The Rev. Dr. Jan C. Heller Year A, Maundy Thursday, John 13:1-17, 31-35 13 April 2017 Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, WA So, it s now Thursday in Holy week. What have we missed on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday? Quite a lot, it turns out. As we heard this past Sunday, immediately after Jesus planned and politically subversive entry into Jerusalem, he went to the Temple and he didn t go there to meditate. That very day in Matthew s account, and on Monday in Mark s, we are told, He entered the temple of God and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons (11.15). Things were definitely beginning to heat up, and the peoples support of his actions seem to be the only thing that protected Jesus from being arrested on the spot. Undeterred by the Temple authorities, and perhaps surprisingly to those close to him, on Tuesday Jesus returned to the Temple and began a series of highly controversial and confrontational teachings, using a series of parables and riddles, with their not-too-subtle barbs targeting those same authorities. Then, as he s leaving, he makes an even more inflammatory statement in response to a comment by his disciples about the Temple itself, predicting that it would soon be destroyed and that not one stone will be left on another. Wednesday is a quieter, but no less momentous, day. Jesus is at table in Bethany, when an unknown woman entered the room and spontaneously began to anoint his feet with a very expensive ointment. Interestingly, she is presented as the only one around Jesus who understands that he s about to die the disciples are still in denial, it seems. After this, Judas makes his move to betray 1
Jesus which is significant since, at this point, the people s support of Jesus is the only thing keeping the Jewish authorities from arresting him. Finally, we catch up with Jesus today, on Thursday evening, where again we see he has made prior arrangements without informing his disciples, just as had done for the donkey on Palm Sunday, but this time for a room. I rehearse these events not simply because we otherwise would have skipped over them, but also because biblical scholars now believe that Jesus actions on Monday, symbolically enacting the destruction of the Temple, and his last meal with the disciples on Thursday, should be interpreted together; indeed, it is now argued that they can only be understood in terms of each other. The synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke claim that Jesus last meal with his disciples was a Passover meal, and they give us the familiar fourfold action that structures our Eucharistic liturgy Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread and then the wine, after which he connected the meaning of that action with himself and his impending death. But the Gospel of John places the meal a day earlier so that Jesus himself can die as the Passover lamb. John also makes no mention of the four-fold action of Jesus at the meal, but he does introduce the foot washing ceremony, where Jesus gives the disciples an example of what it means to be a leader in his new community, and where he gives them a new commandment as he prepares for his death. Having noted these contrasts among the four gospels, it is also quite possible that Jesus himself felt free to move the Passover celebration to another day, and yet still understand it as a Passover meal with all the associated symbolism in fact, this last observation gets us back to the point of it all, the new covenant Jesus was establishing with his actions. 2
If we understand Jesus prophetic actions in the Temple as his attempt, not to reform the worship there but, as most commentators now believe, to symbolize God s judgment on the Temple, then Jesus actions at his last meal with the disciples take on an even wider and deeper meaning than is usually attached to them. This last meal looks in two directions as a likely Passover meal, it looks back toward the exodus from Egypt, and as such it symbolized for Jews the return from exile, the forgiveness of sins, and the hope of God s eventual return to the Temple to redeem God s people. But the meal also looks forward, for Jesus, as we note every Sunday in our Eucharistic prayer, was establishing a new covenant with what was then a small group of Jewish disciples who had been called out from the larger Jewish community, and he was associating what, before this time, been accomplished in the Temple redemption and the forgiveness of sins with his own person and with his impending death. We may take this for granted as Christians, but for Jesus Jewish followers, this was yet another highly significant symbolic twist or novelty introduced by Jesus himself. It suggests that Jesus viewed his own death as the means through which God s kingdom would finally arrive and through which God would at last become king again, and this not just for the Jews, but for the entire world indeed, we believe he was embodying in his own person and actions the climax of all God was doing through the election of Israel to restore creation and humankind. And this suggests again that, indeed, Jesus saw himself as the Messiah. Now, if we re sitting here thinking, we ll of course, isn t that what the church has always taught? then, again, we re missing how utterly astounding and audacious Jesus actions were in the context of first century Judaism. Like the long- 3
expected Messiah, he was to inaugurate the kingdom of God with a genuine battle his last and greatest battle but, as we saw in his temptation, he did not conceive of it as a battle directly with the current corrupt Jewish leaders or the Roman oppressors of the Jews, but with evil itself, personified by the accuser, the Satan. And, contrary to all expectations about the Messiah, Jesus would not fight the battle with arms or armies. He would turn the other cheek, he would go the extra mile, and he would take up his cross even as he would pray for his enemies and his persecutors. He would, in other words, follow his own teaching, and he would follow it all the way to the end. He would defeat evil by letting it do its worst to him (NT Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 565). I want to stop here and ask us to contemplate this, for I fear we may miss its significance. Jesus seemed to believe he would defeat evil by letting evil have its way with him indeed, all the way to betrayal, to torture, to public humiliation, and finally, to a cursed death on a Roman cross. If you and I were trying to defeat evil in the world, is this the way we would choose? How does one defeat evil? Jesus believed evil could be and should be resisted when necessary and possible, but he also believed it would never finally be defeated by violence he evidently believed he could not defeat evil with what regarded as an evil means. As we know, this is why, in the end, he was ultimately rejected by the Jewish people he left Rome in charge. By definition, then, he simply couldn t have been the Messiah. But Jesus saw the Romans and, indeed, his own corrupt leaders, as but symptoms of a much deeper, much more systemic problem, the problem of evil itself. So again, I ask us, what would defeat evil? How would we defeat it? 4
There may be only one thing that can finally defeat evil. Jesus thought he knew what it was, and he passed it on to his disciples during their last meal together: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you... Love, says Jesus, is the only thing stronger than evil, the only thing that finally evil cannot overcome. This is too simple, we may think, or too naïve, but is there anything else but love that could defeat evil? Now, if you re anything like me, having been trained in ethics I immediately think about the usually justified use of violence to protect innocents or in selfdefense this is the basis of theories of just war developed by later Christian theologians. But we re not sure how Jesus would have responded to such questions it seems likely he would have resisted such reasoning. We do know he believed that the nationalism that motivated violent Jewish resistance against the Romans was both morally wrong and politically foolish. And we know that his love motivated him, perhaps paradoxically, to choose the cross as the way both to defeat evil and to redeem the world. We have more to say about all this as Holy Week moves toward its climax. For Jesus, the week was also moving toward a climax a climax of all that he was hoping to achieve: the inauguration of the kingdom of God and the return of God as the rightful king to Israel. He seemed believed he would accomplish this by literally defeating evil with love. Can we begin to grasp the depth and scope this audacious vision? It is utterly astounding. And this love would change the world. This love would be the sign that God s kingdom had truly come to earth. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. 5