Sure it's Good Friday but do we Have to get Depressed out of our Minds????

I am not now and have never been much into symbolism which is kind of bad news when you realize that some of the most important Christians beliefs hinge on it....you know like communion.

Last night I attended our community Good Friday service. I didn't want to go. I was held hostage (emotionally anyway) because I am the music director at the First United Methodist Church here. Many years ago someone came up with the bright idea of having a mass choir from all the churches do a song for the community Thanksgiving service and since then we are stuck doing it for Good Friday as well. As a choir director this means I am forced to go to two services a year I would otherwise ignore.

If it weren't for the mass choir (which lately only consists of the Presbyterians and us) no one would go to the Good Friday Service. I am beginning to resent this. Sure I know it is Holy Week but do I have to go to church every day because of it? How about getting a few of those once a year people who only attend church on Easter to come just a couple more Sundays a year and let those of us who are still regular attenders enjoy a spring holiday when we actually had time to do something other than go to church.

Is this making me bitter? Yes! This probably stems from the fact that not only is it Holy Week but I have a major musical production, Guys and Dolls opening next week and have been painting sets and picking up props from the four corners of the earth all week.

Last night the Good Friday service was a Tenebrae service, one of those services where the lights are lowered after each Bible passage. By the time we got to the community choir's number the lights were so low I couldn't read my music which made the entire reason for being a the service pointless for me.

They have  a great pipe organ at Westminster Presbyterian and two very talented organists but I am used to the Methodist style of hymn singing, fast and furious. Every hymn went on forever and remember this is Good Friday so we aren't talking about tunes like Irving Berlin's Happy Holidays and I am sitting in a sanctuary so dark I can't read the tiny print in the hymnal even with my industrial strength reading glasses.

At least the Presbyterians' new minister didn't take the opportunity to show off his preaching prowess. New ministers in town are always pressed upon to host the community service giving people from other congregations the opportunity to give thanks that they have the minister they do or call a quick meeting of the pastor parish committee to discuss getting someone who can preach like that new guy the Baptists have (Actually in Sparta the Baptists don't join in community services....no one else in town can quite come up to their standards of holiness apparently)

After a prelude, seven scriptures, seven readings, seven brief commentaries, a pastoral prayer, an offertory, four hymns and three special numbers including a trumpet solo by one of the ministers who played a medley of every hymn ever written that included the word cross in it even once we were dismissed in silence.

Excuse me???? Silence? Oh yeah it's Good Friday so we have to be all depressed and everything. The only payoff for attending these community services is getting a chance to socialize with people from other congregations afterwards and they want us to leave in silence?

I guess I should be thankful that I wasn't attending services in St. Louis where one parish's roof got blown off during the service. Now that would be something worth getting depressed about.