The Tuesday of Holy Week: Plotting

I have a discipline in Holy Week to attend or lead acts of worship every day from Palm Sunday to Easter Day. That can be knackering but it’s an amazing thing to do the whole of the drama properly. Between tomorrow and Easter evening I’ve seven services to lead but before that it’s been good the last two evenings to share in sung compline in the cathedral. Compline is a beautiful service - a lovely end to the day. I love this picture. The cathedral was very peaceful tonight. I’m not sure about covering over statues though. I’m not that high!! 

Psalm 31 was sung tonight. Jesus in this week long ago faced slander and people conspiring against him, plotting, people devising to take away his life. He was caught up in the middle of a conspiracy to get rid of him. He was caught up in the middle of a situation he couldn’t control: the anger and paranoia and violence of a crowd who decided he wasn’t what they wanted and worse, was blasphemous for claiming to be God. 

“I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.”

If you’ve ever been the victim of slander, people making up stories about you, people plotting behind your back, that’s horrendous. I once had a church where conversations would stop when I came round the corner! I knew they were talking about me. They used to write me nasty letters and deliver them to the manse in the dark so not to be seen! In the world today we must remember the innocent victim of mob devising. I always say to people fed up with me “don’t say it behind my back, say it to me.” I can’t abide whispers in corridors!! 

Jesus has a horrendous time as he gets nearer a cross. He struggles but like the Psalmist, whose poems and prayers he knew, he never kicks the notion of God out. God might be absent and seen in Kirkby but he is also ahead of us devising our good. There’s a huge word in the Psalm that follows the statement of reality and almost defeat. The word is “but” “ “But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God.My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.”

It’s important in Holy Week to create some space,  and ask what we really make of Jesus. Will we reject him, or will we claim him as king? He will be with us. Always. 

Sinners in derision crowned Him 

Mocking thus the Saviour’s claim;

Saints and angels crowd around Him,

 Own His title, praise His name:
Crown Him! Crown Him!

 Crown Him! Crown Him!
Spread abroad the Victor’s fame.