by CCW | 4 April 2012 23:00
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.
What could be more graphic, more disturbing? We find ourselves in a digital world where the respect for life and thus blood as a common symbol of life is almost lost and gone and where blood is but a cheap and common commodity. You can sell your blood. You can sell your body and parts of your body. This vulgar exchange is but a vile parody of the infinite exchange that belongs to human redemption. We are, of course, as a church, utterly silent about such troubling forms of exchange, about the ways in which we turn ourselves and one another into mere commodities, about the way, too, in which God himself is cheapened into a commodity. The Passion of Christ is about the infinite exchange of the sacrifice of Christ for us. It costs. It cost “the heart-blood of the Son of God to redeem us,” as Jeremy Taylor notes.
The Letter to the Hebrews provides us with a necessary reflection on the radical meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. And yet, the real power of this day may be found in Luke’s account of the Passion, and in particular about the agony of Gethsemane. Nothing could be more poignant, more compelling, and more touching than that scene. It is about blood, yes, but only in a metaphorical and symbolical sense. It is really about the profound literary and theological sensibility of Luke. Dante is only too right in calling Luke the Evangelist, the scriba mansuetudinis Christi, the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. And yet what a disturbing gentleness! Luke gives us the most interior view of the heart of Christ. That alone breaks our hearts, I fear, and I hope! For only so can we be redeemed. “Make me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me,” as David puts it in Psalm 51, the great Penitential Psalm of Lent which is part of our Tenebrae service.
Luke alone gives us this fuller understanding of Mary’s fiat mihi. What Mary says at the Annunciation anticipates (there is that concept, yet again) what belongs to Christ’s Passion and to the logic and meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. It is captured in this intimate and intense scene in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Not my will, but thine be done” as Luke has it, capturing in a way both Mary’s response, “according to thy word,” and the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done.” Yet only Luke gives us this precious and wonderful insight into the soul of Christ. “His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Amazing and most troubling and, yet, how profoundly insightful. The heart of Christ is opened to view through the pen of Luke; it is a heart that beats passionately for our good and our salvation. It is a simile and yet one which captures something of the inner dynamic of the agony of Christ.
Sweat like blood, “great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” It is a powerful image that captures so much of the idea of Christ’s sacrifice for us, body broken and blood out-poured, to be sure, but all because of what is in his heart, broken open for us to read in Christ’s Passion. Out of that heart sorely charged and in agony comes a deep and compassionate understanding of the weakness of our humanity. The Psalms of the Passion, too, bring out the range of human emotions that are on display in the accounts of the Passion. They, too, teach us how to feel.
Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane finds his disciples sleeping. In Luke’s account, Jesus simply says, “Why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” We are then immediately thrown into the maelstrom of Judas’ betrayal by a kiss and Christ’s captivity and trial before the Sanhedrin. And then all the rest of the sad, sorry story of human violence, hatred, and betrayal unfolds. Yet Luke gives us this interior view of the human soul of Christ. The agony of Gethsemane is about the struggle in Christ’s soul. The image of “his sweat … as it were great drops of blood” portends the literal blood of his crucifixion; even more, the image makes visible the inner struggle of soul and body. Luke makes us feel something of what Christ feels. It is a kind of psychological portrait of the moment.
Luke’s portrayal of the struggle of Christ brings out the inner dynamic of the Passion. Christ does not simply suffer; he wills to suffer and to bear the burden of our sins. It is a suffering willingly embraced but it is not without a struggle, an agony which is the Greek word for struggle, and in a way, this heightens and increases the meaning of Mary’s acquiescence to God for hers is not without a question, “how shall this be seeing I know not a man.” It belongs to the deep truth of our humanity that we are actively engaged in the redemptive process.
It is “not my will, but thine be done” and it is always “according to thy word,” both the word spoken and the word or doctrine understood and felt in the very heart of the Son of God. “The light in dark.”
Fr. David Curry
Wednesday in Holy Week, 2012
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/04/04/sermon-for-wednesday-in-holy-week/
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