Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Wednesday in Holy Week

Rick Miller

The Collect

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.

Readings: Isaiah 50: 4-9a, Hebrews 12: 1-3, John. 13: 21-32 & Psalm 70

When Father Rob gently tasked me with the Daily Reflection for Wednesday of Holy Week (of all days), I was daunted, apprehensive. Then I commenced reading the day’s lectionary and found encouragement in ISAIAH 50: 4-9: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned”. What?! Me, Moi, not a Divinity School graduate?? Well, OK, maybe I might briefly put on this mantle of the learned…Very quickly the next passage from the day’s lectionary offered further reassurance from HEBREWS 12: 1-3: “Wherefore seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” Thank goodness, He is on my side..

Thus armored, I turned to the Gospel part of the lectionary from St. John which I (perhaps you, too) have always presumed to be The Penultimate Word of the day’s lectionary. What did I find but Jesus’ prophetic words to his beloved disciples: “Verily, verily, I say unto you THAT ONE OF YOU SHALL BETRAY ME”! Of course the immediately disconcerted disciples are looking at one another with a mixture of uncertainty and bafflement, wanting to be able to point a finger at the traitor in their ranks: “Lord, who is it?” Jesus, ever the teacher, addresses their anxiety by saying: “He it is, to whom I give a sop when I have dipped it”. Very interesting, because a “sop” in this context is like that delicious morsel of Thanksgiving stuffing one dips into savory turkey gravy-a special treat one cannot resist! What child of God does not live for that moment?!?! John’s Gospel continues: ”And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon”. Then the most surprising observation: “And after the sop, SATAN ENTERED INTO HIM (!!). Then said Jesus unto him (Judas), that thou doest, do quickly….and he then having received the sop went immediately out: AND IT WAS NIGHT.” So Judas Iscariot, having been entered by Satan, became a vessel for God’s Will-“Thy will be done”.

Now I cannot speak for you, gentle reader, but the Sunday school boy in me has always thought of Judas Iscariot as the quintessential villainous traitor. But John’s wording in this brief passage awakened my ears and eyes to a surprising possibility that Judas Iscariot of all Jesus’ beloved disciples had just been tasked with perhaps THE MOST DIFFICULT MISSION OF ALL: to betray his Lord and Master so that all that had been prophesied would be set into inexorable motion and the scriptures would be fulfilled. “Thy will be done”. Jesus’ crucifixion on a rude wooden cross betwixt criminals was so that all humankind, Judas Iscariot included (yes!), might be saved, their human sins forgiven. And let us not forget that one final sop: the vinegar-filled sponge on hyssop branch pressed into the suffering Jesus’ parched mouth after which he uttered his final words: “It is finished”, bowed his head, and gave up the ghost”.

All for us. And for Judas Iscariot, too. There is hope, my Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

Peace be with you,

Rick

Clinton Frederick Miller MD