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31/07/2009

Reflections for Lent 2004

[Notice Board]  [Theology]  [Spirituality]

On each Sunday in Lent (except Mothering Sunday and Palm Sunday) we had a meditation based on our lent book, The Day He Died by Matthew Byrne, at our morning service. This took the place of the sermon.

These themes were followed into the Good Friday meditation, and the Easter Day sermon.

1) The First Sunday in Lent (February 29th)

Commentary: So much of what we think we know about Judas is legend and tradition. The text tells us very little. And perhaps the translation we use distorts our understanding. The word translated here as ‘betray’ (paradidomi) just means ‘hand over’ in a neutral sense. Nowhere else in Luke’s Gospel is it translated as ‘betray’. Perhaps Judas was trying to do good. Perhaps he just wanted to arrange a discrete meeting between Jesus and the chief priests.

Perhaps they saw their opportunity and simply used Judas as their chance to get at Jesus. Perhaps he wasn’t the evil betrayer that history has painted him, but the fall guy. After all Jesus was crucified after the hierarchy abused Jewish criminal law and Pilate bent the rules of Roman law. Perhaps Judas could not have predicted what would be the consequence of his actions. Maybe, in the spiritual battle between God and evil, Judas was no more than an unwitting pawn. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for the death of Jesus. What do you think?

Questions: Was Judas really a bad man? After all he had been one of the ‘inner circle’ of Jesus’ chosen apostles. Are we responsible for the consequences of our actions, even when we cannot foresee them? Was (or is) betrayal essential to the death of Jesus and thus to the salvation of humanity? Is there a ‘cosmic battle’ between God and Satan, good and evil? Or is this merely the human experience of good and evil projected onto a larger stage?

2) The Second Sunday in Lent (March 7th)

Commentary: Imagine: the noise, the smells, the crush of people, donkeys, camels, crowded together in Jerusalem for the Passover. And all the sacrifices—maybe 250,000 lambs sacrificed for 2.5m people, or more. Each household celebrating in the same way, with the same rituals, binding themselves to one another and to their shared history of salvation: to the God who brought them through suffering, out of Egypt to the promised land.

Questions: How does sharing in the Communion bind us all together? How does in binds us to God? To what extent does the ritual—the stylised pattern of our words and actions—help our unity? Or does it get in the way of being able to worship as individuals? How would we react, what would we feel, fearing and anticipating that Jesus was going to his death—and knowing he didn’t have to?

And Jesus changes the words. Instead of ‘This is the body of the Passover’ he says ‘This is my body.’ And when he offers the Cup of Blessing, he says ‘This cup is the new covenant made by my blood which is poured out for you.’ He has changed everything. Even as they celebrated God’s covenant, his agreement, with the Jews, Jesus  announces a new covenant. In him, Jesus of Nazareth, God acts to re-write salvation. So we too celebrate the Eucharist in ways which bind us together with one another, and with God. If we are what we eat, let us eat and drink the body and blood of Christ.

3) The Third Sunday in Lent (March 14th)

Commentary: A quiet place, but not a safe place. Jesus and the disciples probably knew the place well. At this time there would be crowds of pilgrims camping around, but they could still find space to be on their own. Land nearby was owned and worked by Annas, the power behind the throne, an enemy of Jesus.

Here Jesus prayed, Father, if you are willing take this cup from me; the bitter cup, the cup of sorrow and suffering. Jesus knew he would be asked to drink it down to the dregs. Even at this late hour God may yet relent and offer another way, or another time. yet not my will but yours be done. Jesus is obedient, even to his own death. Though he dreads it; whether or not he knows just what is coming to him; though he knows he will suffer, he will follow what God has prepared for him. His disciples will fall away, betray and deny him. But he will follow his Father to the bitter end.

