Scripture: John 13:21-32
Given on Wednesday at the Community Holy Week Services at FUMC
After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the festival”; or, that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.
-John 13:21-32
You know every week at my church, I preach right after my choir has sung an anthem and each week I think, I have to follow that? And then I get here today and the sound of that old gospel sound was filling the sanctuary and I thought maybe I should get out of the way and let the singers keep doing their thing. I want to first thank Pastor Steve and the whole of the First United Methodist Church for blessing the community with this series of noontime worship services in the midst of Holy Week and for allowing me to be a small part of it. In addition, I want to thank all the ladies of my church who worked so hard to feed us lunch. I will put up the cooking abilities of my church members against any church in the town, though, I imagine others might take me up on that offer. This morning, as I was taking my 11 year old son to school, I was thinking over this passage and I asked him if he could think of any instances in media or literature in which the image of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other had been used to capture the inner turmoil of a character trying to make a decision and he immediately exclaimed, “Kronk, from ‘The Emperor’s New Groove.’”
I had and have no idea what he was talking about and so I said that I thought it was originally used in the extra-canonical book The Shepherd of Hermas which was written in roughly 140 and was one of the last books to be rejected for the finalized canon of the Bible. He replied that I really should use the example of Kronk and I got a little haughty with him and I told him that part of good preaching was knowing your audience and making decisions based on that knowledge. He looked at me like I was confused and said before getting out of the car, “Dad, you really shouldn’t make decisions.” But, in The Shepherd of Hermas, there is a reference to the two angels that each person has. One, angel tries to turn the person upon whose shoulder she sits towards righteousness, while the other, tempts the person to embrace the way of iniquity and they are constantly doing battle in the mind and soul of the faithful and we, as those who attempt to follow Christ in our lives are often caught in the near constant ebb and flow of that battle. And we all get that, I’m sure. We get that we are constantly being called to be more Christlike in our lives and yet always feeling the pull towards being more selfish, more self-centered, less loving and accepting and grace-filled. I'm certain we can each take an accounting at the end of each day and see those places where we were truly living into the spirit of Christ which dwells in each of us and those times when we might have veered off the path in an effort to address our own needs and wants over and against those of another. Thus, for each of us, life is often a struggle. And as I think of that struggle in my own life to be faithful, loving, accepting, kind, I find myself thinking back to person of Judas Iscariot and the tremendous struggle that overtook his soul as he sat in the presence of the Christ in that last of suppers and ate the bread dipped in the cup.
We are told that soon after Jesus had washed the feet of his disciples bearing witness to the servant’s heart that he tried to grow in each of them, he returned to the table and found that he was very troubled in spirit. And maybe we can understand somewhat what that must have felt like for Jesus. Too often, it strikes me that we lose the human aspect of Jesus, the part of him struggled with all that was going on around him, the part that maybe didn’t want to be killed, maybe didn’t want to be scourged, maybe didn’t want to be betrayed by one who was closest to him. But as he returns to the table, he can sense a shift in the general feeling in the room. Perhaps it is that as the others relaxed in the midst of a good meal with the one whom Jesus loved seemingly lounging right next to him, there was Judas whose heart would no longer allow him to look on Jesus with the love that Jesus had attempted to engender in him, maybe it was that his countenance looked concerned, his brow furrowed, his eyes bearing the marks of one who was being pulled back and forth by his better angels and demons until he could struggle no longer. And so it is that Jesus, with a voice that demonstrated a level of concern that they likely rarely heard, said to them that one of their number would betray him. Of course, the rest of the disciples must have shared a collective gasp when they heard Jesus say this to them. And confusion and fear surely must have overtaken each of them as their eyes darted across the room from one face to the other trying desperately to figure who amongst their numbers was going to attempt to hand over Jesus to the authorities. Because think about it, in each of the gospels, Jesus has spoken, sometimes at length about his impending death really very early in the story. In the gospels we hear from the various narrators that the machinations are already in motion for Jesus to be killed. We know that the Temple leadership was desperately trying to figure out a way to execute Jesus so that the message that he was offering would be silenced once and for all. And so, to hear that one of their own brothers was going to offer him up to those who would end him must have come as a complete and utter shock to each one of them. So it was that after that statement had floated in the air for what must have felt like an eternity, Peter, gave a look to the disciple whom Jesus loved to ask Jesus just who amongst their number would do such a thing, to which Jesus quickly replied that the one whom I give this piece of bread dipped in the dish. And, of course, we learn that it is Judas who will become the final piece in the puzzle for those who wish to kill him. Finally, we are told that immediately upon taking the bread, Satan entered into him, the battle between the righteousness and iniquity was over and iniquity proved to be too strong a force in Judas’s heart and Jesus sent him on his way to undertake this final betrayal, it sounds like, under the cloak of buying food for the festival or giving something to the poor. And as Judas departs from the place where the disciples are supping, we are told that it is night.
I think back to that time immediately after Judas departed from the place where the rest of the disciples and Jesus were sharing a final meal together and we are told that night had set it. Was the narrator telling the reader around what time it was in the day or was he suggesting something more symbolic. For, from this moment forward, the whole of the world is about to be cast into darkness. The darkness in the garden, the darkness in the presence of Caiaphas as Jesus was tried by a religious tribunal, the darkness that overtook the souls of the crowd that pressed in around the Praetorium and screamed out for the release of Barabbas the Zealot and the crucifixion of Jesus, the King of the Jews, the darkness that came with the death of our savior. Was the narrator really trying to tell what time of day it was or was he trying to signify that things were about to get a lot worse before they got better.
