Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
April 7, 2004, Wednesday in Holy Week, Year C
by Donna Trebilcox

Isaiah 50:4-9
Psalm  69
Hebrews 9:11-15, 24-28
Matthew 26:1-5, 14-25

             On the night he was betrayed he [Jesus] took bread….  These familiar words say everything we can know and experience about Holy Week.   Night.  Betrayal.  Bread.  They say it all.  It is while Jesus is having supper with his disciples on the anniversary of this very night that he identifies his betrayer.  Jesus GIVES the bread to Judas in John’s Gospel, but in Matthew’s Gospel Judas dips his hand in the bowl with Jesus and TAKES the bread.  In either case, whether Judas chose to betray Jesus by Matthew’s account, or whether Judas was chosen to betray Jesus by John’s account, we recognize the seriousness of this betrayal even by its context, for Jesus and his disciples are at meal enjoying table fellowship.  

             So just how serious is this betrayal?  Well, think of your own experience of table fellowship.  For me, for instance, food is love.  I have been known to fall in love with people who prepare a meal for me.  Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it is always an honor for me to be invited by someone to dinner, and I consider it an act of honor to extend an invitation to someone to have dinner with me.  I enjoy a meal with people I know and love and trust, people with whom I feel connected in some meaningful or intimate way.  However, I also find that sharing food with a stranger is one of the best ways I can get to know someone.  We demonstrate this each Sunday here at Holy Apostles by the food and hospitality we extend to each other and to the stranger.  I have found that sharing my life while sharing food is an act of grace for me, even with the stranger.  Betrayal simply does not enter into my categories of hospitality.  Now, I admit that I might be a little old fashioned about these things in this day and age of fast food and fast friends, but I am in good company with the Jewish tradition of table hospitality.  For Jews, sharing in a meal was the highest honor people could bestow on one another.  The sharing of food and drink, even with the stranger, was a blessing, an act of thanksgiving, an act of intimate trust and good will.  The fact that Jesus identifies his betrayer as they are eating together indicates a serious offense.  It is no wonder in Matthew’s account the disciples respond, “Am I the one?” in shock and fear when Jesus tells them that one of them will betray him.  In John’s account, Jesus knows who his betrayer will be, and he even encourages him to do what he has to do.  This is consistent with John’s understanding of God’s purpose in sending Jesus into the world.  Jesus’ purpose is to glorify God.  Jesus knows that the consequences of Judas’ betrayal will ultimately glorify God, which means to say that God will be revealed to us in Jesus’ death as he has been revealed to us by his life.   So, what does that revelation look like?  Who is this God Jesus reveals to us by his suffering and death? 

 Well, I for one am certain this revelation will not look like the God shown to us in “The Passion of Christ” as told by Mel Gibson.  There is no place in the life of Jesus where God is revealed as one who will redeem the world’s violence by the use of violence.  And if I thought for one moment that God could not find a more humane or God-like way to redeem God’s fallen creatures then I would not be able to worship such a deity—a God who delights in betraying his own good purposes for creation—a God who would betray his own Son—a God who requires violent and deadly atonement to satisfy the debt of sin.  If this is the God of Jesus, then we are looking at a double betrayal, for Jesus’ Son is not a reflection of his Father, but his antithesis, for  Jesus’ very life is a testimony to love and forgiveness and self-giving.  But if Jesus is a reflection of the glory of God as John’s Gospel indicates then God is not about betrayal or vengeance, nor is God about the suffering and death which come from it.  What is revealed to me about God in Jesus’ life is that we were redeemed and reconciled to God by Jesus’ birth, not by his violent and bloody death.  What is revealed to me about God by Jesus’ own suffering and death is that God grieves for us in the pain and suffering and death of betrayal, and more than anything God desires to redeem us in it, and show us a new way to live in the difficult and damaging circumstances of our lives.  Jesus reveals a God who is willing to die for the love he has borne to us rather than return violence for violence.  God would have us know by such revelations that his Son was arrested by human betrayal, he was tried and convicted by human injustice, and he died by the hands of human violence.  As much as some would like to believe God wanted his Son to die, as violently as necessary, to satisfy a requirement of sacrificial atonement for our sins, and as much as we would like to blame the Jews for carrying out his command, Jesus makes us face a very different truth.  The truth is, we betrayed Jesus.  We tried him and convicted him of crimes against our humanity, crimes of passion we might call them.  He loved us and cared for us too deeply, perhaps, and his challenge to us to live up to our potential as children of God made in God’s image was just too difficult.  We killed him, and in a sense we continue to kill him because of our fear of him—because of what he requires of us, and how that might change us.  We are afraid of what we might become, and we were afraid of what the consequences might be for the way we live our lives.