Questions: Why does God ask Jesus to suffer? Why does he permit suffering at all? Jesus had a choice. Why would he—would anyone—choose the path that leads to death? Would we be like the disciples, asleep while Jesus prayed, scattering when he was arrested? Could any of us be any different?

4) The Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 28th)

Commentary: Such injustice. Everything was wrong about this so-called trial. All done in the dark, out of sight. And Jesus had done no crime that warranted this Roman punishment. Even Pilate said so: ‘I find in him no grounds for the death penalty.’ But it made no difference. They wanted him dead and dead he would be. And the violence. Crucifixion was designed as a slow, painful death. Flogging with metal tied into the strands of the whip made it worse. Then they tied the cross-bar of this instrument of torture to Jesus’ back and forced him to carry it to the place where he would be executed.

Questions: Should we be worried about injustice? After all, it’s probable that injustice has been far more normal than justice has ever been. How do we respond when we see someone who is the victim of violence?? What cross do we carry? Can we share the weight of Christ’s cross?

Some of the women saw, and wept. Is that all we can ever do in the face of violence—to watch and weep, sharing another person’s pain, unable to do anything else? Perhaps our society is too focused on images of violence. Or maybe, contrarily, we gloss over violence and turn our heads and our attention away from it. Perhaps we are a more civilised society as a result, or maybe our wilful blindness allows violence to flourish out of our sight and concern.

Good Friday Meditation

It is important, when we focus on the death of Jesus on the cross, not to rush to the end of the story.

The conclusion is inherent in the narrative.  The resurrection is understood in the same terms as the account of his death.

I focus on three elements: betrayal, injustice, violence.  I suggest that these are not only normal aspects of human experience, but are necessary elements in Christianity.

1) betrayal

Why does betrayal hurt so much?  I suggest there are two reasons:

a) because it's personal.  Betrayal comes from within.  A  traitor is a person who belongs to - is part of - a country or group, and yet who acts against its interests.  The traitor destroys from within.  Furthermore the group, the nation is part of them, part of their identity.  So, when there is betrayal, part of 'us' turns against 'us' and 'we' destroy ourselves.  So it is with lovers: to betray them is to destroy the person they are, their identity, their self.

b) because we are all capable of betrayal.  To belong to a group is to be capable of betraying it; to be with the person we love is to be capable of betraying them.  Traitors are not the alien infiltrator, others about whom we know nothing; they are people like you and I, one of us, they are us were circumstances only slightly different.

Betrayal destroys trust and the possibility of trust.  The appropriate response is revenge.  revenge obliterates the destructiveness of the betrayal; it restores some semblance of self-worth; and it is a warning to others.  The potential for betrayal inherent in every relationship must never be realised because it happens all the time.  But revenge is always inadequate: destruction cannot be undone and trust cannot be restored.

Betrayal is integral to the account of Jesus' death.  What would have happened if Judas had not betrayed Jesus, though everything else had happed in the same way?  What if Jesus had simply been picked up by the Romans patrolling the streets of Jerusalem, or if he had been arrested by the temple authorities while teaching there?

I would guess that Christianity would have been reduced to simple dualism: Good Guys (Jesus and the disciples) against the Bad Guys (Jewish and Roman authorities together).  Bad Guys won the battle, Good Guys will win the war.  The conviction that evil and the capacity for evil is inherent in each person would be discarded.  Christianity would become - as it is sometimes inclined to do anyway - a simple choice between good and bad, light and dark - and 'we' would always be on the side of the Good Guys.

Judas' betrayal led to anguish and suicide on his part and no doubt bitterness on the part of the disciples.  But it did not lead to revenge.  On the contrary his actions were later seen as necessary, as part of the way things had to work out, in God's providence.

2) injustice

Jesus was dragged before the Sanhedrin, taken to Pilate, passed to Herod, and returned to Pilate and duly condemned.  It was a process that no-one, even then, would say was just.  It was done at night, in the dark, out of the sight of other people, and God.

