Maundy Thursday and “The Other Boleyn Girl”

Today I was lucky enough to join the choir at my church, for the first time in almost a year. I really enjoyed being a part of it last year, and was very sad this year when one of my classes was scheduled for Wednesday evening, meaning I couldn’t make it to choir.
Since it’s less then a week until we sing all of the music we rehearsed this evening, I was dumped headlong into a blur of music that everyone else has been practicing for weeks. It was very hard to keep up, but I enjoyed the challenge.
All the pieces were lovely, as usual, but one in particular struck me. It was called “For God So Loved the World”, and it’s the song we’ll sing on Maundy Thursday (which is a Holy Day I always forget about). The opening lines are “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son”
Normally, these words wouldn’t strike me in particular. I’ve gone fairly consistently to either the Catholic or Episcopalian churches for most of my life, and these words are repeated throughout Lent, in hymns, sermons, and readings.
However, for the last few days, I’ve been deeply immersed in reading “The Other Boleyn Girl”, by Phillipa Gregory. It’s a very good book, with intrigue, lust, passion, suspicion, romance, love, and of course, beautiful Renaissance outfits. The whole book is lush and sweeping, and all the characters are believable and intriguing, and the romance is spell-binding. But above all of these things, one of the things I’ve been enjoying about it the most is the deep love and affection the main character has for her children. I’ve read very few books where the main character was a mother, and this is one of the focal points of the story.
So, all week I’ve been immersed in this vivid book about this fascinating character and her love for her children, so when we sang “That he gave his only begotten son”, I was immediately brought to tears. As I said before, I’ve spoken or heard these words so often that they make almost no impact on me. But tonight, I thought of Mary Boleyn, and the fierce love and protection she feels as a young mother for her children, and really realized, for the first time, how hard, how painful, it would be to give your child up to death, willingly. And it’s not even in death for good or wonderful people, it’s for all sinners, all of whom have done wrong. As Paul says in Romans, “It might even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. But God has shown us how much he loves us – it was while we were still sinners that Christ Died for us!”
This is one of the things I’ve been trying to accomplish, this Lent. I wanted to come to Church and view it with new eyes, and examine everything with a wonder and awe that I haven’t ever really felt, having grown used to all the rituals and sayings in the church. I’ve had a few moments in Sunday school (when I’ve been able to actually concentrate on something other than all the weird emotions I have wrapped up in church), where I’ve really thought about the meaning behind all of the responses I’ve grown so used to saying. But I’ve never really thought in depth about what all of this means spiritually, and emotionally, until tonight. Until that one line, and “The Other Boleyn Girl”, brought it all home to me.