One of the ministers at church asked me if I would deliver the message for Tuesday in Holy Week. “Sure,” I said in one of those initial bursts of enthusiasm that later leave you wondering, What was I thinking?
What could I possibly say about Tuesday of Holy Week? It’s not the glory of Easter, nor the sorrow of Good Friday, nor the communion of Thursday, when Jesus first said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” I looked in my concordance and couldn’t find the word Tuesday anywhere in the Bible. None of the gospels point out what happened to the disciples the Tuesday of that week.
The different texts all describe the disciples’ confusion and bewilderment. Jesus keeps leading them, hinting at what is going to happen, showing them, teaching them so they might have something to hold onto when he is gone. The triumphant Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem is behind them. Now what?
All I could think was how often it feels like Tuesday in my faith. Sunday’s worship service with its certainties seems far behind. The Easter hope of the Resurrection is hard to glimpse. I’ll get caught up in work on a Tuesday and then if I pray it’s like the words of the English baron who said before battle, “O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not forget me.”
Maybe it’s OK to have a Tuesday faith, if I can do it like the disciples, listening, asking questions, trying to understand. Jesus stuck with them, as he does for any of us on a Tuesday … or a Thursday … or a Monday.
Sunday comes. But we all need to get through the week.
