Holy Wednesday: How to Have a “Silent Wednesday” Instead of a Judas “Spy Wednesday”?

It’s just a few days before Easter, a few days before everyone sheds their old grave clothes to be decked out in beauty and a bonnet for Easter Sunday morning, when she turns to me and says,“I just really wanna buy something that’s beautiful and lovely for Easter — something light and lovely.”

Sometimes we want to possess lovely things — because we’re actually still figuring out that Love is a Person…

That’s what the woman tells me. You could see that look in her eyes, looking just for something lovely.

Something new and shiny and lovely, that catches the light in it’s own way.

Sometimes we want to possess lovely things — because we’re actually still figuring out that Love is a Person…

Love is a person and the Wednesday of Holy Week is the only day of Holy Week that Scripture is silent about, and doesn’t tell us exactly what that person, Jesus, Love Himself actually did.

Which is why the Wednesday of Holy Week is often called “Silent Wednesday.” Knowing He’s about to face deep, unfathomable suffering, on the cusp of the very end of His earthly life, Jesus quietly retreats into the silence and solitude of beautiful intimacy with His Father… so He can be the beauty of real Love in a broken world.

“Something — beautiful,” is what the woman said, “I just want something really light and beautiful.”

“Your life is only a blink long —and then you wake up to the forever that your life chose.”

“Somedays — I just want all the beautiful things, you know? Floral and light chiffon.” She’d turned, and this light catches her eyes…

I know exactly what she means.

And then a woman turned to me in a car the other week, and asked me what I didn’t see coming in the least.

“So what do you want your life to really be about?”

Her question left me hushed and silent.

Your life is only a blink long — and then you wake up to what forever that your life chose.

And then we’d pulled up and the GPS announced that we had arrived at our destination. She opened the car door. And I sat there, silent, fixed and yet a kind of jarred, broken, staring out the windshield, heart unshielded. Exposed.

What do I really want? What do I want my one life to really be about? Even the calendar this holy week is turning to look toward Jesus and what He did with His one life. Because He wanted to live given into an intimate relationship with us most.

What you most want — is what you most love.

And what you most love — is what you’ll ultimately have for all eternity.

And I’m thinking:

“Any craving for the beautiful — is really a craving for Jesus.

Doubtful that you’re standing at the feet of Jesus, thinking you wanted anything that was more beautiful than He is and the way He loves in deeply beautiful ways — that are different than the ways of this world.

There is no doubt:

Beautiful things can genuinely be made into meaningful things, beautiful things can definitely be made into faithful things, and certainly, thank God Almighty, there is no definitive black and white line in the sand between beautiful and meaningful.

But there are times … we may be better to simply seek out the most meaningful — and see that as the most beautiful.

Meaningful over beautiful. The most fulfilling lives actually see what’s meaningful — as the most beautiful.

Any craving for the beautiful — is always really a craving for Jesus.

“You were meant for greatness — and greatness is about loving greatly. And living greatly given.“

Because honestly —

It would be a travesty to have a life about only collecting all the beautiful things for some — instead of recollecting that we were made for greater things.

You’re meant for more than collecting beautiful sea-shells, or just protecting your own self-interests. You were made of the beauty of intimacy — relational intimacy with God and with people.

When I light the last candles on the Lenten wreath, the flames waver.

While the Wednesday of Holy Week has Jesus spending His last hours in silence and solitude with God, Judas is in the midst of what is called “Spy Wednesday,” where he spies on his intimate friend, sells his friend, His Lord, for 30 pieces of silver.

Judas sold Jesus, the One who came to set the captives free, for the same amount of coin that it would take to buy one slave.

Judas betrayed one of his closest friends, to buy what he’d thought was worth it — only to realize he’d sold his soul and made his own soul a slave to the dark.

In the darkened shadows, the candles of our lenten wreath are disappearing, melting lower, giving themselves away to be light.

