Desiring the Kingdom (): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies Book 1)

by James K. A. Smith

For instance, when our children were quite young, we would sometimes participate in Good Friday services that included a few hymns and an extensive sermon that would focus on the fine points of atonement theory. But sometimes we would have opportunity to participate in Tenebrae, a historic “service of shadows” that revolves around Christ’s seven last words from the cross. In the service we have attended, the congregation enters a sanctuary lit only by seven clusters of candles. Through the service, Christ’s last words from the cross are read—sometimes with a brief meditation, sometimes with a musical interpretation. After each word, one of the clusters of candles is extinguished (in this case by a person methodically doing so as part of a liturgical dance). The darkness of that dark day increasingly envelops the congregation, until after the final word when the last bit of light is extinguished. After a time of darkened silence, the strepitus sounds—a torrent of discordant noise generated by cymbals from a hidden location in the rear of the sanctuary, shuddering through the congregation like a cold wind of desolation. The congregation then departs in somber silence, in darkness, the realities of Good Friday having been enacted in a way that still lingers, almost oppressively. They will not gather again until Easter morn, when the darkened sanctuary will be ablaze with light and lilies in resurrection splendor. But for now they depart in heaviness to endure that dark Saturd...