The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

This year for our Holy Week Tenebrae service I presented a short reflection on Luke 22: 47 – 52 — the betrayal and arrest of Jesus.

Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash

The disciples are having a very bad day.

And it’s only just begun. They were up all night, and when they did manage to catch a little shut-eye Jesus yelled at them. And now one of their own has come with crowds and armed guards to arrest Jesus and to take him away. Not at all a good start to the day.

No surprise, then, that one of them should lash out. Not against the real problem – not against the priests or the officials here to arrest him, or against the guards who would fight back, not even against the betrayer whom they’d recently considered a friend. But they lash out against a servant, against the most insignificant person there.

It’s a typical response, really. If the problems of the day are too big, too intimidating, too frightening to confront head on, how often do we vent our frustrations elsewhere? How often do we seek the quick and easy catharsis of cutting off a servant’s ear?

It’s at times like this that we need to hear the voice of Jesus – Jesus, who is having a worse day than any of them, Jesus who alone knows how much worse it will get before it gets better. Jesus, who knows that, yes, it will get better. Jesus, who steps forward into the middle of it all and says “Enough!” Who takes a moment to heal the wounds, and then goes ahead with doing what needs to be done.