Jesus betrayed – a meditation for Lent

Judas Iscariot was one of the Twelve, chosen by Jesus to be an apostle. As such Jesus considered him  a friend, though from the beginning he knew Judas would betray him. But to the end Jesus reached out to Judas as “friend.”

Nothing hits us harder than when our friends turn their backs on us. In the case of Judas there was no purity in his motives. He had pilfered money from the money bag he was in charge of. And it is possible that he was trying to force Jesus’ hand to bring about his own vision of the kingdom of God which Jesus said was on them, or in their midst, of course with promise of its climax.

Judas betrayed the Son of Man to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council for thirty pieces pieces of silver, not that large amount for that day. He may have been anticipating a much larger boon from the Messiah’s reign to come. We just don’t know. We do know that Judas betrayed Jesus.

There is nothing harder in life than to be betrayed, and the closer one is to us, the more difficult such betrayal is. This was part of Jesus’ lot, to be betrayed by one close to him. Not as something inevitable, contrary to some. No matter what happens in life, somehow God is said to have decreed it. God never tempts people to sin nor decrees sin. Rather, this is in the sense that God is completely in control in everything, while letting the devil and people as a rule to their own will. So though Jesus knew Judas, I don’t believe Jesus saw him as anything less than a friend for whom he wished the best. But unlike the other disciples, Judas had not been cleansed  by the word Jesus had spoken.

Really we have all betrayed Jesus. Whenever we sin we betray him. Whenever we speak in our hearts against a fellow believer we speak against Jesus. And all too often it has  been our agenda we were concerned about, and not the Lord’s.

Tragically Judas hangs himself at the end, and Jesus goes on to his death. Jesus does so with a heavy heart over Judas and all of those who have heard his word and seen his works, but have not believed.

What about us? Are we betraying Jesus in anything we are doing now? Do we claim to live in him, yet not live as he did? Are we living in fellowship with him? And do we understand that he walked the road to the cross out of God’s love for us in spite of our sin, and really because of, and for our sin? To be the offering for sin, good for all who repent and believe.

prayer for Holy Wednesday

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

Jesus our Passover lamb – a meditation for Lent

Our Jewish friends just celebrated Passover. In our Christian Scripture we read that Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Because of our sin we most certainly are fully deserving of judgment and death. But Jesus took that judgment on himself. Jesus is indeed our Passover lamb, freeing us in a new exodus from slavery to sin and death by grace to live in righteousness and obedience to God in a new life.

We remember what Jesus has done for us in his suffering and death with reverent awe, knowing it was because of our sin. And we also celebrate because through Jesus we are set free to live a new life together in him for the world. By God’s grace we want to honor Jesus’ sacrifice for us by turning our backs away from sin to follow him.

Have you trusted in Jesus as your Passover lamb?

prayer for Holy Tuesday

O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

Jesus’ dread – a meditation for Lent

Jesus suffered dread as he faced the cross. There is certainly mystery as to all he suffered. The physical aspect of it was bad enough, the psychological aspect worse, but worst of all was the spiritual aspect. Jesus was taking on himself a road planned in love by God, but a road which involved an abandonment (seemingly) by God, and by man. And it was a road that he alone could take. On him all the sin of the world was placed, as he indeed bore our sins on his body on the tree. Indeed he is the Lamb of God, the atoning sacrifice not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the world.

But Jesus endured because of the joy set before him. Yet going through it, while never flinching from walking the path toward the cross, he was beset not only with great temptation, but also with his own will. What he was facing was more than it seemed he could bear. As one completely human he faced it by the help of the Spirit. Yes, he never lost his Deity, but in the Incarnation he laid down the prerogatives of being God and lived as we do. Of course he did so without sin, but was tempted in all points, and to a degree which no other human ever has been. But Jesus brought all of this to God, all of his weakness and dread to the Father. And he even asked his disciples to watch in prayer with him (Peter, James and John) as well as to pray so they themselves would not fall into temptation. And while he did ask that if possible his Father would remove the cup of suffering and death from him, he nevertheless held firm that not his will, but the Father’s will should be done. This is not at all saying that the Father and the Son were at odds in this. But it is to say that it is the Son who underwent the sufferings as a human. And the Father suffered with the Son, but not as a human. Indeed along with the Incarnation there lies in this the mystery of the Trinity.

As we walk in the way of Jesus we face dread. And sometimes we berate ourselves because we think we should be better. But recall Jesus himself. Though he knew he would be raised from the dead on the third day, yet he dreaded, indeed his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow, even to the point of death over what he faced. It is certainly the case that what we flinch at may seem trivial, and maybe even is relatively speaking. Certainly in comparison to what Jesus faced in bearing the sin of the world. But we don’t know all that underlies it. Certainly we are in a growing process, yet for us the dread and reality is just as troubling, and in our case unlike what Jesus did, we may flinch and give in to our fears, deterring us from God’s path in the way of Jesus.