And I wonder what that must have been like for Jesus knowing that he had sent Judas out into the night to betray him. I wonder about the gathering dusk that must have set in over his soul when he told Judas to be quick about it. I wonder if he was trying to make sure that Judas didn’t have second thoughts, or if he didn’t. I think about what that must have been like for the rest of the disciples gathered there. It surely must have felt like the whole of their world was collapsing all around them, that they could no longer trust one another, that far too soon their rabbi, their leader, their savior was going to be taken from them and how dark must that night have felt. At the end of the reading for today all the world and every character in the story finds himself completely covered in the blackness of night and the gathering dark night in each of their souls. And there seemed little hope for any of them.
I am positive that I am not alone in this place in saying that much of my world came to a grinding halt on Monday afternoon as stories began to trickle into various newsrooms that there was a fire in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Though, I have to admit that listening to the earliest reports on NPR as I was driving, I could not begin to imagine the level of devastation that would soon follow. I have had a couple of opportunities to visit Notre Dame when I was younger and while I know in my soul that God is everywhere, there are few places in the world where it is as easy to sense the holiness of the Spirit of God surrounding you as when you step into the Cathedral and see the stain glass and the altar and the large golden cross that sits just behind the altar and feel the silence and smell the votives and become immersed the light that pours through the windows and just be a’washed in the peace that one can breathe in like the air in the midst of that space. While as a Christian, I affirm that one can have that experience anywhere at anytime, I am also aware that there are places in the world where the liminal space between the physical and spiritual are razor thin and it feels as if you can touch the face of God right in front of you and Notre Dame is one of those places. And in the first hour or so that I watched the coverage of the fire, there was hope that surely the Parisian firefighters would be able to get there and put the fire out before massive damage was done but by 4:00 or so, it was clear that that was not going to be the case and when the iconic spire in the back of the Cathedral, engulfed in flames, finally succumb to gravity and physics, I felt myself, along with much of the world, begin to openly weep. And as the roof caved in and night set in Paris and a dim orange glow replaced what had been visible only a few moments earlier there seemed little doubt that when the first light of the new day cascaded across the old part of the city that there would be nothing but smoldering ashes of the building left. And reflecting on that time a couple of days later, there are several things that I am struck by—chief amongst them is the manner in which nearly all the world seemingly stopped to watch coverage and be grieved in the same way that I was feeling grief. The last two days have born witness to the degree to which much of humanity Christian and non-Christian, the faithful of others faiths and the secular amongst us, all seemed to feel pangs of sorrow as this symbol that rested deep in the foundation of the whole of the Christian faith was seemingly crumbling to ash right on our television screens. And as sad as it is to think about the fire and the devastation, there is something about humankind having a moment of unity in a world that is so often marked by disunity. In the midst of Holy Week, when Christians take on the guise of the people who dwelt in darkness desperate to see a great light, when the gospel of Matthew tells us that darkness is soon to overtake the whole of the world while our savior hangs and dies, in a time when we are so segmented as a population both as believers and as a species, for a brief time all the world joined a unified Church in a place of darkness, in which people of all traditions and no tradition at all felt their common humanity and maybe, just maybe, something of the spirit of Christ that we are told makes us all one. And in that darkness, we all went to bed, united in our sorrow, united in our grief. Then the sun rose in Paris on the next day and some 6 hours later we in the United States awoke to an image that has no doubt been shared on social media millions of times by now that of a cross. In the midst of the charred remains of the interior of the Cathedral, seemingly illuminated by some otherworldly force, was the large gold cross sitting empty in the midst of the darkness. And just like that life, death, and resurrection had taken place for all the world to see and regardless of whatever else was around it, and the despair of the loss of the spire and the roof and the precious artifacts and pieces of art that we will no doubt hear about in the coming weeks, in the midst of what seemed like total destruction as we all went to bed Monday night, was now a symbol of resurrection and hope a’lit in midst of destruction. And the whole of the world was watching and maybe, for the first time ever, some of them saw the light.
Sisters and brothers, we have now entered into the darkest period of Holy Week and it will be hard. We have entered a time when we will see Judas lose the internal battle between righteousness and iniquity and give Jesus up to the authorities who seek to end him. We will see the crowds turn on him and bloodthirstily shout out to crucify him. We will see him whipped and beaten and crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross and scream in agony and commit his own spirit to God and be laid in a cold, dark tomb hewn out of rock with a boulder placed in front of it and it will be hard. And we will each be tempted as we always are, to turn around, to walk back the other way, to go back to the Jesus who brought sight to the blind, and caused the lame to walk, to brought Lazarus back to life and told the woman who touched his hem that her faith had made her well. There will be every temptation to retreat back to those times. And yet, and yet in this midst of this Holy Week, when our every inclination is to shield our eyes, we have been given a sign, a miracle, a beacon, that reminds us that even in the midst of the deepest devastation, there is always hope. Even in the midst of soul-crushing agony that there can be a spark of joy. Even in the midst of the most overwhelming, heavy, bleak darkness, that there can still be found a pinprick of light, and the cross still stands empty, calling us to bring all that weighs us down and lay it there at the foot, where our savior bled and died and where death was overcome by life. Hold on to that light, now and always. Amen.
*-Image taken from NY Post website