Resurrection ruminations (2) depth of field

Thursday in Easter Week

April 16th

READING: Luke 24: 35-48

Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

REFLECTION

As we move further into Luke’s resurrection appearance stories, we find him working hard to convey, for want of a better word, the reality of a period of surreal experiences. Actually, borrowing from the world of art, I want to say “super-real,” reality over and above that which is our normal experience. The “super-realist” school of art emphasized the subjects of their art at the expense of any distraction: the shop, the can of baked beans, the cat, whatever, was all that mattered. In photography the same effect can be achieved, to some extent, by altering depth of field (there’s a related issue called “circle of confusion.” which may also be a useful metaphor for resurrection theology, but I might skip that for now!). Reality greater than mere actual.

Mathematician-priest John Polkinghorne famously used the analogy of a stone in water to convey the “super-reality” of the resurrection. The super-real passes through the merely real. Physician Luke didn’t think of that, though with phrases such as “it is I myself” and depictions of Jesus appearing and disappearing from the realms in which the encounters took place he is wanting to communicate the same idea. For me, of course it’s easy to believe. Though illogically claiming to be rationalist in some ways, I have no understanding of anything mathematical, let alone other sciences, and (equally and oppositely!) no difficulty believing in the super-real breaking into reality in God’s chosen moment. Not often, mind you: just sacred moments (like when a horse told Anne and me to get married, but that’s another story). In “thin places” when the power of the beyond breaks through, occasional liturgies similarly, in occasional music, too. For me, in the sacred rite of Eucharist, this becomes an always (well so far, for 40+ years). That’s not everyone’s experience, I know. And at the moment it’s pretty much no-one’s experience (or should be, theologically and legally speaking). So we must sit with that pain … for now.

Ancient, pre-Christian spiritualities, especially in Australia, have taught me vast hints about the limits of science. For me there was no thinner place nor thinner time than where and when heaven kissed earth in the Resurrection. Not a committee meeting saying, “Yup, Jesus was pretty good, let’s carry on his work” but the sheer weight of divine love transcending death (and walls) and impelling us to bear witness. So we must, however stumblingly.

Resurrection ruminations (1) strange meanderings

Wednesday in Easter Week

April 15th

READING: Luke 24: 13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION

As we slow down a little from Holy Week and rejoice together in the mysteries of Resurrection, may I take a pause in these reflections to tell you one or two elements that form them? Scholars these days will often speak about the “reading site” of writers and readers engaging with a text. They will talk about the “lens” through which we read. Our life story, our location, what’s going in the world and in our lives. Almost all texts are alive with these influences – as readers of Scripture we might argue the biblical texts are “extra alive,” or “sharper than a two edged sword,” as the author of Hebrews put it when she was delivering her powerful sermon to a slightly nonchalant Christian people.[1]

So, as I brought you some reflections for Holy Week I did so out of my backstory as well as our shared circumstances. The latter are far more important, though the former will have shaped all that I shared. And as we move on into post-Easter lockdown and I continue to share thoughts with you there are a couple of the former influences that I should explain, before you throw these pixels at the cat.

In the first place, my training in biblical interpretation emerges very much from a literary critical tradition approach. Such an approach moves from “this is what happened” to “this is the information that the author, some years after the events described, wants us to work with, enflamed by the Spirit of God, as we extrapolate gospel meaning for us today from the Jesus stories that have been circulating amongst Jesus-followers these past several years.”

The gospel writers were not envisaging a “for us today” such as we are experiencing. But there is more in common between the first century and ours than there is that is different.
Pandemic? While it was still seventy years or so away the Antonine Plague in 165 c.e. would slaughter 5 million people across Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ringing more death knells for the overreached and decomposing Roman Empire. And, while that was still a few years off, the ancient world remembered only too well the plague that swept through Libya, Ethiopia and Egypt, eventually entering Athens during the Peloponnesian War, killing roughly half the city’s population, including its general, Pericles.

