Wednesday in Holy Week: Faith, Trust and Paradox

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 70

Hebrews 12:1-3

John 13:21-32

Lord God,

whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped

and his face to be spit upon:

Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time,

confident of the glory that shall be revealed;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen.

Scratched into the walls of a cellar in Cologne in Germany where Jews were hid from the Nazis are these words: “I believe in the sun,
even when it is not shining.
 I believe in love,
even when I don't feel it.
 I believe in God,
even when there is silence.”  Such a statement, such an assertion strikes at the heart of the mystery inherent in paradox, and through it we discover that the spirituality of paradox is not unique to Christianity, and that somehow it has something profound to do with faith and hope.  One aspect of the paradoxical, of counter-intuitive thinking resolves itself in our being able to look beyond the immediately rational or the immediately perceivable.  It resolves itself in a real sense of trust, the kind of trust expressed in today’s collect in which we ask God for grace to bear the inadvertant trials of life patiently, confident that there is a glory not yet fully discerned, not yet fully manifested. 

Unlike the collects for the Sundays in Lent, none of the collects for the Monday,  Tuesday or Wednesday in Holy Week find their origin in ancient sources.  This one dates from sometime in the 19^th century when it was unsuccessfully considered for inclusion in the 1892 revision of our Prayer Book.  It was included in the 1928 revision as the collect for Tuesday in Holy Week and moved to its present place in at the last revision; most probably because its words tie in with the day’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews.  These words from Hebrews were written during the period when it was becoming increasingly obvious that Christ’s return was not as imminent as expected, and in which Christians were suffering both emotionally and physically at the hands of their detractors.  The unknown writer of the letter encourages his fellow Christians to perservere and follow Christ’s faithful example.  Now, we sometimes think of faith as having to do with knowing something to be true.  Rather, Christian faith is better expressed in a word like “trust”; trust that even through suffering and trials God has a purpose for us beyond them, and that their existence and our experiencing of them in no way diminishes God’s sovereignty, God’s goodness, neither God’s plans.  The wickedness of others or of circumstances should not undermine our faith, our trust in God and what God has in store for us.

This is certainly a difficult concept to grasp; difficult for those first Christians, difficult for the unknown Jew hiding in a cellar in Cologne during one of the darkest periods in human history, difficult for so many people, difficult for us.  Indeed, the wickedness and cruelty evident in the world aroound us is evidence enough for many that no god exists at all, certainly, at least, not a caring one.  Belief in the kind of god which Christianity claims – personal, loving, sovereign – makes no sense in the light of this sort of wickedness, and yet we proclaim his existence Sunday by Sunday, and day by day.  Understood in this context we can see how it is not only the teachings of Jesus which are paradoxical, but the faith of every Christian who, while being honest as to the seemingly inherent cruely of the world, continues to trust that, as Paul reminds the Romans, the creation itself is groaning in labor pains as it awaits the full revealing of the glory of God and of God’s people.

As we come near to Lent’s ending, we still have a ways to go and its darkest observances are still to come.  Yet, the Church invites us to enter into them in the spirit of the counter-intuitive, in the spirit of the paradoxical and in trust.  She invites us to enter once again into the passion of Christ as instruction and reminder that things are not always as they seem, that the wickedness of the world and the cruelties to which we may be subject – while real and painful – are not the whole story, or even the most important part of the story.  Indeed that inspite of it all we can be “confident of the glory that shall be revealed”, no matter how dark things may get or how absent God may feel.