Texts on Maundy Thursday, April 13, 2006
Matthew 26: 17-30
You have probably heard about the “Gospel of Judas” this last week. A very old tattered parchment tells the story of Jesus’ betrayal with a great twist. Taking Judas aside, Jesus warmly praises him for this act, since the death is necessary. Only Judas, goes the story, loved Jesus enough to do the awful deed. The news media have been jumping like children at a party at this possibility that the Bible is all wrong on yet something else. But the media only jump with joy at ideas that make them money. The location of this thrill in finding the Bible false lies out here in the land among the many, not in newsrooms. The same excitement to falsify the Bible drove The Da Vinci Code atop the best-seller lists.
Predictably, the Bible defenders are bearing down on their church flocks all across the land, instructing them in how to think and what to believe. But let us not “go there,” as they say. Bible defense is played with the same ball as Bible offense in the game of “what really happened.” It is a game played in the head, not with the heart. It’s a game played to win, not to love. It’s not worth watching. None of these gospels can ever settle the “video cam” question of what really happened. They weren’t meant to. People write stories to wrestle with bigger questions than those that thrill the news media. Sometimes gospel story writers were wrestling with questions even bigger than they themselves understood.
Judas bears the name of his whole tribe, Judah, whence come the names Judaism and Jewish. Jesus’ disciples were all Jews, of course, but Judas is the disciple who is made to stand for the whole nation. It doesn’t matter whether there “really” was a disciple with his name or not. In the way the story is told, and in the way its early hearers heard it and their descendants kept it and told it, the betrayer Judas stands for a whole nation and its great religious tradition. The very hope of the coming Messiah had grown to a mature spiritual fruit within that tradition. Now, in the figure of Judas, this story–our story–captures the early Christians’ dismay and confusion that their own nation had rejected Jesus, for those early Christians were very often Jews, as you know.
Bible scholars feel quite certain that the author of Matthew’s gospel wrote his stories expressly for Jewish Christians. Can you get a sense for how difficult it is to feel your way into what they of long ago meant and felt when they wrote and retold these stories? Anti-Semitism had nothing to do with it; they were Jews who made “Jew-das” into the betrayer. Neither did they hate their own religious tradition or their prophets or their scriptures. Rather, they were confused and appalled that this man Jesus was rejected by some of his own people. How do you translate that?
Those who play the heartless game of what really happened believe that no translation is needed–just the facts, ma’am. But the literalists who claim they never interpret have so often brought blood on our hands. They knew that slavery was God’s will. They knew that women must never speak in church. They knew that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death. So for hundreds of years, all across Europe, they persecuted and tortured the Jews in pogroms–because the Bible said so. And said so and said so until the consequence of evil, which lies ever close in the unexamined heart, burst in the bloom of doom we call the Holocaust. If the Spirit of Jesus watches what we do in his name, does the Spirit weep?
For the peace of the world, it is essential that you practice translating your old stories by taking them from their museum mountings, where whole nations worship at the altar of their pretense to know what really happened, or what side God is on. You take the story down from its high place and step into it. After all that has happened on earth these two thousand years, we see first that to tell the story right, Jesus’ betrayer needs a new name if we are to read it for our own spiritual benefit. Say it: The betrayer’s name would be . . Chris. Christopher. Christine; for now ours is the religion with the long history and the infinitely precious Scripture. Ours is the religion which is asked to receive God’s anointed–the Christ. Ours is the religion split in amazement over some who seem to think the name of the Messiah a license to make war with their enemies of every stripe, rather than to love the enemy, as the Word so plainly spoke. “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”(Matt 9.13)
Matthew’s story has it that Jesus said, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me.” At that table long ago–who was that not? Did they not all fall away? At our table here tonight, who is not in the party of those who have been bidden to dip their hand in the bowl with their Lord? And who of us has not fallen away? Still, there is a difference between falling asleep or failing in courage on the one hand and on the other, deciding to be rid of this Light tonight, in exchange for a few pieces of silver. How do you translate that difference? You step into the story like a parable. You take your part. You bring to mind how absolute, how eternally serious, how present is the decision before you right now, to remain awake, to watch with your Lord. You take your seat at the table, hearing yourself say “Surely not I” with them all. And you listen for your life.
Yet who can do this, unless Love first bid us sit?
Love
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
–by George Herbert
delivered at Central Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York
©Stephen H. Phelps, April 2006
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