Tuesday, March 28, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Look up and live
Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses, “Make a saraph (image of a snake) and mount it on a pole. Whoever looks up at it after being bitten will live.”
Just to remind us all, we are midway through the fifth week of Lent. The sixth and final week is called Holy Week, the week before Easter Sunday: the week of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, called the “Triduum.” Long hours of church, with many readings from the entire bible. Baptisms on Saturday. If the weather allows, church begins on Saturday around a fire, then the congregation heads inside.
Some churches celebrate Tenebrae on Friday night. The word is Latin, meaning “darkness.” Candles are gradually diminished. Music is mournful. A loud noise (strepitus) bursts out in total darkness at the end of the service.
I attended Tenebrae several years ago in Austin at St. Thomas More Catholic Church. I went alone and sat alone. Normal conversation seemed out of place, so I introduced myself to no one. The lights dimmed, and the candles in front were gradually extinguished. Special music and songs in whispers. In the end only a few moments of silence.
And then, the strepitus! Loud, harsh echoes boomed across the room, so final, and sudden in the silence. Just a few seconds and then, it was gone. Gradually we stood. Several hundred people left the church in silence.
Traffic outside had not noticed. Streetlights and parking lot lights stayed bright. Some people began to talk. I left the larger group and found the labyrinth I knew had been built at the edge of the church grounds. There I sat on a bench and pondered the paths, seven cycles each representing a stage of life, with seven u-turns representing changes in course at least often in a normal life. I had walked the labyrinth earlier, in the sunshine. Now in this more-than-welcome darkness, I sat still and pondered, prayed.
Let this be written for the generation to come: The Lord looked down from his holy height, from heaven he beheld the earth and heard the groaning of the prisoners, ready to release those doomed to die.
But now the stone was sturdily in place and the tomb was shut, sealed. Inside Mary and Joseph (of Arimathea) had laid him in a manger, so to speak. They had wrapped Jesus’ body in swaddling clothes, so to speak.
When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own and say only what the Father taught me.
I’ve never been much of a street preacher, never worn a sandwich sign that screams REPENT. But Flannery O’Connor’s Hazel Motes (in her novel Wise Blood) fascinates me, how his inner workings dictate his outrageous outer life. On the University of Illinois quad I watched traveling preachers settle in for an afternoon, watched them draw in students with their stories and their sermons.
Like I said, I never wanted to be one of them. But as I think of Moses in the desert, and the snakes biting all of us, I do imagine crafting a bronze snake, setting it upon a stick, and holding it in the air.
The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.
LOOK UP! And be saved.
LOOK UP! Do not be afraid.
LOOK UP! Your healing is at hand.
(Numbers 21, Psalm 102, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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