'Justice' is a slippery concept, but there were at least three aspects of injustice visited on Jesus:

a) He didn't have 'due process'.  A fair trial requires rules which give the participants a fair chance of a hearing, rules that are known, evenly applied, and followed.

b) His trial was personal.  A fair trial means that justice is blind in the sense of treating all those who come before her impersonally and equally.  

c) The punishment should fit the crime.  But for Jesus it was evident that the punishment was decided first and the alleged crimes and the forensic process was made to fit the desired outcome: Jesus must die, as a criminal, at the hands of the Romans.  

Injustice has, of course been the normal experience for most people for most of history.  The steady extension of the rule of law over society (as opposed, for example, to rule by personal whim or military prejudice) has contributed wonderfully to the extension of security and well-being, and more people may have experienced more of justice as a consequence.  But a quick glance at any tabloid newspaper will reveal how easy it is to pander to an instinctive desire to condemn and spit at people about whom we know nothing except that they deserve to be condemned, perhaps even to die.

The proper response to injustice is the superior application of law and order.  This is a very attractive notion: that everyone in an ordered, dispassionate society, can be governed by the impartial application of the rules of justice.  But it should never be forgotten that at the heart of this ordered approach lies the capacity for and necessity of violence.  Someone must be prepared and able to enforce the law, physically, against those who will not conform willingly.

And what if Jesus had had a fair trial?  What if everything had meticulously followed the court rules of the day, if he had been tried fairly by people without an axe to grind, and if his punishment had fitted his crime (say, blasphemy)?  

I guess that there may not have been a Christianity on this supposition.  But if there had been a Christianity then it would probably be even more rule-bound than it now is (perhaps to its advantage), maybe more human-focused than God-focused, more sure of the human capacity to sort itself out without God.  And it would have to accept violence as a necessity, perhaps even as a good thing.

3) violence

The violence done to Jesus is sometimes portrayed as the worst conceivable violence done to anyone.  Sadly it was not.  People have been hurt, maimed, killed, kept alive in utterly horrendous ways - human beings appear to have an inexhaustible imagination when it come to ways to cause pain.

Nor do we need to look to the past or to other countries to find examples of cruelty and violence.  Though, thankfully, the beneficial consequence of the rule of law, and of peace in Western Europe, mean that most of us most of the time may sleep in our beds secure in the assurance that we are unlikely to be the victims of violence tomorrow, or today.

But the fact remains that, just like betrayal and injustice, violence is a normal component of human experience; and furthermore that we are all capable of it.  We are capable of so much else besides - heroism, compassion, creativity, love - but we remain capable of violence.  

Shift your gaze from the meek, quiescent Jesus to the representative of humanity - the executioner, the torturer, and behind them those who make the arrangements, supply the equipment, train them for their task, give the orders, take the decisions.  They are the people we stand with.

And the normal, even necessary, response to violence is yet more violence.  When one child hits another it gets hit back.  When one country invades another we expect not just resentment but, if the opportunity arises, armed resistance.  Violence breeds violence; violence, and the fear of violence, drives politics and decision-making the world over - not excepting law-governed countries.

But what if Jesus had not suffered violence?  What if he had simply been sent into exile on Crete, or Santorini, for example?  Or if Herod had simply kept Jesus under house arrest, and otherwise fed him and looked after him and debated religion with him?  

Certainly if their had been a Christianity it would be an emaciated thing, concerned with the assurance of happy endings to all trouble.  It would have been a fairy-tale faith wholly unsatisfying in the face of human violence and suffering.

4) conclusion

To summarise:

a) we are all capable of betrayal, injustice, violence.  to some degree we all (willingly or not) participate in and benefit from them.  Perhaps we can distance ourselves from their excesses much of the time, but we cannot finally evade them as they are part of who we are.

b) betrayal, injustice, violence are necessary parts of the Christian story.  The absence of any of them would impoverish Christianity, perhaps fatally.  

