pews are once again filled with “regulars.” Palm Sunday gives all of us an opportunity to rejoice in the arrival of the King of Kings to his capitol city. Special musical selections are presented and everyone looks forward to the final days of Lent in anticipation of Easter itself. In the entire pattern Good Friday casts a jarring note. Frankly, we often don’t know what to do with it. In many communities marathon services are held proclaiming what is alleged on rather weak Scriptural grounds to be the “Seven Last Words.” Usually a different minister arrives to preach on each Word, really a series of Scriptural verses. In many communities this is the pattern of Good Friday. Theatrical, yes, religious, well, I wonder! The reason for the confusion about the place of Good Friday is easy to discover. The Puritan heritage of America has not always been for the best. Among the Puritans it was assumed that all days are of equal merit. As a result the great holy days were transformed into civil but not religious occasions. This tendency is reflected many of our theological seminaries e it unto one of the least CHURCH WORLD SERVICE National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U S. A. Did you give to the “One Great Hour of Sharing” Program? which still call upon students to attend classes on Good Friday. If the future ministers cannot see any difference between this day and any other it is little wonder that the worshippers are at sea. It is one of the priceless treasures of the Hungarian Reformed heritage that Good Friday, as well as Pentecost, are maintained as holy days in the best sense of the term. Not merely occasions for the so-called “community services” which generally seek the lowest common denominator of religious experience but times for true congregational participation in worship. For on Good Friday man is faced by the enormity of his sin. God’s Son is once again seen as the victim not of Hebrew priests and Roman rulers but of you and me. Christ is crucified anew not in the “hocus pocus” of the Mass but in the terrible tensions that mark human life. And man is forced to see and feel the enormous power of sin in his own life. Good Friday is a day of soul searching. No choir can sing the agonies of the Messiah. No scholar can explain his sufferings in detail. Only the heart of the sinner can comprehend that God suffered then and suffers now for his sake. If this were all, our faith would indeed be in vain. But on Good Friday God speaks through the greatest crime of all time to remind us that He cares for us and loves us with the undying love of the Savior who found time to forgive the penitent thief on the second Cross. Holiday or Holy Day? Its really up to us. No one can decide how we will mark this day. No one, except for God. May His Spirit lead us into not only remembering the suffering and dying Christ but also to seek His grace and forgiving power. THE INADEQUATE PASTOR A pastor could spend twelve hours a day, seven days a week, calling on the lost and unchurched. Or, he could spend those hours calling in the homes of the members, sick, and inactive. Or, he might spend all these waking hours doing organizational work with the Sunday School, youth groups, meeting with the dozens of other organizations that comprise a Church, Or, he may spend his time ministering to the troubled, distressed humanity, somehow managing to handle funerals, weddings, and countless other social obligations that come, or he may spend twelve hours a day in his study with great profit to himself and his Church. Denominational activities and meetings he must work in somewhere. So, a pastor — any pastor — must forever remain inadequate, He can attempt to cover five fields of endeavor, in part, devoting about twenty per cent of his time to each, leaving each job eighty per cent undone! Hence the term, “Inadequate Pastor.” Any pastor must always remain in that category. Do not pity the preacher. He is having the best time of anyone on earth, doing work he loves. He spends six nights away from home by choice. Inadequate, desperately busy, always behind with his work, the preacher thinks his job is the best on earth. Pray for him and bear with him; he is the only member of the church who has no pastor ... (The Broad Street Builder)
