Tuesday • 3/30/2021
Holy Week 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 6; Psalm 12; Jeremiah 15:10–21; Philippians 3:15–21; John 12:20–26

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Jeremiah prefigures our Savior. There are subtle ways in which the prophet Jeremiah prefigures the sufferings of our Savior. It was clear from the start of Jeremiah’s ministry that he would face resistance and rejection. As a youth, he had been told by Yahweh: “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoiInt you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). Jeremiah would be, like Dante, “a party of one,” or like Lincoln, “a majority of one.” He would “sit alone” in his prophecies against the majority opinion of his day (Jeremiah 15:17). And, like Jesus, he would come to his own people, only to be treated like a stranger (compare John 1:10–11).

Nonetheless, Jeremiah, like Jesus, would so internalize God’s words that they, and they alone, would be sustenance and joy to him: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts” (Jeremiah 15:16). In this, Jeremiah was like Jesus, who said his food was to do his Father’s will (John 4:34), and who also said we were made to live not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). 

A sinner just like the rest of the people to whom he prophesies, Jeremiah must go into exile with them. Even there, God will deliver him from his opponents, and God’s Word will sustain him as he continues his lonely mission of proclaiming truth in the face of error (Jeremiah 15:19–21; 43–44). Simultaneously sinner and saint, alone and in solidarity with fellow sinners, Jeremiah foreshadows a greater prophet. Jesus, that greater prophet, would be like us in every way, save sin. Jesus would be with us as sin-bearer, and at the same time he would be alone in resisting sin’s lure to the end.  

John—Jesus suffers alone, but not alone. While Jesus suffers alone, like “a grain of wheat that falls into the ground,” he does so in order that he will not be merely “a single grain.” For by his death, Jesus “bears much fruit” (John 12:24). It is, after all, the inquiry of “some Greeks” that has prompted Jesus to exclaim at last: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23—compare with the “not yets” of John 2:4; 7:6,8,30). When he is lifted up on the cross, he will say, in tomorrow’s passage in John, “I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). 

Life can be messy. We can feel alone at work. We can feel alone with our sins. We can feel alone, without family. We can feel alone, without friends. It can feel like a kind of dying. Jesus, too, experienced aloneness, pain, and suffering on the cross. He understands anguish. We can thus feel God himself accompanying us in our aloneness, our sense of dying. And in that sharing we can see to the other side, to the gift of a resurrection-life of abundance and companionship. 

Philippians—independent, yet belonging. There is a splendor to Paul’s letter to the Philippians (most of whom are, like those who approach Jesus in John 12, Gentiles). In this letter, Paul unpacks what it is to be independent of anybody else’s assessment of personal worth, and yet at the same time what it is to be part of a great new “commonwealth” or “citizenship” (Philippians 3:29—the Greek is politeuma). 

One thing to keep in mind during Holy Week is that the loneliness of Good Friday’s cross yields to the fellowship of Easter Sunday. Jesus, indeed, as the old hymn puts it, “walked this lonesome valley, he had to walk it by himself.” But with his rising, he brings, not only us, but a great company of others, with him. Once dead, we are made alive: our resurrection begins because of his resurrection. Once feeling friendless, we have the dearest and best of friends: God himself, in the person of Jesus. Once lost and alone, we have a destination and companions on the journey: the Body of Christ.   

Collect for Tuesday in Holy Week. 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.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

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