We are just over two weeks into the lockdown to keep us and others safe from this virus. It feels an eternity since the Prime Minister told us all to stay home apart from getting food and medicine, going to work if we cannot work from home and one piece of exercise a day. Someone I spoke to this morning on Zoom in a meeting said she has friends in Serbia who told her the other day they were “slowly going mad.”
Holy Week if we do it properly can feel equally long and draining. Ministers are told “Christmas must be your busy time” when actually the most knackering time is doing this week well. We have reached Wednesday. Well done if you’ve stuck with me this far!
The passage today for our pondering is John 13: 21 - 30. We are at the last supper though John doesn’t mention what we now call communion, we will get to that tomorrow. Our focus today is betrayal. Jesus says to the disciples “one of you will betray me” - imagine all but one of them being really shocked. Jesus and Judas knew what was about to happen.
Peter wants to know who’s it going to be. He’s worried it’s him. Jesus says “ it is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” He gives it to Judas. And John tells us at that moment Satan entered him. Jesus says “do what you are going to do quickly.” The other disciples thought as he was the treasurer, Jesus was asking him to go out and get some more food, or make a donation from the funds to the poor. They haven’t a clue what’s going on!
I could write loads here about betrayal, how it hurts when someone you trust goes behind your back to bring you down but I’m led to think about a verse we easily skim past.
”Having received the piece of bread, [Judas] then went out immediately. And it was night” (verse 30)
“And it was night.”
The Bible is full of light shining in the darkness. Jesus himself says he is the light of the world. He calls us to let our light shine so people may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven. The prologue to John’s Gospel confidently says “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not put it out.”
But now the same Gospel writer writes of darkness and Satan and something sinister and frightening. In four words at the end of the supper like the duff duff moment at the end of an Eastenders episode, the tension and drama heightens: “And it was night.”
A service I often like to offer when I’m doing Holy Week is Tenebrae: literally a service of darkness or shadows. A friend in West Sussex reminded me in a Facebook comment the other day of the ones we did in the little chapel in Ashington, where I had a monthly reflective time for folk.
The idea of a Tenebrae service is you have candles or nightlights lit and readings are read from the passion story focussing on how Jesus was forsaken by his friends. After each reading, a candle is extinguished and this is repeated over and over until there is complete darkness in the room. You are then meant to leave in silence when you are ready. Some people spoil it because they can’t just go home and they can’t not chat. We had a minister in Harpenden when we did this service in the church at Batford who used to sternly say in his explanation of what was about to happen, “you will not talk until you are in your car!” You were meant in his view to walk to the car park, which was some distance, in silence. If you do Tenebrae right, it is a moving experience.
“And it was night.”
What is happening here?
Judas moves from light into darkness; from the presence and guidance of the Light of the World, to be possessed by and guided by Satan, known as the prince of darkness. It was night; and John the Gospel writer could hardly have written these words without remembering those he had written a short time before: “If a man walk in the night, he stumbles, because there is no light in him.” Was Judas weak, selfish, just easily manipulated seeing he might get something out of a deal with the authorities if he could get Jesus handed over to them? Or was he evil? I suggest selfish and weak and seeing a deal rather than evil although this story needs the extremes in it to make its point. Judas’ life ends in tragedy when he realises what he has done.
Jesus moves from light into darkness. He is a victim of human power and threat and is cast out into the night. The mood and time is dark. There is uncertainty. John’s words in the Prologue for him are a reality. “This is the verdict: light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
What is the night like?
Positively it is a time of stillness, inviting us to rest, but going out in it with no light at all is dangerous and destabilising. I remember being at a licensing of a new rector in Winchelsea in my last appointment. Winchelsea has no street lights. We had all parked our cars in the light. We left the buffet in the school after the service in the pitch black. We couldn’t find our cars. I remember the Bishop of Chichester and his little man who carries his bag panicking ahead of me they might not ever get out of the town!
But psychologically and spiritually it is much worse than not being able to find your car. The night is dark. I think in Holy Week there is a lesson here that there are parts of life that are night. There is a darkness in the world. There are people who are evil. There are times we are led into uncertainty and we long for the day to come and it doesn’t. .
I think we have to remember that part of the Holy Week isn’t pretty and we mustn’t on Wednesday rush to Sunday. Remember when Jesus died darkness covered the whole land. So I suggest sometime tonight, when it is dark, you might like to do two things.
1. Have a Tenebrae in your home. Get eight night lights, light them, and put them round a central larger lit candle. The night lights represent the human response to Jesus and the larger candle Jesus.
Read the passion narrative in eight parts. After each part say “and it was night” and blow out a night light.
Here are the eight parts:
1. Matthew 26: 14 - 16
2. Matthew 26: 36 - 46
3. Matthew 26: 47 - 56
4. Matthew 26: 69 - 75
5. Matthew 27: 15 - 23
6. Matthew 27: 24 - 31
7. Matthew 27: 32 - 37
8. Matthew 27: 38 - 50
Then after the eighth night light has been extinguished play the Taize chant:
Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray. The You Tube link is here:
Then read John 1: 1 - 5 and 9 - 11 and blow out the central candle.
Then try and sit in absolute darkness and in silence for half an hour. Or as long as you can!
Then pray this prayer:
May Jesus Christ
who for our sakes became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross,
keep us and strengthen us.
who for our sakes became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross,
keep us and strengthen us.
2. If Tenebrae is not your thing, read this story and a verse of a hymn meditatively.
In 1833, John Henry Newman was dying. Struck down with a terrible fever and bad homesickness while travelling in the Mediterranean, he was desperate to come home. His ship home heading for Marseille when he was travelling back home became stranded in the straits of Bonifacio. It was there, while he felt most depressed that he wrote the poem “Lead kindly light.”
We don’t sing it much now, but it is an honest reaching out for divine help in the night: perhaps if you are in a hard night experience make this your prayer today:
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead thou me on.
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.
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