First preached as a sermon at Choral Evensong for Passion Sunday (Fifth Sunday of Lent) at Croydon Minster. Luke 22.1-13.
‘Now the festival of
Unleavened bread, which is called the Passover, was near.’
(Luke 22.1)
With that phrase there is a change of gear in the narrative
of St Luke’s gospel, which mirrors the stage of this season of Lent that we
have now reached.
We have now entered Passiontide, which moves us, as it were,
from the focus of self-denial and the facing down of temptation, which is seen
through the lens of Jesus’ forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, and, through
the change of gear, into the impending betrayal, passion and death of Jesus
Christ.
In the Slavic language there is a phrase, ‘the devil
helps’. Well, the devil helps this change of gear. The adversary – Satan literally means ‘adversary’ - the
Enemy of our Human Nature, as St Ignatius of Loyola calls the devil, came to
Jesus in the wilderness (4.1-13), and
now - for only the second time in Luke’s gospel he is named – this time as
entering into Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who he reminds us, ‘was numbered among
the Twelve’.
The previous change of gear happened at Caesarea Philippi
when Jesus directly spoke of what awaited him as he came to Jerusalem, ‘The Son
of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief
priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised up’ (Luke 9.22).
What unfolds as the Passover draws near is precisely what
Jesus anticipated and declared at Caesarea Philippi, and to which, in both St
Mark’s and St Matthew’s accounts, Peter took such great exception such that he
is told, ‘get thee behind me Satan’, you adversary (Mark 8.33; Matthew 16.23). When you refuse the way of the cross you
are an adversary, acting contrary to the ways in which the Son of Man must
reveal God’s glory.
The journey from Caesarea Philippi was a journey to
Jerusalem, and along the way Jesus healed, taught and prayed and spoke
repeatedly of what was to come in the Holy City, the city that kills the
prophets and over which he would weep.
Now, in Jerusalem, Christ’s disciples are to be drawn more
into his inner life through their participation in the Passover of Christ’s
body and blood.
Yet one of them could not bear to participate in the Divine
Life. Judas.
There has been a certain attempt at the rehabilitation of
Judas in recent years. It is of course the case that without his betrayal the
route to the saving death of Jesus would not have opened up in the way it did;
in that sense Judas’ betrayal of Jesus is indispensable to our salvation.
There has been considerable analysis given to Judas’
psychological condition, and a portrayal of Judas a victim not perpetrator.
It’s an old question, really. In the fifth century St Cyril of Alexandria
identified two motives for Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. The first of these is
‘envy…which always leads to the guilt of murder (Homily 140), the second, which
is much less weighty, is greed suggested because Judas is the keeper of the
common purse and is suggested to have siphoned off the funds of the band of
disciples.
In the spirit of the French-American theologian and anthropologist,
René Girard, we might reflect that Judas’s motivation is around adulation and
disappointment. Judas was deeply attracted to something in Jesus which he did
not himself possess, and rather than wait to receive Jesus’ life in the Passover meal he sought to take away Jesus’ life through betrayal.
Christ drew others into his life; Judas drew others into
his plans for death.
Even in the face of betrayal Christ resolutely faces the
cross, and knows that for the meaning of the cross to be sustained throughout
the ages the Eucharist, the Christian Passover, will be the vehicle for bearing
and bringing the reality of Christ’s saving death to his people by drawing us
into his life.
The Passover meal that Christ celebrated with his disciples
is the very meal that Paul describes having handed on to him, and what is
handed on in turn to us:
For
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on
the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given
thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in
remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying,
‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it,
in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.23-26)
So the day of Passover drew near, and as we read, the day
came, ‘the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.
John the Baptist declared Jesus to be the ‘Lamb of God that takes away the sin
of the world’. Everything is converging such that St Paul can say: ‘Christ our
Passover, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed for us: so let us celebrate the
feast’ (1 Corinthians 5.7b).
But first we are drawn to the passion, the suffering that
precedes resurrection: ‘So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare
the Passover meal for us that we may eat it”’ (Luke 22.8). That is the commission to the Church this Easter and
what begins to unfold, most intensively, next week: Holy Week.
May we now prepare for this Passiontide, for our Passover,
and draw afresh from the life of Jesus Christ.
