Tag: Judas

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March 2016

March 22nd 2016: Luke 22: 39-53

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

Have you ever prayed so earnestly that it was as if you were sweating blood? In our comfortable Western context, prayer can easily lack intensity. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place where someone sweated like great drops of blood blood in anguished prayer. If they did, we’d probably try and calm them down, make them sit down so as not to distress other people. Jesus, as he does this, is entering the most intense moment, not just of his life, but arguably of all of human history. Still, it’s a detail that can sometimes get brushed over in our cultural of appropriateness.

Jesus finds his disciples sleeping ‘because of grief’ and demands that they pray ‘earnestly that you might not come into the time of trial’. If we do pray like this, it’s easy for us to slip into feeling selfish or to descend into self-absorption. Recently, the concept of the enemy ‘prowling like a lion that he might devour some’ has been much on my mind. As I write this in front of the backdrop of the unfolding event of the terror attacks in Brussels this morning, I find myself thinking again of how accepting I have become of ‘times of trial’, moments when evil rears its head and wreaks as much havoc as it possibly can, seeking not just to devour individuals, but whole communities, cultures and ideologies. Evil is part of our world, our lives, but it is never acceptable. We should do all we can to stand against it, recognising, especially this week of all weeks, that we have one who is for us and who went to the Cross to defeat evil. In our own lives, in our thoughts and actions, in our words, in our politics, in the choices we make with money, let us not be people who repay evil for evil. Let’s instead be people who pray earnestly for those who find themselves in a time of trial, that the merciful love of God would enfold them. Let’s be people who, when faced with evil, repay it with good. Where there is hatred, let’s bring love. Easy in theory, but all so very hard in practice.

Let’s be people who hold true to the one we believe in and love, the Prince of Peace.

 

Categories
March 2016

March 21st 2016: Luke 22:1-23

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

As we enter Holy Week once again, the challenge for the reader is not to understand and explain what and why things happened, but working out which elements of the story we should particularly focus on this particular year’s journey to the cross. The scale and scope of the narrative and its consequences are too great for us to comprehend its entire breadth at all times, or at least they are for me. Reading the story of Judas deciding to betray Jesus this morning, the eye is drawn to the question at the passage’s end. These people had lived with and followed Jesus for three years. How could any of them betray him?

All of us have experience of committing to a person, group or institution and ending up disappointed. As those who welcomed Jesus in to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday felt let down by the lack of a strong and mighty saviour and disavowed him on Good Friday under pressure from the Jewish authorities, so it can be easy for us to decide that, as we haven’t got what we wanted from those we put our trust in, what we were promised, even, then we’re well within our rights, our entitlement, to go and find what we deserve elsewhere.

I often wonder about the emotional life of Jesus, about his feelings. We’re given small glimpses into it in the Gospels, but not on this particular occasion. Here’s one who has come to bring about a new covenant between God and his people, betrayed by those he loved, who he has taught, related to, lived his life with and for.

And yet for all our deal making and seeking to better ourselves without reference to him, or even perhaps whilst attempting to use him as a bargaining chip, Jesus went to the cross anyway. He chose to die, to lay down his life for his friends. That’s the call of the Christian life, to accept the gifts God gives us, and then to live in such a generous way that those gifts are shared as widely as possible. We are to lay down our lives, not seeking to protect ourselves or feather our own nests.

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

August 19th 2014: Acts 1:15-26

Read Acts 1:15-26 here

When people fail and fall, as Judas has done, requiring the choosing of a new member of the 12 here, we can be left in quite a quandary. Obviously, in the case of Judas, his fall had been heavy and significant. At the same time, as Peter explains here, Judas’s betrayal actually fulfils part of what has been prophesied in regard to the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

This is one point where we can find ourselves in difficulties of understanding around failing and falling in our Christian lives. I’m not a huge fan of the doctrine of predestination (either single or double predestination) but it is undeniable that whereas our perspective is only ours, God has a view of our lives and circumstances which is far wider, far more knowledgeable, and far more in control of things than ours ever will be. That isn’t to say that failing and falling is something we should try to do because it doesn’t matter, far from it. But when we do, it is not beyond the reach or love of God to bring about redemption and reconciliation.

Second, and following from this, the Church is bigger than any one of us. It is not about any of us individually. It is about a community of people,  holy nation, called to live lives surrendered to God, with a direction of travel towards Him, and lived in such a way as to draw others in to relationship with Him. One day soon, though, none of us will still be here. All the worry, anxiety, energy, power-brokering and so on that we will have done to try and push our own claims or theological points of view will cease, as we entrust the care and growth of the Church to the next generation. It is not for us to conserve our view of Church as we see it, or as we wish it was. It is for us to rejoice as God reveals ever more of Himself to His children with each passing generation.

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

August 1st 2014: Luke 22:1-13

Read Luke 22:1-13 here

As Jesus’ story moves towards its conclusion and He and the disciples enter Jerusalem for the Passover, it might be easy to focus on the betrayal of Judas, and how this parallels our own betrayal of Jesus in our day to day lives. This, however, would be cheap, and would take away from the power of the narrative. We do, all of us, have a tendency towards living our own way, falling short of the glory of God, and the glory set before us in Christ. However, something else has grabbed my attention this morning:

The priests and scribes sought to find a way of killing Jesus “because they were scared of the people”. I’d not noticed this before when reading this passage. The priests, societal power-brokers and gate-keepers, weren’t scared of Jesus himself, they were scared of the impact He, and His message, were having. This indicates that the message was finding traction, that it was causing  a stir. The fear exhibited here also indicates some were worried about the upsetting of the status quo, the debasement of the truths of faith which they held dear. Placed in this context, in spite of the fact that there were dozens of “Messiahs” active in Israel at the time of Jesus, it is perhaps obvious why something needed to be done. Silence the leader and the rabble will go away.

Except it didn’t turn out like that, did it.

We live in a culture today where it’s ok to believe pretty much anything, except that Jesus is Lord. There is a societally-driven moral code which is pre-disposed to the expression of outrage, distrust and so on. It can also often show great compassion and care for the “other”. We like, though, to be right, to show our compassion from a position of strength, and to keep those we disagree with where we can see them. I’d go as far as to say that if you disagree with the prevailing cultural norm, on whatever issue, there’s an undercurrent now of a wish that you, and your opinion, would go elsewhere, or better still not exist.

Isn’t this how Jesus and His disciples were treated? Most people who aren’t Christians think the whole thing is preposterous nonsense. Perhaps they’re right (I don’t think so) but it’s amazing how the minutest inkling of a fear that it might be true motivates whole swathes of culture to continually seek, with increasing desperation, ways of proving that it must all be bunkum. If you are a Christian, you’re silly. If you’re a Christian you lack the common sense, faculties of logic, fortitude etc to rise above the crass set of beliefs which must have been forced upon you anyway.

Or put it another way, society is actually scared of you. What if your belief is right? If your God exists? If Jesus is real and He did do what He said He would do? What then? If you believe today, stand firm and confident.