The ancient world also knew muddlement of misinformation. Conspiracy theories, leaders of the world who reversed the names and weight of truth and lies, megalomaniacs, narcissists, rumour-mongers, drama queens, as well as fighters for truth, martyrs for hope, bearers of sacrificial love, justice and compassion.

So, as I often cite, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

So much then, for history. What then of two, then three travellers, walking to Emmaus?

REFLECTION

Luke sets about highlighting some interesting features as he tells this story. Like all the post-Easter stories this one breaks out of the constraints of normality. Some scholars tend to have a “yeah it didn’t really happen” response to this: “I haven’t encountered people disappearing when they blessed, broke and delivered bread, so clearly it’s a fairy tale.”

I don’t take that approach. I don’t know what happened … lives were dramatically transformed by the post-Easter encounters, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t think, though, that the two travellers sat down, had a sandwich and a chinwag, and decided they better go and cheers the spirits of the Jerusalem disciples with some fabricated palaver. No: the dramatic changes I have experienced in my life over 40+ years of faith haven’t included people disappearing too often, but neither have they been restricted to mere logical, prosaic events.

So, what does Luke want us to know? Other kinds of scholar tried to de-mystify aspects of this story: the travellers, Cleopas and his mate, were walking towards the setting sun so they didn’t recognize the stranger (see v. 16). Maybe. But something bigger than a setting sun is happening here. The travellers were walking away from fellow-disciples: maybe that’s significant? They use a touch of embellishment when they suggest “everyone in Jerusalem knows.” In reality, outside the Christian scriptures, there’s not a lot of indication that anyone took much notice of the Jesus-happenings. But, slowly, they changed the world. Luke couldn’t have seen how much they changed the world, but certainly even when he was writing lives were being changed and faith communities were growing. Why?

Cleopas and his companion[2] explore, in conversation, the events that they have observed. The stranger who expounds on these events by use of the Hebrew Scriptures (v. 27) broadens their world view, heightens their understanding, and then appears to complete the lesson with some form of blessing involving a shared meal. We wouldn’t have to be geniuses to discern that some sort of “agape” meal, if not full eucharistic event, is taking place here, with the word broken open then the bread broken, and enlightenment dawning (and the stranger disappearing from sight, but not memory).

There are a myriad more details to explore here, but I’ve probably pushed the envelope enough already. But so what in our locked down, virus-afflicted, apocalyptic present?

We can’t, most of us, share meals with friends or strangers at the moment. We can share love. We can share hope. Within the bounds of common sense (and common sense civic law) we can be a resurrection-proclaiming people. We can pray and live and act as a people who hold to a hope that is greater than the confusion and despair that has dominated our pixels and airwaves. We can practice the “r u ok?” that we have learned many times even before Covid-19. And we can know, even if our civilization is undergoing incomprehensible implosion and our church is quivering and lives are being lost at least around the world if not in our own immediate sphere, we can know that we can, like Cleopas and Mary, leap up and speak love and hope to our small worlds.

Because that’s Luke’s biggest message. Tell. Because that is how you and I have heard, how our lives were transformed, how hope expanded across the globe and across centuries. “That same hour they got up and told.” And so can we: with words if necessary, but with every fibre of our resurrection life being.

(Tomorrow we will return to briefer reflections ... Thanks for tackling the journey).

---

[1] That, by the way, was in part a self-interested flag to alert you to my book on Hebrews, which is available from on-line booksellers even in a time of lock-down, and could give you food for thought in these strange times. Entertaining Angels is available from all on-line booksellers in Kindle or physical forms!

[2] Some say it may have been his wife, Mary, and some heart-warming art depicts this gender re-balancing view: see https://artandtheology.org/2017/04/28/the-unnamed-emmaus-disciple-mary-wife-of-cleopas/

Easter reflections

Happy Easter!

