Wednesday of Holy Week, April 16, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Preparing
Morning after morning
he opens my ear that I may hear;
And I have not rebelled,
have not turned back.
This day, this great sad day on the way to Jesus’ cross, when the disciples were preparing the place for their Passover feast with Jesus, when Jesus called Judas out, when Judas found a ready taker for his betrayal and received 30 silver pieces for his kiss. Not worth a lot, but still … it was the value of a slave. Today of course, in the hands of relic authenticators, those coins would be priceless.
The Triduum begins tomorrow with Maundy Thursday’s communion service, after which churches that observe the Church Calendar remove all elements of Christ’s presence from their sanctuaries. The cross is covered in black and consecrated bread and wine are consumed. Lent is over. Now comes the darkest day of all, the Friday when Jesus is killed.
The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak a word to the weary, a word that will rouse them.
I remember a Thursday when Margaret and I attended a service in Urbana officiated by my brother-in-law. After the service we helped him finish off the bread and wine, far too much for him by himself. I felt something of what the disciples might have felt at their own Passover feast with Jesus.
This year I’m searching out local congregation schedules to find ways to be involved with others on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. But what about Wednesday? What I do today will be up to me. For the last few weeks I’ve fasted on Wednesday from breakfast to breakfast. I’ll do that again today.
A few years ago I shaped this week’s devotions into imagined first person accounts of several main characters: Jesus, Peter, Judas, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Pilate, Simon of Cyrene. Once I attended a Tenebrae service at an Austin church and then walked the labyrinth on their grounds, mostly in the dark. When I reached the center of the labyrinth, I sat still in the center for awhile.
Always I feel a great desire for the remembrance to last. I imagine many of us know all about that. My friend Don’s favorite song is “Were you There?” When they crucified my Lord? Oh, oh, oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble … this link takes you to a longer meditative version of the song that walks us through the stations of the cross.
Where else would I rather be?
Kahlil Gibran wrote of what he saw looking out from his own deep cave, searching for truth wherever he looked. In “The Crucified,” he catches my feeling of lonely grief, not just for Jesus but for myself, for my own incomplete attention to what matters more than anything:
On this one day of each year the philosophers leave their dark caves, and the thinkers their cold cells, and poets their imaginary arbors, and stand reverently upon that silent mountain, listening to the voice of a young man saying to his killers, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But then dark silence chokes the voices of the light, and the philosophers and the thinkers and the poets return to their narrow crevices and shroud their souls with meaningless pages of parchment.
Here on Wednesday, Holy Week half spent, I cherish moments of presence that come unbidden, sometimes when I least expect them. Holy Spirit, empty me of myself and fill me with Wednesday waiting, hearing footsteps of sandaled men and women hurrying toward the supper they have planned with their Master, joining in as best I can, for howsoever long I can, trusting my Lord and God with all that is to come.
The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
He is near who upholds my right.
(Isaiah 50, Psalm 69, Matthew 26)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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