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Spy Wednesday
Though the Prayer Book simply calls this day “Wednesday in Holy Week,” there is a long tradition of referring to it by a somewhat more sinister name: Spy Wednesday. By tradition, this is the day on which Judas Iscariot approached the chief priests and offered to betray Jesus to them. Scripture tells us that after he received 30 pieces of silver, Judas then began to spy out the perfect “opportunity to betray Him unto them in the absence of the multitude.”
All four of our Gospels take pains to emphasize that, while Jesus was condemned by the leaders of the Jewish people and executed by the Roman authorities, He was first betrayed by a close friend. Betrayal is at the heart of the story of Holy Week, and not simply the betrayal enacted by Judas.
Consider the parable we hear today in the Daily Office lesson from Mark’s Gospel. Jesus tells of a landowner who entrusts his carefully constructed, amply supplied vineyard to the care of tenants and then goes to another country. When the time comes for him to receive what is his from the people to whom he has commended it, he sends a slave to request his share from the tenants.
The tenants seize the landowner’s slave, beat him and send him back with nothing. Again and again, the landowner sends servants to collect from the tenants what is rightfully his. Again and again, they abuse them, mistreat them, and even kill some of them. At last, the landowner resolves to send his beloved son to the tenants in the vineyard. “Surely,” he reasons, “they will respect my son.”
The tenants take an entirely different view. If they get rid of the son, then the vineyard and all the rest of the son’s inheritance will become theirs. So, they seize the landowner’s beloved boy, murder him and throw him out of the vineyard as if he were trash.
Remember, these were not random robbers and bandits attacking the son on the road. These were not squatters who had snuck into the landowner’s vineyard under cover of darkness and were lying in wait for an ambush. These were not strangers who seized the boy and killed him. The father had entrusted his property to these tenants. He had faith in them that they would honor his rights and return to him the proper portion of what was, in fact, his own. He trusted that they would honor and respect his servants and at last his son.
When God the Father sent His beloved Son into the world, it was not the inanimate elements that resisted Him. Quite the contrary, the storms and the seas obeyed His voice. It was not the demons and diseases who denounced Him. Quite the contrary, they yielded to His commands. It was not a people unfamiliar with the power and promises of God who rejected Him. Rather, it was God’s own chosen nation. It was the leaders of the people entrusted with the responsibility of teaching them God’s own Holy Word. It was the very tenants of the vineyard who should have been looking eagerly for the return of the Lord of all things, who murdered first His prophets and who then shouted “Crucify!” for His Son.
You and I, too, have betrayed the Lord our God each time we have turned aside from His will to pursue our own. We have nailed the Son to the tree with our sins and vainly thought that we could seize His inheritance for ourselves. Behold the wonder of the days ahead: what we thought we could greedily take, the One we have betrayed freely gives.
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