It was never my practice, in about 30 years of parish ministry, to preach a sermon on Easter Day. This was in part a kind of “marketing” strategy: I use the word cautiously. Throughout those years Easter still had a residual hold on many in the community, and a large number of individuals and families would head off to church, perhaps to please Granny, perhaps because there was this memory of some sort of faith connection from Mum and Dad’s youth, a faint memory that it was the done thing and couldn’t, surely, be all bad.

To be honest, often it was. I heard of long dreary sermons, hell-fire and damnation condemnations, page shuffling morasses of confusions. In some places where the liturgy was profoundly beautiful to the regulars it was dense and meaningless to the irregulars, and all too often there was nothing more than some scraps of A4 paper for children to draw Easter eggs on.

And of course there were exceptions.

But in any case I decided that Easter is beyond words, resurrection is beyond words. So I settled for music, or even dance (on the rare occasions I could find a genuinely faith-enflamed trained dancer). Sometimes just a poem, or a reading, for example, from C.S. Lewis’s wildly hope-filled depiction of the humans and other creatures running pell-mell into the new, resurrection Narnia (from The Last Battle,) or Tennyson’s joy-filled “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” 

Because words were not enough. Words sometimes sank the joy of Easter. Good liturgy has many quite beautiful hope-filled words: more were not needed.

I’ve been largely out of parish ministry for a few years now, since one of my own Good Friday – Easter journeys. (As it happens I was leading Easter services for the last couple of years, but that’s another story). But the Easter hope-filled joy won’t leave me. And even in the midst of Covid-19 I still find myself seized by resurrection hope.

So in these pixellated pages I share with you three reflections that I have been privileged to share this year.

1. A link to my biblical reflections written for the Diocese of Dunedin, here
2. A link to my reflections on Easter Day, and those of my colleagues  (scroll down)
3. A link to a broadcast I was honoured to record for local community radio station OAR-FM for this day (scroll for 12th April podcast – (once posted, some time after 0830 on that day!) …

 What follows is the script to that last link, in the hope that it may in its own way be something of a “Broken Moment” for you, even without sound and without many of our normal experiences of Easter, as Easter hope breaks the tomb of a Good Friday, Covid-19 world.

SERMON NOT PREACHED AT ALL!

NOT EVEN PREACHED IN AN UPPER ROOM

TO A COMPUTER AND TO AN INTERNET

BUT, FROM, EASTER DAY (April 5^th) 2020

but the text of a …

RADIO CHURCH BROADCAST

OTAGO ACCESS RADIO OAR-FM

0830 SUNDAY 12^th APRIL, 2020

Tēna tatou, haere mai, haere mai, haere mai ki te rā tapu, e ki te hāhi reo irirangi, Mo te « Radio Church » Ko Michael Godfrey toku ingoa.

Welcome to you, whoever and wherever you are, welcome to Sunday and welcome to Radio Church. My name is Michael Godfrey. Great to be with you, “with” with all its strange connotations, in these weird times.

Welcome too, to Easter.

[Have a listen to “The Easter Song”  … Very 1970s, but it was in its time a joy-filled explosion of Easter hope and touched many lives with its message]

Easter. Forgive me for a moment if I travel to another world that many of us remember faintly:

Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. [From Alice in Wonderland]

I’m not sure what Charles Dodgson, Lewis Carol, had been ingesting when he wrote the Alice books, but he was a master of words, and he took us into a world far beyond most of our imagining. A fantastical world, certainly a world very different to that into which gospel-writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John take us. But like them he only had words to covey his scene.

[Have a listen, if you like, to Jewel’s “Goodbye Alice in Wonderland”  … in it she explores the pain of hope and innocence lost]

Jewel Kircher, in a quite autobiographical album, penned an emotionally laden song, “Goodbye Alice in Wonderland,” in which she is bidding goodbye to a fantasy world that had left her bewildered and hurt. Bad fantasy, even bad mystery, can do that. French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre used the phrase “mauvais fois,” bad faith, for this. But faith does not have to be bad – even when it is faith in one who many dismiss or mock as an “invisible friend.”

