What wondrous love is this, O my soul! What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to lay aside his crown for my soul.
In our readings, we are moving in a progression to Maundy Thursday. On Monday night, we heard how Mary of Bethany poured out her jar of expensive ointment onto the Savior’s feet and wiped them with her own hair. A simple act of love. But an act rich with meaning and rich with feeling. Her act gave us a glimpse of what pure human devotion to God looks like.
Tonight’s reading gives us a glimpse of another facet of the depth of love in the relationship between God and humanity. Monday’s reading showed us what human love looks like when humanity is at its best. Today’s reading shows us what God’s love looks like when humanity is at its worst.
A thousand years before, King David had sung in the psalms about the pain of human relationships, the pain of relationships gone wrong:
“All my enemies whisper together about me and devise evil against me. Even my best friend, whom I trusted, who broke bread with me, has lifted up his heel and turned against me.”
As David sang, as David prophesied, so Judas acted.
The one dips his bread in my bowl, this is the one who will betray me.
It’s not like Jesus doesn’t know. He knows the friend who will betray him. And yet he loves.
Of course, if it would be one thing if the betrayal had stopped at Judas. Not only did the disciples fall away in the garden, but Peter himself would betray Jesus three times. But the betrayal doesn’t stop with biblical characters either. I think of things that I’ve done and things that I’ve said. I too have betrayed him.
It’s not like Jesus doesn’t know. He knows the people who will betray him. And yet he loves.
What wondrous love is this, O my soul! What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to lay aside his crown for my soul.
Nice, I recognize our Lord in her words, and quite better than this “I would ask us to explore that Jesus does not make us one with God. Jesus reveals, and this is incredible mystery, incredible good news—Jesus reveals to us, and it is why we say that he is the Messiah, he is an anointed one, he reveals to us that we are already at one with God – and why? Because God is always at one with us.”
btw, prayers ascend…