Tuesday in Holy Week

 Tuesday in Holy Week
30 March 2021

O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Isaiah 49.1-7; Psalm 71.1-14; 1 Corinthians 1.18-31; Mark 11.15-19

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Perhaps it is where we are in week 54 of Coronatide, but today’s readings from Isaiah and the gospel today speak to me of weariness. 

The prophet sighs to God:

But I said, ‘I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the Lord,
and my reward with my God.’

And Jesus’ wrath at the temple as he overturns the tables of the money-changers has to have come from a place of utter frustration and weariness that, after all the time he had been teaching, these injustices were still happening. 

We know too well how frustrated the prophets and sometimes Jesus could get. 

Isaiah speaks to his people during their exile in Babylon or Egypt or remaining as the poorest of the poor in their own land. This long period of alienation, brought on by a sense of betrayal of their God, who had established a covenant with David that was supposed to go on for ever, was bitter. Yet they could work and travel, as long as they were obedient to Babylon, so one might argue that it was not a period of extreme suffering. Nonetheless, the people did seek for a meaning of their faith. 

Toward the end of the exile, Isaiah appears with words of compassion: Comfort, comfort, you my people. The prophet, the Servant will restore the remnant of the people, those who have survived and those who have been faithful to Israel.

Yet, this particular moment, the prophet expresses an understood weariness.

Likewise with Jesus.

Prior to his riding into Jerusalem on a colt (as per the gospel of Mark) and overturning the tables in the temple, Jesus has cursed a fig tree that it bear no fruit. To imagine Jesus condemning a living thing to suffer seems bizarre and against what we would think of Jesus’ teachings. Likewise, his furor at the money changers  in the temple seems out of character. Some suggest that he is overturning the old in order to create space for the new. Certainly he was reacting to the injustice of the money system that prevented people from worshipping if they did not have money to change in order to purchase birds and animals for sacrifice. 

In this discussion, I am more interested in Jesus’ state of mind as portrayed in the gospel than the why—that is for another meditation. Jesus seems exceedingly cranky and weary of it all.

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And aren’t we also weary as a world right now? 

The soul is weary.

Weary of rising numbers of cases of COVID-19.
Weary of a possible fourth surge.
Weary of the uncertainty that still faces us.
Weary of having to wear a mask.
Weary of having to stay hunkered down.
Weary of…
The soul is weary.

On a personal front I am 

Weary (and angry to the point of wanting to overturn tables of injustice the way Jesus did at the temple) of the forthcoming legislative bills that will restrict the freedom of people to vote, and bills that want to prevent trans people from being fully themselves, and all the assaults on the common good. 

Like the people of Israel grousing and complaining about their time in the desert, we are weary of so much.

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In moments of despair, I always turn to the psalms because I know they express the breadth of emotions. The psalmist laments, despairs, but usually manages to work themself to a place of serene hope in God. Even Psalm 22, which in the old lectionary we read on Palm Sunday and still do at the end of the Maundy Thursday liturgy during the stripping of the altar and church and, again on Good Friday, ends on a hopeful note.

Psalm 71 today contains that same impulse: 

1 In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; *
let me never be ashamed.
2 In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free; *
incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; *
you are my crag and my stronghold.

These three verses echo Psalm 31, which is appointed in Compline and is a psalm of confidence. Whether you pray these three verses of the first three verses of Psalm 31, I find they always provide a gentle way to close out the day.

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On this Tuesday in Holy Week, perhaps your heart calls you to write a psalm of lament. 

Perhaps it calls you to read Psalm 71 or 31.

Perhaps it calls you to pray Compline—at 8.00 PM tonight, one can join the Green Mountain Abbey for Compline. (1)

Perhaps it calls you to listen to Simon and Garfunkels’ song, now 50 years old, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ that holds its roots in gospel song. (2)

Or perhaps your heart calls you to listen to the Taizé Chant, Nada te turbe. (3)

As the late Bishop Barbara Clementine Harris often said, ‘We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.’ We are called to be people of hope, not optimism, but a radical, life-giving hope.

Wherever your heart leads you tonight, confide in God’s ever-present love and the knowledge that all shall be well.


NOTES
1 https://diovermont.org/2021/03/03/online-prayer-with-bishop-shannon/
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrcwRt6J32o
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go1-BoDD7CI