The gospel writers struggled with words to tell of an experience they and their fellow-believers had undergone some decades earlier. The words they came up with take us into a world beyond words. Like Jewel’s song Alice in Wonderland their world of resurrection hope can be meaningless and treacherous pie-in-the sky, mauvais fois. In the hands of some the Christian resurrection stories become an excuse to avoid reality: to spread Covid-19 recklessly by holding meetings that endanger the lives of countless thousands, as we’ve seen recently in the United States (though not exclusively there).

The resurrection story-tellers struggle for words to convey some life-changing experience that a handful of early Christians had undergone. Some who read the words and images of the resurrection of Jesus take them as an excuse to be, as the saying goes, so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly use, or worse, they become utterly destructive of human society and the greater, natural world.

But these word-pictures of the gospel writers have also inspired greatness, life- and world-changing greatness.

Something happened in the lives of those  first word-challenged believers: something beyond words.

[Have a listen, if you like, to the last movement – about six minutes from the end of this link – of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.]

Amongst other words in the Resurrection Symphony Mahler includes the line “On the wings I have gained / I shall soar with ardent love.” Here we break out of prose, out of factuality, into the words that are beyond words, words of awe … and mystery … and love. Sometimes some of us need to believe in hope beyond sight. When we are witnessing quite apocalyptic scenes all around us, the wrath and destruction wrought by an invisible virus and in many places aided and abetted by irresponsible behaviour and even leadership, sometimes we want to believe in something greater than lives cut off in horrendous circumstances.

Seven days ago, in an online sermon, I made some dark suggestions: Let us stay, I suggested, with the death of hope ...

Not an ersatz or false death, but death. Real death.

Death like the deaths of those countless souls dying, separated from loved ones because draconian regulations now rightly forbid basically all family contact while victims are dying of coronavirus. 

Death, mind you, like a myriad other forms of death:

• Death like those died in the hell-holes of war.
• Death like those died in concentration camps.
• Death like those died in the Black Death.
• Death like the early waves of HIV-Aids.

Not romantic “turn your eyes upon Jesus and beam a beatific smile death” but death, tormented death: death like those of NZ's obscenely high suicide and domestic violence rates.

Real death. Your death, my death, either of which may or may not be peaceful or pretty.

Much of Christianity tries to sidestep harsh realities – which is a wee tad surprising, since the founder of the faith died a brutal, lonely, abandoned death.

But Christians very quickly came to believe even that death, and even the deaths I described in that sermon last week, was – is – not the final word. Unprovable of course, and perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but at its best this strange set of beliefs, this one of six impossible things to believe before breakfast, this has inspired ordinary human beings to greatness.

At its best this strange set of beliefs has inspired ordinary human beings to face the trials of human existence, including Covid-19. Perhaps we too can be inspired to lift our eyes, some of us believers, some not, to recharge our lives with compassion and justice, and to face another day, because a handful of frightened women approached a sealed tomb and found it empty.

Thanks for joining me.

[Have a listen, if you like, to Pete Seeger (or the more digitally enhanced Enya) singing “How Can I Keep from Singing”]

first whispers of a word of hope in a world of ache

This series of postings  are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page.

Holy Saturday

April 11th

READING: There are no Eucharistic readings on this day ... until the Great Vigil.  Let's pause, this day, with the stillness of a dark, sealed tomb

 …  John 19: 38-44

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

REFLECTION

This is the day of timid, tentative desire for belief. Joseph, the secret fear-filled Jesus-follower, and Nicodemus whose tentative puzzlements have gradually brought him closer to Jesus-belief during the course of the Fourth Gospel: these are the unsung heroes of this trembling, sorrow-filled day. Later the women will seize the initiative, but that’s later, and we’ll leave them for now with their grief immeasurable.

One of the most profound theological works I have read is a much undervalued study named Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday. Lewis wrote the book while suffering from terminal cancer, and died during the publication process. 

