Holy (Spy) Wednesday by Fr Jack

Holy Week 2026 sermon series

Holy Week and our day to day life now:

The events of salvation,
the font of Grace,
the sacramental life of the Church today.

Reading:
St John 13.21-32

Confession
Judas despairs, Peter confesses.

‘And it was night’. Just as Shakespeare’s storms presage chaos and disaster for his characters. St John plunges us into night as Judas slips into the darkness to become a dealer in betrayal and death today. Darkness for darkness. And it doesn’t stop there. Judas will shroud Jesus in darkness, when he betrays the Lord with a kiss. And the darkness will overtake Judas, and in the end he will take his own life in despair (St Matthew 27.5).

But, before we all pile in on Judas, as sometimes the Gospel writers are wont to do: ‘He was always a wrong ‘un’, that kind of thing. There is another betrayer in today’s Gospel. One who also in darkness will deny Jesus, and walk away. Three times, we are told, S. Peter will betray the Lord, and slink off from the fireside into the darkness, weeping bitterly (St Luke 22.62).

So what makes one the archetypal traitor? And the other the Prince of the Apostles, upon whom the Church is built and the keeper of the keys to the Kingdom?

They both betray the Lord. But.

But, one despairs and the other confesses.

Today’s sacrament (in our journey through the seven days of Holy Week and the seven sacraments of Christian life) is Reconciliation, sometimes called Confession. We’re seeking to use the events of Holy Week to illuminate our day to day life as Christians and the sacraments we celebrate together, and vice versa.

Judas despairs that he is saveable, and in sorrow destroys himself.

Zoom forward to the risen Jesus, making a barbecue on the beach towards the end of St John’s Gospel (Chapter 21). Peter rushes to Jesus from the boat when St John tells him that it is the Lord. And three times Jesus asks S. Peter if he loves Him, and three times sends Peter to feed God’s people.

Judas despairs. Peter comes to Jesus. Peter comes to Jesus and receives threefold mercy and forgiveness for his threefold denial. And is commissioned three times to feed God’s flock.

Mercy and forgiveness. This is God’s language. Mercy and forgiveness aren’t rare jewels, treasured because they are seldom found. They are God’s way of being in the world, and the way we are called to live: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ (S. Matthew 6.12). Abundantly.

One could say that Jesus’ ministry in the New Testament is one long act of reconciliation, one long continuum of healing, forgiving, of flowing mercy. From reconciling leprosy sufferers to their community, to reconciling humanity to God by His sacrificial death on the cross. From the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan to the Penitent Thief crucified beside Him. Mercy and forgiveness.

The only difference between Judas and Peter is that one despairs, and the other returns and confesses.

The ministry of confession is one of the most life-giving gifts the church has. Every Eucharist and every night in Compline we start by confessing and turning ourselves back to God. Christian forgiveness is not empty words, or a switch easily flicked. It is often hard work, and has to be lived out with grit and tenacity and plenty of steps backward as well as forward. Sometimes it takes years.

And to help us, God has given us a sacramental form of this grace. One to one personal Reconciliation is not just for mass-murderers or Roman Catholics, or Roman Catholic mass-murderers, for that matter. It is in the Prayer Book, and has been part of Church of England life right through. It is a simple regular check-up and check-in hygiene, like the dentist. A time to look closely at that ways we are not living in Christ, and having laid them out before God, receive a fresh start. Twice a year perhaps in Advent and Lent, or maybe every few months (which is my pattern).

A time of self-examination, self-honesty. A prayerful check-in, followed by a sacramental a return to baptismal grace. To start again, as, in a way, we do everyday. But in the sacrament we do it with the help of a priest to assure us that we are here-and-now absolved, set free, and truly starting again.

I often think, the hardest thing is not the seal of the confessional or the things people say, (they are all the same and not very exciting). The hardest thing is to truly believe that we are forgiven. To truly believe that not him over there or her, but me, I am loved that much, that I am truly forgiven. I am set free to start again.

Jesus gives to the Apostles, and thus to His Church, that ministry that is Jesus’ own. Mercy and forgiveness. Endless and abundant.

The call to repentance and confession is not a call to the headteacher’s office, it is the invitation to leap out of the boat and rush to Jesus on the shore, as He sits at the fire He has made on which to cook us breakfast with Him. It is the invitation to a banquet of joy and wholeness. Holy hygiene, healing and humanity.

Those keys that St Peter is so often depicted with in religious art are freedom from the shackles of worry, self-hate, and harm. ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (St Matthew 18.18).

As the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 has it in the absolution of a penitent:

‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners, who truly repent, and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; And by his Authority committed to mee, I absolve thee from all thy sins, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Ghost. Amen.’

Mercy and forgiveness.