Sermon for Wednesday in Holy Week
“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Tenebrae, meaning shadows or darkness, is the great Psalm Office that anticipates the Triduum Sacrum of Holy Week, the three great holy days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday which culminate in the mystery of Easter, the mystery of the Resurrection. The theme of anticipation is intriguing and not a little confusing, perhaps, though it has to do precisely with the deeper meaning of the form of our participation in Christ’s passion. The drama of salvation is more than a narrative tale. The Passion is about the way God addresses the radical disorder of our humanity; darkness and shadows indeed, and yet bearing a wondrous grace. “Thou’ hast light in dark” and “immensity cloistered in thy dear womb” as the poet, John Donne says about Mary in his poem, entitled Annunciation, and about her place in the drama of human redemption. A wondrous grace indeed.
And, perhaps, nowhere is that idea of “light in dark” seen more compellingly and yet more gently than in Luke’s account of the Passion which we begin to read on the Wednesday in Holy Week. That we read it along with one of the most theologically challenging and exciting passages from The Letter to the Hebrews only heightens the sense of Mary’s word, “be it unto me according to thy word.” The conjunction between Luke and Hebrews through the critical matrix of Mary’s response is remarkable and, I think, most compelling. By word I mean something more than just what is spoken or written; it is also about understanding and meaning; in short, something theological, something that pertains to the logos of God.
“Christ is the Mediator of the new covenant” the Letter to the Hebrews states, a new covenant initiated “by means of death,” a new covenant that is quite literally and metaphorically about blood, a word which appears seven times in the epistle reading. The point is dramatically captured in the arresting phrase, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Human redemption is about the divine forgiveness bestowed upon a wayward and foolish humanity steeped in violence and folly and wickedness. But there is a cost. There is blood.
