Nicole’s e-Pistle

April 16, 2025

Greetings, Friends!

Today, I’m going to do something a little different. I’m going to use someone else’s ideas to give you some food for thought. Today is Bjorn’s birthday, and as you know, I am deeply immersed in final Holy Week preparations. Therefore, I have a couple of brief readings for you to consider, as a kind of devotion for “Holy Wednesday,” the day when many Christians traditionally recognize Judas’ deceit – while he betrays Jesus with a kiss on Thursday after supper, he meets with the authorities on Wednesday to offer to give Jesus over to them… for a price.

First, please read Luke 22:1-6…

¹ Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near. ² The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people.

³ Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; ⁴ he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them. ⁵ They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. ⁶ So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present.

Next, if you have your own copy of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, please read chapter 23, which begins, “MY DEAR WORMWOOD, Through this girl and her disgusting family the patient is now getting to know more Christians every day…” If you do not have access to this letter yourself, allow me to share some highlights…

The Screwtape Letters is a fictional series of letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to his apprentice and nephew Wormwood. The letters reference “the patient,” who is a human that Wormwood is attempting to corrupt and win over for Satan. In his letters, Screwtape encourages Wormwood’s efforts and guides him on the best way to succeed in pulling the patient away from Christianity. Please note, that any reference to the “Enemy” is referring to the Triune God. Here are some quotes from this chapter to ponder:

• “Looking round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be the borderline between theology and politics. Several of his new friends are very much alive to the social implications of their religion. That, in itself, is a bad thing; but good can be made of it.”
• “…all such [man-made] constructions [of Jesus] place the importance of their historical Jesus in some peculiar theory He is supposed to have promulgated – a crank vending a panacea. We thus distract men’s minds from who He is, and what He did. We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement between His teachings and those of all other great moral teachers.”
• “For the real presence of the Enemy, otherwise experienced by men in prayer and sacrament, we substitute a merely probable, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange language and died a long time ago. Such an object cannot in fact be worshipped. Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian.”
• “About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything – even social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the enemy will not be used as a convenience… Fortunately, it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner… ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game…”

I look forward to joining you Thursday at the Table and Friday at the Cross, as we remember who Jesus truly was and what He truly did for us all.

Blessings and peace,