Holy Tuesday 3rd AprilTenebrae    

Fr David Cherry

Text : Hebrews 12 : 2

Words from the epistle to the Hebrews:
Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  
Hebrews 12 : 2

We hold on to him and in doing so find that we are being held by him.

The practice of the Christian faith is an  habitual and repetitive ‘not-forgetting’: remembrance. In Greek ‘anamnesis’; a recalling of the life, the ministry, the undergoing at the hands of others in his passion; the death and resurrection of the Lord through the liturgical cycle of the Christian Year in seasons and feasts.

“Do this in remembrance of me” says Jesus at the Last Supper.  Remember who I am to you: One who is for you, utterly faithful to you.  

The Passover meal of the Jews is such a remembrance.  They recall what happened to them then so that they may be present to it and undergo it now.

Here we come to meditate - as we do in that extended 3 day dramatic meditation which begins on Maundy Thursday - to remember the most significant Mystery : the death and resurrection of Jesus: His passing over from death to life to find something new made known to us – a truth hidden since the foundation of the world and now revealed in the Son of God.

The opposite of this anamnesis, this remembrance, our  ‘not-forgetting’, is amnesis : amnesia.  

As we make remembrance of these things, looking to Jesus, tonight we are perhaps refusing the cultural amnesia of forgetting; turning away from a culture where everything must be happy but ultimately unreal; a culture of forgetting; of denial of our own suffering and the pain of the others, the shipwreck of our world through human sin; a culture where life can only be conceived in success and plaudits; as victory; a culture which is ultimately a mirage of vanities, incapable of sustaining a real life.

Here we make ourselves present to a deeper mystery : to the God who in Christ is to be found, stripped of all dignity, at the heart of our humanity and at the heart of all suffering.

Throughout this week we are looking to Jesus in his passion – that passive undergoing at the hands of others, that powerless failure of being 'done unto' which reveals his glory, the glory of one who is stripped of all dignity and whose stripping at human hands reveals his divinity.

As we look to him, the pioneer of our faith, as we follow each step – Maundy Thursday at the Last Supper, Good Friday at the cross, Holy Saturday into the depths of the earth, to hell itself, to Easter morn, found in a garden…as we look to him, what is it we will find of ourselves?

God, in Christ has chosen to enter into the depths of how and what we are like, to identify with us, inviting us to see how we in our own depths are already identified with him – like him.  

We hold on to him and in doing so find that we are being held by him; we look at him and find ourselves beheld with love from the cross; we find ourselves confused and he, our God, is utterly steadfast, simply there at the centre of the turbulence, simply and utterly present like a rock.

Jung spoke of the shadow – those parts of us which are hidden, often kept hidden, but are not all to do with what is wrong and negative, but also those parts of ourselves which are talented, the unrealised potential, the capacity for believing and for holding on, the capacity to own our true strengths which paradoxically includes a strength to own our true weakness, the gnawing need, the living in want of something more that only God can meet. A kind of truth, a faith in a God where we find the ability to own even our faults – to admit, to confess who we are.

We are invited to discover in the shadows of betrayal and desertion; the shadow of  where we put God on trial; the shadow of denial; of Rejection and even the killing of God; to find One who is constant; constant in love; a light that our worst nightmares and darkness cannot overcome.  

So let us run with perseverance this race that is set before us: watching, waiting, "looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Amen