Tuesday in Holy Week

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer, via Zoom
Tuesday in Holy Week, April 7, 2020

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“God, save me from this hour.” No doubt all of us have prayed this prayer many times in our lives. God save me from the evils of this world. God save me from disease or hardship. God save me from myself. God save me from the seemingly insurmountable challenge in front of me. No doubt many of us would join in Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, the prayer to let this cup pass from me. To avoid the challenge, to avoid the pain and suffering.

Of course, we would. Especially in the midst of pain and suffering, we desire nothing more than healing and wholeness. We desire a different way forward. And sometimes that is granted. Sometimes, we do indeed get a reprieve and a different path opens up. But most of the time we, like Jesus, have to follow the path that is set before us.

Now, whenever I talk about the particular challenges of pain and suffering, I think it is very important to draw a distinction between the suffering that is endemic to the human experience versus the suffering that is the result of injustice. When we encounter suffering that is the result of injustice, that is suffering we, as followers of Jesus, are called to work against. We are called to be agents of change and transformation. We are not called to merely “accept” that suffering as a part of life.

The suffering that we do have to accept is that which is endemic. It is the suffering that is the result of having mortal bodies, illness, injury, disease, and death are a given part of our life. But even though we can expect them, I don’t think any of us expected them on the scale which we are currently facing. There is a different sort of grief that comes with the enormity of this experience. Our grief is multi-layered. We are dealing with the grief of the numerous changes and losses in our own individual lives. We are also dealing with a societal and global grief as we watch the news.

So, what do we do with this reality, what insight does this Holy Week and today’s Scriptures in particular, have to offer us? Note what Jesus says after his prayer. He asks God to be glorified. He calls his followers to be the children of the light. I think there is a profound invitation for us in that. It invites us to be looking for light, looking for hope, looking for ways in which God’s glory can be made manifest even in the midst of suffering that is on an overwhelming scale.

Sometimes the journey through Holy Week is a largely intellectual one. We hear the stories, and we can imagine playing different parts in them. We can choose to enter the story as lightly or as deeply as we want. Other times, like our present circumstances, we experience the fullness of Holy Week in our own lives. The story of Jesus’ betrayal, death, suffering and crucifixion has deep meaning, not because we have chosen to enter into it as an intellectual exercise. The story of this week has meaning because the Passion Narrative resonates on a visceral level with our own experience. I imagine that is true for many of us this week.

Given that many of us may feel as though we are living out the realities of Holy Week in a profound way that makes it different from other years (and not just because we are doing our worship online), it is all the more important for us to remember that this week, that the crucifixion itself, that the worst humanity can do to each other, is not the end of the story. Death, suffering and pain never have the last word in the Christian story or in our own lives. As our Collect for today so beautifully says, “O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life.” A means of life. Indeed. Life, love, hope, and possibility are what follow from the Cross. Even out of the darkest moments, even out of the moments where it seems that all is lost, know that we are never lost. We are never separated from God’s love. God is our hope, and we can trust in that amazing truth. Today and everyday. AMEN.