April 8, 2009
(Wednesday in Holy Week)
Spy Wednesday
By
The Very Rev. Terry White,
Dean
Isaiah 50:4-9a - Hebrews 12:1-3 - John 13:21-32 - Psalm 70
(From
The Lectionary Page)
“And it was night.”
The sentence in today’s reading seems to be saying so much more than simply indicating that the sun had set and a new liturgical day had begun. Given the context - that Jesus said the one who receives this bread from me is my betrayer, and that Judas was then sent out to do what he was going to do quickly — the reader is left with a sense of profound foreboding: And it was night.
Traditionally Wednesday in Holy Week is known as Spy Wednesday. Judas, the betrayer, is despised for leading the authorities to Jesus. Satan, the Deceiver, entered Judas, John writes. Years earlier, as Jesus fought-off the third temptation in the wilderness, Satan left him until a more opportune time. That moment arrives on the night before Jesus died for us.
We have all known such nightfall, dark nights of the soul, dark times when we forsake all that our baptism means, all that Jesus taught us, all that our lips have promised: Lord, unlike Judas, and Peter, I will never deny you.
But the night does not have the final word. It is indeed darkest before the dawn, and in the midst of the darkness of death, on the Third Day, the grave is defeated, and hell is vanquished, and we are forgiven our trespasses, our denials, those things we have done and left undone.
This Holy Week is necessary for us, in all its complexity of emotions, so that we might claim our need of God, and drink deeply from the wellspring of God’s unending grace and love. Into the Garden with Christ we all must go, just as he goes with us in our darkness. “And it was night.”
Hymn 171 (Listen to the hymn here)
Let us pray. Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
