by CCW | 23 March 2016 06:00
Wednesday in Holy Week marks the beginning of the reading of the Passion according to St. Luke. Once again, the story of Jesus’s encounter with Martha and Mary in Bethany, a story which Luke alone tells, contributes to our understanding of his account of the Passion. So too, do the readings at the Offices on this day, readings from Numbers[1] and Leviticus[2] and, of course, from John’s[3] Gospel[4].
The lesson from Numbers is about the bronze serpent raised up by Moses at God’s command. The people of Israel, fractious and discontent in the wilderness, complain against God and Moses for what God has provided them. As punishment for their kevetching, they were afflicted with fiery serpents. They repent in a kind of way and ask Moses to intercede for them to God to save them from this death and affliction. The cure lies in looking upon their sin made objective before them in the form of the bronze serpent.
Serpents are an intriguing biblical image that takes us back to the story of the Fall, to the beguiling serpent of human reason turned against itself. “Did not God say?”, the serpent is imaged as asking, insinuating a half-truth for what we already know to be the whole truth even if we do know that we know. That ambiguity has troubled generations of generations of thinkers throughout all ages. We only come to know the truth as truth through our separation from it. The serpent is the image of our human reason as turned against itself and in so doing becoming aware, becoming self-conscious. It comes with a cost, of course. Paradise is lost and the serpent becomes, as John Donne puts it, “the creeping serpent” that crawls upon its belly in the dust. So too does our reason unless we learn to look up. Here in Numbers we see the nature of redemption at work through the transformation of images. The serpent is raised up so that whoever looks upon it is healed. John in his Gospel has Christ identify himself with this image directly. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”.
The passage from Numbers helps us to contemplate the deeper meaning of human sin in the struggle of Christ. There is always humanly speaking the struggle for wisdom and truth and the struggle to act out of what we know in whatever way. The agony in Gethsemane shows us that very real struggle. Christ who will be lifted up on the cross shows us the inward struggle to do the will of the Father. “Father, if it be possible…”.
The reading from Leviticus reveals what is for us, I suspect, the disturbing idea of the scapegoat, the one upon whom the transgressions of others are heaped and who is sent into the wilderness; thus are sins taken away. This connects to the theology of redemption in the lesson from Hebrews about blood and sacrifice “for without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”, no being at one with God. Atonement is about our being one with God. The whole idea implies our separation from God and the need for something to make us right. The Letter to the Hebrews takes the Old Testament images of blood sacrifices for sin and sees how God in Christ makes atonement for us and in what is proper to us, our humanity. It changes everything. Christ enters into heaven itself – such is the Ascension – which brings to completion all that belongs to the Passion and the Resurrection. “Now, once for all, at the end of time, he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
The greater wilderness out of which comes the greater provision is the wilderness of human sin. The sixteenth chapter of John’s Gospel provides with the theology that underlies this image of Christ as the one who bears our sins and who is sent into the wilderness. Jesus tells the disciples that it is good for us that he is going from us – a going which is about the crucifixion and the ascension. His going from them is the condition of his sending (and the Father too) the Holy Spirit. As John explains, through the Holy Spirit we will come to understand more fully what we do not fully understand in the moment, even in the experience of the crucifixion.
There is a necessary aspect of reflection upon what happens that reveals the real intention of our actions, in this case, the actions in which we are all complicit, the actions of betraying and crucifying Christ. In Christ’s going from us into death and into the hands of the Father, the world will be reproved or convinced about “sin and righteousness and judgement”. These are three powerful lessons that go to the issue of how we learn about sin and love. The lesson about sin, Jesus says in John’s gospel, has to do with our unbelief; righteousness, he says, “because I go to the Father”, meaning that righteousness or justice is properly found in the divine relations of the Trinity, the greater justice of God which underlies all and any form of justice and power; and finally, judgement, “because the prince of this world is judged”. There is a contrast and a conflict between heaven and earth, between the divine will and the human will which is only overcome in and through the sacrifice of Christ. “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” and in those motions lies the nature of redemption. “In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Redemption is about us and the world being returned to God by God through the Passion of Christ.
Fr. David Curry
Meditation
Wednesday in Holy Week, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/03/23/meditation-on-the-office-readings-for-wednesday-in-holy-week/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.