Let this Holy Week free us from selling out Jesus for our own interests. Let this Holy Week free us being slaves to lesser loves. Let this Holy Week free us from betraying the way of Jesus, for the way of the loud, proud and bullying powerful. Let this Holy Week dismantle everything that isn’t about eternal things.…

On Holy Week “Spy Wednesday”, Judas decided to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver: How does what we pay attention to — mostly to what makes us feel good — betray the worth of Christ?

The Wednesday of Holy Week can either be “Spy Wednesday,” where our preparations for Easter betray the way of Jesus, betray the compassion of Jesus, betray the sacrificial heart of Jesus, betray the upside down way of the love of Jesus, to buy what isn’t really worth it… to grasp a kind of life that sells out the name of Jesus for the name of our own power and interests first.

On that Holy Week “Spy Wednesday”, Judas decided to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver: How does what we pay attention to — mostly to what makes us feel good — betray the worth of Christ?

There is another way….

There is the open invitation for our Wednesday of Holy Week to be “Silent Wednesday” — where we quiet our hearts and and the jockeying noise of the world, to retreat into the sacred silence and the beauty of Jesus, to be so close to His exquisite heart that we become like His cruciform heart, and sacrificially reach out to someone who has been exiled, marginalized, forgotten, abandoned with the beautiful heart and love of Jesus.

What if we moved from “Spy Wednesday” — and spying for more ways for our agenda and our interests to be furthered — and we lived “Silent Wednesday” — and this was the day of Holy Week that we made space for sacred silence with the Spirit of God, to speak clearly and directly to our hearts about how we might live so that our testimony would not be silent, but speak loudly of the ways of humble, loving ways of Jesus in the world?

Silent Wednesday is for taking time to intentionally turn off the world, and hushing our souls, lighting a candle, and sitting with His Love Letter, His very Word, and paying attention to the beauty of the heart of the only One who has ever loved us to death and back to the realest life in His Love.

Silent Wednesday is for the free beauty of taking a walk under some trees, soaking in His glory, and having a prayer walk in silence with the One who never stops whispering your name, beckoning you to Himself and His upside down ways of love.

Silent Wednesday is for making time for the beauty of worship, the beauty of loving someone that someone else who has perhaps been labeled unloveable.

“A life given to God, given to people, given to community, given to those are forgotten and marginalized and maligned — is what gives our lives the deepest beauty.“

Silent Wednesday is about pausing to gaze on the beauty of God, the only loveliness and beauty who ever fulfills, because Love is a Person and His name is Beautiful, and He calls us to be His kind of beautiful love in the world, and like He loved us when we were unlovely, how can we love someone else who feels unlovely?

The most beautiful life is a given life. The most beautiful life — is one that looks for ways to give away our life…. so others feel His love… and we feel the beauty of His smile.

You were meant for greatness — and greatness is about loving a great God greatly, and about living greatly given.

I sit before the flames of the lenten wreath with the wooden silhouette of Jesus carrying a cross around the wreath, around the world, around time and the cosmos and at the heart of the universe is a servant bending low, giving away His heart, never doubt this.

A life given to God, given to people, given to community, given to those are forgotten and marginalized and maligned — is what gives our lives the deepest beauty.

God doesn’t call us to an impressive life — He calls us to an important life. And a life of importance isn’t found in a life that impresses other, but in a life that presses into the cruciform ways and heart of Jesus.

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, candle flames flicker brave, flicker on against the dark, and there is time to simply still and make intentional space for silence and prayer.

I met a woman once who said she wanted to buy something kinda lovely for Easter…

But then her soul turned around — and decided to pay attention to all the broken and beautiful ways to live what is meaningful — to love the unlovely in meaningful ways. And it began to happen — she herself started to become more beautiful… as beautiful as her sacrificed and given Jesus.

Her people said that she really had no idea how she was becoming, quietly, silently, beautifully, over time, more and more like light Himself.

Like all the meaningfulness of His light.

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