Wednesday in Holy Week: Tenebrae
Listen: Lamentation by Thomas Tallis
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow (Lam 1:12).
These words – Jesus’s words, in our Good Friday liturgy – are taken from Lamentations. They are the cry of Jerusalem in the time of its devastation. They are also part of the Service of Tenebrae, celebrated during Holy Week (often on Wednesday) from at least the eighth century.
Tenebrae means “shadows.” It is the Service of Shadows. As in Advent at the beginning of the Christian year we look forward to the birth of the Christ with candles – each week another candle lit to herald the coming of the light – now as Good Friday approaches the candles are put out, one by one, until the darkness is complete.
What is happening in this journey with Jesus into darkness?
Tenebrae turns to Lamentations for understanding.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! (Lam 1:1)
The people sing these words and a candle is extinguished.
Lamentations is the mourning-song of Jerusalem after she has been devastatingly destroyed by Babylon, her temple burnt, her people carried into exile.
She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks …
Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude. (Lam 1:2-3)
The people sing, and a candle is extinguished.
But in the same breath, Daughter Zion cries out to the God under whose righteous judgement she stands:
All her people groan as they search for bread …
Look, O Lord, and see! How worthless I have become (Lam 1:11)
(And a candle is extinguished.)
In the depths of her suffering, Jerusalem cries out
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow
And in her cry the gospel sounds.
For these very passersby appear at the cross of Jesus. And those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, if you are the son of God!” (Matt 27: 39-40).
As those who pass by mock Jesus, Jerusalem’s suffering is heard.
All who pass by along the way clap their hands at you;
They hiss and wag their heads at daughter Jerusalem (Lam 2:15).
On his cross Jesus, son of God, shares the suffering of daughter Jerusalem.
The last candle is extinguished in the night that leads to Jesus’s cross. And the church hears the sound of hope. Jerusalem cries out to the God she loves and fears she has lost:
Why have you forsaken us these many days? (Lam 5:20)
In Jesus, God makes an answer.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matt 27:46)
God with his people. Even here.
Almighty God, We pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross. AMEN.
