Wednesday of Holy Week
1993 (Year A), 7 April / Holy Week
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
So far this week, in an attempt to approach the mystery of the passion I’ve used the notion of Christ the martyr. On its own it seems to me that that doesn’t move us very much further so I traced the martyrdom of three others Christians, put to death more recently and I think this is helps us to clarify some things. If we look, we can begin to see how these deaths at least are linked with the crucifixion of Jesus. One died the death of faith, another the death of a resistance leader and the last one who was identified with the oppressed of the world. All are the deaths Jesus died. But even that in the end may seem very distant to us. After all we don’t have to face a fearsome totalitarian state or any of the evils that Paul Schneider, Dietrich Bonheoffer or Archbishop Romero had to face. So tonight I want to try and bring some underlying themes of the passion even closer and in so doing link it directly to us.
The question of course, that we all ultimately have to answer is this; how can the torture and the death of a man 2000 years ago bring salvation to us and transform our present lives? The church has given many answers here’s one, ‘He carried out a wonderful transaction with us through our mutual sharing: he died from what was ours, we will live from what is his.’
Well I personally find that language very difficult to understand, much easier is this which I heard recently; it’s from a book about Peter Abelard. In it a man says this, ‘Christ suffered on Calvary, but that was only a piece of it, the piece we saw – in time. Like that!’ He pointed to a fallen tree beside them sawn through the middle, ‘That dark ring there, it goes up and down the length of the tree, but you only see it when it is cut across. We think of God as kind and forgiving, serene and at peace forever. We chose not to see the pain. We chose not to see the agony at the last. We think that stopped. The truth is that the agony and pain continue, just like the rings up the tree.’ What the speech says is that just as we envisage Christ being constantly kind and compassionate so he is constantly suffering.
I want to say one more thing. The crucial thing is this week we should be absolutely sincere. We shouldn’t pretend to have fine feelings we haven’t got. We shouldn’t pretend to be any different from what we are. It is no good pretending when we are with God. That’s ultimately why God’s company is so restful. We don’t have to go on trying to keep up appearances we just come as we are. And when we do come, when we confront each other, we realise that the passion isn’t just a far off event, it becomes a present reality in which we are the players not merely the spectators.
How can that be? Let’s get down to it. God is present in all things. If that is true then he is present in pain as well as joy. In the person of Jesus and specifically in his passion, God blesses us with the gift of recognising that even the most outrageous suffering and agony cannot separate us from his love. Even when everything in our experience tells us that there is an absence of God, when as Jesus some of us are called to sweat blood – the reality is that we are as close as ever we were in our most insightful peaceful times.
And so it follows, and seems increasingly clear to me, that those who sit round the bedside of one who is waiting to die, are in fact being invited to watch and pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, for Christ’s suffering continues in the one who is dying. The one who is dying may well be praying that if it is God’s will then, ‘Please God, let this cup pass from me’. The watchers may not want to be there, they may long for sleep, but they are watching and praying as someone they love is crucified by illness.
As someone cares for a disabled and increasingly ill sister, she too is watching and praying in the Garden. As a parent cares passionately for a child facing the possibility of blindness or a friend cares for another who has failed to get a job they wanted – both of them wait in the Garden, watching and praying whilst someone they love is crucified. As a daughter comes to terms with the death of her father and what that might do to her mother or another daughter sees that the relationship with her mother and family is not what she would wish. Both of them sit and wait in the Garden. Often none of these people may be able to pray – they are ‘asleep’. But there, at that precise moment is where they are called to be. Christ is sweating with them again and quite possibly preparing to die. That is where they are called to be.
Watchers and prayers are but one kind of participant in the drama. There is the other who asks for prayerful company, the one who sweats, and as a new job develops and hopes and expectations begin to crumble away and all they can do is hang on by their fingernails. Then you are sitting in the garden – maybe not this time being asked to watch and pray; maybe this time the one preparing to die.
And if some of those examples feel a bit close to home. If you can see yourselves, all well and good, for they are you. There are many many more, I could’ve chosen any number. Each of us has at one time or another, recently – even now – be going through our own Gethsemane, as we are called to watch and pray as a person we love, our friend, our child, our sister, prepares to be crucified. It’s not a single call, it will come again and again. And every time it happens the prayer is the same – for it is Christ – from the very depths of our being – ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me’.
The cup will not be removed. It may feel to us that God has deserted and that we are alone. Not even our closest friends can support us. Yet if we are able to reflect on these experiences we might just be able to see that what was or is present in them, is the history of Christ’s sufferings and as we remember that his sufferings become present.
The remembrance of the events of this most Holy Week enable us to see the passion of Christ continuing in us and indeed the whole of creation. AMEN