But we do not embrace them as good because they are necessary.  On the contrary the action of Jesus on the cross was to transform them into something different.  

Jesus went to his death through betrayal, suffering injustice and violence.  But he didn't seek revenge, he didn't proclaim law and order, he did not return violence on those who had been violent to him.  He death scattered and demoralised his disciples but it did not destroy him.

What was it that God did on the cross?  How was betrayal set aside?  How did injustice result in justification?  How does this violent death result in an outpouring of God's loving Spirit?

I no longer believe in original sin - the idea that we are all born inherently sinful.  And although this has been a central component of Christianity for hundreds of years it seems to me that most people (at least most people I meet in this place) have also discarded the idea - or never held it in the first place.  But if normal human experience (setting aside our personal experience for a moment) includes betrayal, injustice and violence, not to mention suffering, pain, greed, oppression and irrationality, then on one level it scarcely matters whether human nature is good or evil or amoral.

But when it comes to grasping what God did through Jesus on the cross then it seems to me pivotal.  Theologies of the atonement focus on the nature of God's work, and they have been grounded in the notion of human original sin.  If we are not born sinful, if our nature is not evil, than how do we expound God's saving action on the cross?

Somehow (though this still seems to me an inadequate and only partial description) Jesus gathered into himself all humanity: the betrayal, injustice, violence - and perhaps also the heroism, compassion, creativity, love - and transformed it all into something new.  

Evil is not thus obliterated, nor paid off, nor wiped out - since that would wipe out, discard or obliteration what people are.  But all that human beings do and are and are capable of is somehow transformed and made new.  Just as the acorn vanishes as the oak tree grows so all that Jesus gathered into himself on the cross is necessary for and utterly transformed into a new creation - a new order - a new being - a new relationship with God.

Which leaves the question of how we participate in his death and his resurrection.

Easter Day

He is risen indeed! Alleluia! 

Neither the Jews nor the Romans were fools.  They knew perfectly well what death was and Jesus was dead.

Nor were the disciples self-deluding dupes.  They knew people do not come back from the dead.  

They also knew people would not believe them without question, so they announced what they knew to everyone who would listen.  And when their accounts came to be written down they made sure that details were included and people were named so as to reinforce their evidence.  They were witnesses to Jesus' resurrection and the Gospels have continued their witness ever since.

Rejoice and be glad!  Jesus who was dead is alive, and through him God has made a new agreement with humanity.  Through Jesus God has reconciled humanity to himself.

This is not merely a matter of belief, of weighing the documents and the testimony they contain, and concluding that on the balance of probabilities the events they describe really occurred.  Nor even just a matter of trusting God: of being prepared to accept that God acted in this way and will keep faith with those who seek to obey his commands.  It is not even simply a matter of following Jesus.

All of these are important, even vital.  But what is asked is that we participate in Christ's death and his resurrection.

We do so through baptism.  We do so in the eucharist, consuming the body and blood of Christ so that God lives in us as we live in God.  We do so through our membership in the church, taking our part in the body of Christ.

We do so in prayer and in contemplation of God, seeking to drown in God, and to hear his word.

We do so through our experience of the Holy Spirit: God With Us.

We do so through existential decision - the leap of faith - by which we align ourselves, body, mind and soul, as belonging to Jesus and followers of his way, as members of the Christian faith.  Perhaps, like Mary Magdalene, we meet Jesus in the pre-dawn dark and do not recognise him until he speaks to us.

And we do so in love.  As God loves us so we love God.  As we grow in love so we fall deeper and deeper into one another, lover and loved remaining distinct in ever-closer union.  

And our whole self - the good and the bad, our intentions and the consequences of our action - who we have become and who we are capable of being is all utterly engaged in participation in Jesus' death and his resurrection.  And thus in him, as he has transformed humanity into a new creation so we in our participation are also transformed and made new.

He is risen indeed! Alleluia! 

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