He is adamant, in this completion of his life’s work, that the death Jesus dies is utterly complete: no clairvoyant or even divinely prescient expectation of resurrection (despite sayings in the gospel narratives, written so much later, that hint at this knowledge). As Lewis says, “He is dead and gone, convicted as a sinner, a rebel and blasphemer, who has paid the price of tragic failure. He simply died, and his cause died with him, quite falsified and finished” (45).  He dies like the whisky priest of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. There is no rescue on the horizon.  

Very dead, utterly dead.

Lewis’ harsh emphasis then gives us permission to sit with the finality of death for 36 hours. Covid-19 hurts. Failure hurts. When Donald Trumps and Dominic Raabs of this world tell us that Boris Johnson will bounce back because he is a fighter they are generating ear-space in which those who die of Covid-19 or anything else are in some way failures (and actually the doctors and nurses: they are the fighters). We failed to fight or fight well enough, and so we die. Cancer? Depression? Life? We fail, they suggest, and so we die.

Mortality hurts. Death and taxes. The news is not rosy. Both are inevitable, and the former offers no rebate. Mortality hurts.

When we are hurting we long for comfort. For many, normally, that will be a touch of a hand, or a hug … Covid-19 of course takes even that away from the dying and the bereaved.

On Holy Saturday we sit with harsh reality. When we die, when our loved ones die, it hurts. You may have sat through those days between the death of a loved one and the rites of farewell. Days of aching stillness, interspersed by bustle and hustle because there is much to be done. Even funeral rites still leave us in the aching void of loss … though they whisper a word of hope. Resurrection rites are a Holy Saturday. 

They are first whispers of a word of hope in a world of ache.

We remain this side of the Parousia (the End, whatever shape that takes). We are caught between The Already and the Not Yet (as Oscar Cullmann put it). But tomorrow will be another day and a new hope will seize us, and amplify our whispers of timid belief, our Joseph and Nicodemus tremors, and grief-filled women will timid-trumpet new hope, and a mad, frenzied dance will begin.

he dies to enter death

This and the postings that follow are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page

Good Friday

April 10th

READING: for full Passion, see John 18:1 - 19:42. Here I reproduce only the final verses ...

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

REFLECTION

It’s worth remembering, on this day as we recall the death of Jesus, that the date is still writ large in many New Zealanders’ lives as the day on which many lives were terminated prematurely in the wreck of the Wahine. Like, in New Zealand consciousness, Erebus, like the Christchurch earthquake, like the Christchurch shootings, or in world consciousness 9/11, there are events by which our assumptions of invulnerability are rent asunder, and we are cast into what the psalmist calls the valley of the shadow of death.

I noted yesterday John’s desire to portray divine control over the events of the Passion. But John, who probably was an eyewitness (to the extent that anyone was) of these final events of the incarnate life of Jesus, is too sensitive a human being to fail to let the deep humanity of the scene break through. The grief of the whanau and closest friends of Jesus was immeasurable—as is the grief of every parent who watches their child die, the grief of every member of a previous generation who watches their successors die (and with them all hope of renewal), the  grief of every human who has watched their closest soul-mate die. John portrays divine control of the events, but depths of divine feeling, too: “woman,” (the term had more tenderness than we can convey here) “Here is your son … here is your mother.” Mary, widowed, bereft of her first-born, ran the risk of the scrapheap. The dying Jesus, embodying love, compassion, justice, would have none of it, and pronounced his final wish. Then, in surrendering to this loneliest of deaths, further scripture is fulfilled (this was important to John), and Jesus dies.

He dies, as I have said previously, as countless are dying now: exposed, deserted, isolated (and this is no reflection on medical teams who will do all they can to comfort and sedate the lonely dying). He dies not somehow to wash us in blood, though that is one metaphor that has sometimes and in some contexts been useful, but to enter our death. He dies to enter our death and every death; lonely deaths, frightened deaths, complacent deaths, triumphant deaths, your death and mine.

