The Very Reverend Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Dean Emerita of the Seminary of the Southwest, will preach throughout Holy Week, offering a series of sermons entitled The Long Goodbye: Remembering Jesus’ Passion in the Gospel of John. 

In the annual observance of Holy Week, the church together rereads and relives the events of Jesus’ last days. We know the ending, but we read as if we don’t: each rereading brings new insights, comforts, questions, and challenges. We do what the gospel of John speaks of as his disciples “remembering.” From the beginning of the story of Jesus, John’s gospel is infused with the memory of his death. Six chapters are devoted to Jesus’ final teaching, and every detail in the story of his “hour” provokes contemplation and invites faith.

In her sermons, Dean Cynthia invites us to enter the extraordinary theological imagination of the Fourth Gospel as we probe, with the intellect, the heart, and the senses, the revelation of Christ’s glory and the life it brings.

Themed sermons will be given at the following services:

• ‘Behold your King is coming’ at the Procession and Eucharist for Palm Sunday, 29 March
• ‘Fragrance fills the house’ at Midday Eucharist and Compline, Monday 30 March 
• ‘They said it was thunder’ at Compline, Tuesday 31 April 
• ‘Night falls’ at Midday Eucharist and Compline, Wednesday 1 April
• ‘He loved them to the end’ at the Sung Eucharist with Washing of Feet, Thursday 2 April
• ‘The Temple of his Body’, ‘And this is Eternal Life’ and ‘Born at the Cross’ at the Three Hours’ Devotion with the Liturgy of Good Friday, 3 April
• ‘Why are you weeping?’ at The Vigil and First Eucharist of Easter, Saturday 4 April

Click HERE to find out more about Lent, Holy Week and Easter services at York Minster.

About the Very Reverend Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Dean Emerita:

The Very Reverend Cynthia Briggs Kittredge is Dean Emerita of the Seminary of the Southwest. She was appointed in 2013 after serving on the faculty as the Ernest J. Villavaso, Jr. Professor of New Testament and as Academic Dean.

Dean Kittredge serves as Vice Chair of The Church Pension Fund Board of Trustees and on the Board of the EcoTheo Collective. In the past she has served as a member of the Steering Committee for Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, as Chair of the Board of the Episcopal Evangelism Society, and President of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars.

She is a contributor to The New Oxford Annotated Bible and the Women’s Bible Commentary, and the author of Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John and Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in the Pauline Tradition. She co-edited The Bible in the Public Square: Reading the Signs of the Times and Walk in the Ways of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. She is the co-editor of the Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The New Testament. She also wrote  A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark.

Prior to joining the seminary faculty in 1999, Dean Kittredge taught at Harvard University and the College of the Holy Cross. She serves as assisting priest at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin, Texas and as Canon Theologian in the Diocese of Southwark.

She received her MDiv, ThM, and ThD from Harvard and a BA from Williams College.

She is married to Frank Kittredge, Jr. and they have three grown children and one grandchild.