Homily for Wednesday in Holy Week
“A Love That Saves”
by
Margaret D. McGee
Delivered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Port Townsend,
Washington on April 4, 2007.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 69: 1-2, 7-15, 22-23
Hebrews 9:11-15, 24-28
John 13:21-35
![Image courtesy of Gary Gocek [www.gocek.org]](crown-thorns%20--%20Colored.jpg) The
Psalm sets the tone and lets us know right up front what kind of
mess we’re in. “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to
my neck. I sink in deep mire … the flood sweeps over me … shame
has covered my face … I am the subject of gossip for those who
sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.”
Shame, and fear of shame. This is a hard place to go, and I
don’t want to go there.
When Isaiah says, “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my
cheeks to those who pulled out the beard,” he’s talking about
that same place. It was usual in Isaiah’s day for Hebrew men to
wear full beards, and pulling out a beard, besides being quite
painful, was an attack on a man’s dignity. So the prophet is
speaking of being in the hands of people who hurt him and who
want to shame him.
The collect reminds us that Jesus spent his final hours in that
very place. “Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his
body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon.” Then it goes
on to make a request that’s very difficult for me to say
whole-heartedly. “Give us grace to accept joyfully the
sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that
shall be revealed…”
When I first read the collect, I winced and turned away. I don’t
like to think about anyone being whipped and spit upon, much
less Jesus. And to accept joyfully my own pain and humiliation?
Please.
Shame, and fear of shame. This is a hard place to go, and I
don’t want to go there.
Course, it’s not as if I don’t know the way. Not as if I’ve
never been. We start going to that place at a young age, and
once we’re there, it can feel as if there’s no way out.
Second grade. You remember how in elementary school, you had to
raise your hand to go to the bathroom? I don’t know how I got in
this frame of mind, but I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t like
for anybody to know that I had to go to the bathroom. So I’d
wait for recess, or wait for lunch. I’d hold it. And, one day,
seated at my desk during Show & Tell, I waited too long. The
dam broke, and I wet my pants right there in front of everybody.
I remember the moment when the kid who was up front doing his
Show & Tell realized what had happened. It may have been the
sound of drips off my chair that tipped him off. His eyes got
big, and he put one hand over his mouth, and he pointed his
finger right at me. I can see him today. Steve Warner was his
name. Then the teacher realized what was happening, and she
hustled me out of the room and sent me home for a change of
clothes.
At home, my mother was puzzled about the episode. Wasn’t I
allowed to go to the bathroom at school? Well, yes, of course I
was. But I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was too
embarrassed to raise my hand. So she stayed puzzled. I don’t
remember being mocked about it in the playground later, so maybe
the teacher gave the other kids a talking-to while I was gone.
That would be a blessing. And yet, even today I can see Steve
Warner pointing his finger at me, and the look on his face.
I hadn’t thought of that incident for years and years. The
memory came to me while I was studying today's scripture
readings. And once that memory came, it was as if
another dam broke, and other memories flooded out, some from
long ago, others from just last week. Times when I was the one
pointing my finger at someone else. Times when a loved one
counted on me, and I didn’t live up to their trust. They felt
betrayed, and I felt ashamed. Or maybe they didn’t live up to my
trust, and I felt betrayed, and they felt ashamed. Illusions
shattered, relationships wounded by pride, or shame, or the fear
of shame.
It’s a hard place to go, and we may not want to go there, but
the truth is, we live in that hard place for much of our lives.
And
in the gospel, we come to the moment when Jesus serves a piece
of bread to Judas. Satan enters Judas’s heart, and he leaves
this gathering of close friends to arrange for the arrest of his
teacher, who loves him. Judas will live the rest of his short
life in shame, his memory to be held in contempt for generations
to come.
The scene is told with great intimacy. After Jesus, troubled in
spirit, declares that one of the people in this room would
betray him, the gospel says that the disciples looked at one
another. Who could it be? Peter motioned to one of them
– the one whom Jesus loved – who was reclining next to him.
In the King James Version, this disciple is described as
actually “leaning on Jesus’ bosom,” and a verse later as “lying
on Jesus’ breast.” So close. This disciple asks, “Lord, who is
it?” Jesus answers, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of
bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” He dips the bread and
gives it to Judas. Moments later, Judas is out of the room, on
his way.
Then Jesus says something truly extraordinary. Judas is barely
out of the room, when Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man has been
glorified and God has been glorified in him.” Now. Right now. To
‘glorify’ is to make visible the presence of God, and Jesus says
it happens at this moment. He goes on to say, “Little children,
I am with you only a little longer. … I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved
you, you also should love one another.”
He doesn’t say anything about Judas, about how disappointed he is in
him, or how awful it feels to lose your trust in someone close
to you. It’s almost as if Jesus didn’t lose anything, as if
nothing changed from his standpoint between him and Judas. He
says, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one
another.”
Who in that room did Jesus love? Only one disciple is described
as “the one Jesus loved.” But when Jesus tells the disciples to
love one another as he loved them, clearly he’s speaking to
every disciple. He loved them all. Without expecting perfection,
or even ordinary loyalty, he just loved them. Immediately after
this passage, Peter gets all gnarled up in his betrayal of the
Lord. And Jesus, unsurprised, clear-eyed, loves him all the way
through.
To whom in that room did Jesus serve bread? Again, only one is
named – Judas. But again, we know from other Gospel accounts
that Jesus served them all on this night. He served himself to
them, knowing that any one of them might betray him at any time.
They were only human, just like us.
John’s gospel doesn’t say why Judas did what he did. No
motivation is given. Based on that flood of memories I had, I
wonder if Judas might have become suspicious of Jesus’ mission,
or might have wanted to retaliate for some perceived slight to
Judas’ own dignity.
Whatever his motivation – suspicion, a sense of disillusionment,
or disappointment, or just a simple lack of faith – Judas broke
away. He left the room, and then unlike Peter, he couldn’t find
his way back.
In the meantime, in that room, God’s saving grace is present and
visible in Jesus. How? Jesus shows the way when he says, “Love
one another as I have loved you.”
That new commandment rests on an ancient and well-worn path. If
we go back to the psalm, we hear of this path: “But as for me,
my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in
the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me. With your
faithful help, rescue me from sinking in the mire.” And in
Isaiah we hear of this path, when he says, “The Lord God helps
me; therefore I have not been disgraced … It is the Lord God who
helps me; who will declare me guilty?”
On this night, Jesus makes the path visible in the love he
offers everyone in the room. He says, this is how you find the
path and walk on it. Live in my love, as close to me as you can
get, leaning right up against my bosom. This is the safe path
through that terrible place where none of us want to go, and
where, at one time or another, all of us live.
On
this path, you don’t need to be perfect, and neither does anyone
else. If you have to go to the bathroom, it’ll feel fine to
raise your hand, no shame involved. If anyone tries to pull out
your beard, then like Isaiah, like Jesus, you are not disgraced.
Because it’s at that very moment that God’s saving grace and
love can be not only present (which it always is) but also
visible. Visible in a love that holds no illusions about who we
are or what we might do. In this love there is no shame, or fear
of shame.
This
is the love of Christ.
Image for Holy Week courtesy of
Gary Gocek
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