And there we will leave him, just as so many of us have had to and will have to leave our loved ones. Let us sit with the pain. Nightfall will come, but the darkness of John 13:30 has never really dissipated, despite the intervening hours, nor will it yet. Let us sit with the pain.

all creation is redeemed

This and the postings that follow are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page

Maundy Thursday

April 9th

READING. John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”  Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am.  So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them ...  Then 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.  Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

REFLECTION

When you read John’s gospel account there’s some key words that John loads with theological meaning. “Hour” and “glory” (including “glorify”) are critical flags that he uses throughout his text. He has some other stylistic quirks, too. In this passage we see the extent to which he wants to demonstrate that Jesus is in control of his fate: this will recur throughout the trial and crucifixion scenes. To read it today it can give a little too much of an impression that Jesus was waltzing towards execution serenely, more or less untroubled by the events befalling him. It is important to set that idea aside; John wants to demonstrate that all is within the purposes of God, but we need to avoid any sense that this is a walk in the park for the suffering Messiah.

The “in control” nature of John’s portrayal of Jesus is designed to underscore the weight of the word “hour.” This is the moment above all (if I can put it that way) in which God’s purpose is fulfilled. Time is fulfilled. The “hour” stretches from the moment John pronounces “and it was night” to the moment the “and it was still dark” of John 20:1 surrenders to the “angels in white” of John 20:12. 

John is using peculiar contrasts to emphasize that it is in the deepest of darkness that light is finally revealed: Christlight reaches to the deepest depths of dark. The “hour” of darkness gives way to eternities of light. At that moment the other great word comes to force ... The glory of God is revealed in the deepest depths of what seems to be “un-God” and all creation is redeemed. All creation is redeemed; even your darkness and mine are caught up into this great movement from night to day.

In response, the very least we can do, Jesus suggests, is to love. Washing feet is a powerful symbol of servant-love. Love your neighbour, even to that extent of humiliation and service. While love is not easy Jesus also tells us, in John’s account, of the Comforter, the Spirit who will draw near and make faith, justice, hope, love ... all these things ... available to us, albeit on the proviso that we abide (another key John-word) in the life of the Risen Christ.

and it was night.

This and the postings that follow are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page

Wednesday in Holy Week

April 8th

READING. John 13:21-32

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.

REFLECTION

Betrayal. So brutal a crime. And this in that most treasured of contexts, a meal amongst trusted loved ones. Manaakitanga invaded, spat upon. Dip it in the dish, my friend, then go, do your deed. We dreamed a dream together, and you have torn it to shreds and flushed it. Betrayal. It was night. In so many ways it was night. Night like the nighttime of Covid-19. Night like the knock of police at the door with sombre faces. Night like the moment the doctor warns us that the news is not good. Night. You’ve had moments of night, I’ve had moments of night. In Christ this is the beginning of darkest night; this is betrayal of perfect love, perfect justice, perfect hope. Betrayal drawn deep, deep into the love-filled heart of God. In the next three days we absorb glimpses of the loneliness of that darkest journey. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” cries God.

I have little interest in metaphors about vicarious sacrifice, paying the devil, whatever. In this moment God-in-Christ enters a darkness; your darkness, my darkness, humanity and creation’s deepest darkness. Blood and guts and horror is part of it for sure, but betrayal and utter, utter aloneness that will descend upon the crucified heart of love, these are greater still.

We have the advantage of a glimpse forward. We’ll do the time these next few days—but we have practised the presence of God before. Deep in the DNA of our faith we know light will burst forth on Sunday. Let us do the hard yards these next few days, yet treasure the knowledge that light will dawn, that Covid-19 and hate and war and cancer and abuse will not have the final word. But let us do the hard yards, if only because then we can glimpse something of the pain of a suffering world and its inhabitants with whom we share our lives and for whom we ache in prayer.