Sermon for Monday in Holy Week
“One thing is needful”
Jesus’ word to Martha about Mary speaks to our reality throughout Holy Week and Easter. It is about attending to the one thing needful. What is that? It is about “sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his word”. In the context of Holy Week it means seeing and hearing the accounts of the Passion and the other Scripture readings that help illumine the meaning of the Passion. Only by sitting and listening, seeing and hearing can we begin to learn things about ourselves and about the high and holy things of God.
It seems to me quite significant that at Morning and Evening Prayer throughout Holy Week, the second lessons are taken from the Gospel according to St. John and largely from what is known as the ‘farewell discourses’ of Jesus where he is explaining to them his going from them, at once into his passion and death but also into his resurrection and ascension, in other words into the hands of the Father, into the community of the Trinity. “I go to prepare a place for you”, Jesus says. What is that place? He is, he says, “the way, the truth and the life” and that is found in his love for the Father. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me.” Of course, that may not be easy to grasp so Jesus adds “or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.” Words and deeds that open us out to truth and life. These rich and paradoxical lessons reveal the dynamic of revelation and redemption.
The Resurrection forces into view a deeper reflection and understanding about the events of the Passion. In his going from them in this twofold sense, we are forced to remember and learn more deeply the meaning of our life with God. “In that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.” “The Holy Spirit”, he says, “whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
This is the condition of true peace. The peace that Christ brings is not as the world gives. It has entirely to do with his “going to the Father” which is the deeper meaning of the Passion without which the Resurrection makes no sense even as the Resurrection is essential for understanding the Passion.