 I witnessed such fears often in my work as a teacher in a public high school.  Especially among boys who would take a jest as an insult, or whose anger toward someone would provoke a fistfight.  I am certain that most of the boys I encountered throwing punches at each other did not want to be engaged in it.  It was even somewhat sadly amusing to watch them take jabs at each other and then look around hoping a teacher was nearby to stop them.  They especially liked female teachers to step in, because a code of honor forbid them to throw a stray punch in her presence, although I caught a punch once; the fight stopped abruptly, and I forgave the young man immediately.  That really surprised him.  I don’t remember how often I asked one or both of these pugilists why they didn’t just walk away.  I would even suggest on occasion that they just forgive each other and let it go.  But this is not what the world expects of adolescent boys.  Turning the other cheek was just too hard, even though it was preferable; it had too many difficult consequences.  They were afraid of what they might become in the eyes of the world by walking away.  They were afraid of becoming like Jesus.

            Becoming like Jesus requires so much that the world rejects.  For one thing, it requires us to die to ourselves and to reject the opinions of the world.  Holy Week reminds us that living a life worthy of Christ requires that we die with Christ so that we can be reborn in him.  Holy Week is the time to remember, not only why Jesus died, but also why he lived and how God was revealed to us in that life and in that death.  We need to remember that in a sense Jesus continues to die daily by our acts of betrayal, by our systems of injustice and by our passion for violence.  But we must also know that Jesus continues to live in us, and in him we reveal God’s purposes for creation to the world by the very words we speak and the very actions we take in his name.

              Wednesday of Holy Week is an especially good day for remembering, because this is the night of deep darkness for us—the night of Tenebrae.  The night we betray him with abandon, and abandon him utterly to death only to find that in fact we have betrayed ourselves and we have abandoned our only hope for living into the goodness of God’s kingdom on earth.  On this night we embrace the darkness of our sin in the Passion of Christ’s suffering and death.  We suffer the sting of betrayal and the loneliness of abandonment, and like the psalmist we will find no sympathy or comfort in it—until.  Until we recognize that it is the light of Christ, represented by the one candle which stays lighted and is returned to us after it is removed during Tenebrae.  This is the light of Christ which will show us who we are in our darkness, and save us from it.   We will recognize that light as we die with Christ and are buried with him over the next three days.  It is the light which is also healing us and renewing us for love and service in washing each other’s feet on Maundy Thursday, and for love and service to the world as we pray the Solemn Collects on Good Friday.  So it is that each day, as we journey toward the light of Christ in our Easter Vigil we find ourselves becoming Christ to each other and for the world.  And as  Jesus promises in John’s Gospel, we are also becoming the light of Christ by his reflection, to reveal God to the world.

            But tonight it is right for us to consider our darkness, to live with our betrayal and abandonment, and to journey with Christ to his death.  We need to sense our brokenness in his broken body, so that we can see the possibility for our lives in his body broken for us each time we receive him in the bread of communion.  “On the night he was betrayed he [Jesus] took bread….”   Night.  Betrayal.  Bread.  On this night of betrayal let us prepare to receive him in the bread as we journey with him through the darkness of death into the light of resurrection.  

Amen.

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