We cannot be certain about the chronology of Holy Week. some call Wednesday, the day before Holy thursday, silent Wednesday or Spy Wednesday, where the final plans were laid to arrest Jesus.. Tomorrow we may receive Communion, first inaugurated when jesus was facing his death as surely as the Passover lambs just consumed.Jesus would see two more sunrises on this day almost 2000 years ago. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus laments over Jerusalem as part of a long set of teaching in the Temple area in the last days of his life. (apocalyptic images) In some ways, it was a Wednesday, maybe a typical day for the rabbi jesus.
I love this image of Jesus fussing over us like a mother hen. Jesus would die with real regrets. It also shows that Jesus died with regrets, just like we do.Jesus imagines what it would be like for Jerusalem to flick to him, but they do not.
In the Middle Ages, a spiritual practice was to rehearse facing death. How would we spend time if we knew death would be approaching? What could be a fitting prelude to the days that lie before, Holy Thursday, good Friday,Holy saturday? did Jesus’s soul feel like we do when we sense that tornado weather is present in the juiced weather? How do we face the terrors of death, given the promise of Easter? I wonder if he was trying to soak up every bit of experience that Wednesday, or maybe that is how Jesus lived all of the time? Was he struggling to find the words to say goodbye, even to his own life?
After the triumph of Palm Sunday, it could have been a fairly ordinary day for Jesus.Most of our lives lie between the twin towers of Palm sunday spectacle and Good Friday suffering.
Shelter of the wings is a maternal image and made explicit here, see Ps. 17 It is a sweet image, as the mother hen warms the chicks and hides them and chases away some of the other birds, but is quite ineffectual against dangerous predators. Jesus would be dead on the Sabbath of his people, did he take a Sabbath day as death approached? Did he consider those he had raised from the dead? Did he think about how his disciples would try to manage without him?
Instead very soon Jesus will cry out in abandonment in quoting Ps. 22 my God, my God why have you forsaken me. L A prayer of lament was one of the last words on the lips of jesus. God is open to our communication, including our deepest cries. Praise is not the only music in our lives, or in church.the blues fit most of life better.Jerusalem, Jerusalem.Could that lament be heard in heaven now at the way we conduct our lives? does jesus regret the cross at what we have done with his name?
this is another Wednesday in Holy Week.God sanctifies every single day in our lives.God is with us in the palm sunday peak days and the Holy week sufferings and all the Wednesdays in between.for that matter, I suppose we can see every moment oscillating between triumph and tragedy, every moment tied to the past and expectant of the future.Still, I would ask that we spend some time in prayer and if possible church observance these special days before Easter.We fritter away or ur precious forty days of lenten preparation in a haze of living life as usual. Now for the rest of the week, let us dive into the deep end of the pool and experience the capacious boundless love of God.
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