Key for us is to see our lives as intersecting somehow with his life. We are called in this life to no less than to become like Jesus in his death. We are called to walk with him in the way of the cross. A way opened by him for our salvation, but also for our participation with him so that others might be saved. The mission of God in the world through Christ’s great salvation goes on through the lives of those who follow Christ by the Spirit. We must do this together, praying for each other. Indeed we are the Body of Christ in the world and for the world.

Back to Jesus’ sufferings. Let us remember what he did for us. How much he suffered. And he did it in love both for the Father, for us and for the world. We have the most wonderful privilege to be called to this same path, a path made by Jesus in his once for all salvation, and a path we are to take with Jesus by the Spirit.

How can this become for us our way of life day after day? What models from Scripture and in life do we find of people following? How is this to be a community endeavor, and not just a bunch of “super saints” who do it alone?

Late addition: Of course we must rest by faith in the salvation God has provided for us in Christ. And from that we walk in the way of Jesus.

prayer for Holy Monday

Almighty God, whose dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

N.T. Wright on the meaning of Jesus’ last journey to Jerusalem

Jesus in his entire public career was acting as if he were bringing about the new exodus. God’s people were in slavery; he had heard their cry and was coming to rescue them. Just as the first exodus revealed the previously hidden meaning of YHWH’s name, so now Jesus would reveal the person, one might say the personality, of YHWH in action, embodied in human form. He would bring about the final redemption of God’s people and thereby set in motion the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny to be the light of the whole world.

This great theme comes into prominence in the last great journey of Jesus to Jerusalem. I argued two chapters ago that his action in the Temple constituted a decisive symbol of his messianic claim, his belief that it was his destiny to sum up Israel’s long story in himself. I have suggested above that this action itself belonged to his belief that he was called to replace the Temple with his own presence and activity. I also argued that the great symbolic meal in the upper room was designed to symbolize his belief that through his death the redemption of Israel and thereby of the world would be accomplished. I now propose that these two actions were in fact the climactic symbolic moments, both of course pointing on to the cross and resurrection as their fulfillment, of a larger and yet more significant symbolic action. Jesus’ last great journey to Jerusalem was intended, I suggest, to symbolize and embody the long-awaited return of YHWH to Zion. This journey, climaxing in his actions in the Temple and the upper room, and undertaken in full recognition of the likely consequences, was intended to function like Ezekiel lying on his side or Jeremiah smashing his pot. The prophet’s action embodied the reality. Jesus was not content to announce that YHWH was returning to Zion. He intended to enact, symbolize and personify that climactic event. And he believed and said in appr0priately coded language that he would be vindicated, would share the throne of Israel’s God.

N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 115-116.

prayer for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

silence – a meditation for Lent

A remarkable aspect of Jesus’ trial, and his time from his arrest to his crucifixion and death is his silence. Jesus was silent as a sheep before it shearers, as the prophet said. He rarely spoke, but when he did his words hit home so that to this day we have at least a sum of them in our Bibles which are rightly memorialized.

One of my favorite experiences was also one of my hardest internally. Not as hard to do as to experience. We were silent a good share of a Saturday, a few gathered for a silent retreat at an area Dominican center. Though I could hardly appreciate what was going on during that time, when the silence was broken, and especially on later reflection I understood just how powerful a time it had been. Though I could hardly put it into words. Though actually I did, a poem now lost along with my old blog.

Sometimes we don’t know what to say; we’re at a loss for words. Jesus certainly spoke many words, but he did so as one depending on his Father. His words like his life were like a song. And the pauses and silences were important in that as well.

What about us who follow Jesus? What about our words and our silence? How can the both be cross-oriented? And how can either fail to do so?

Jesus crucified in weakness – a meditation for Lent

What characterized the Son of God’s death on the cross? We read that it was characterized by weakness. Jesus had said that his soul was troubled. And before that that he was under the burden of a coming baptism which he was constrained to receive, the baptism of death.

When we read the account of Holy Week in the gospels, we marvel at Christ’s passion and pouring out of his soul to the Father at Gethsemane. Afterwards his disciples want to stop the soldiers who have come to arrest him, but Jesus stops them, and heals the ear of the man Peter had struck with his sword. At the trial Jesus says little, except what he knows will incriminate him in the ears of the Jewish leaders in charge. For which he is struck and spit at in his face. He says nothing at all before Herod. He does interact with Pilate but in terms Pilate can’t understand. After all kings act with power, and truth is beside the point. Pilate wants to satisfy the Jewish leaders, yet he also wants to release Jesus, so he orders Jesus to be flogged. After losing blood, Jesus stands before the gathered crowd who insist on his death. Pilate reluctantly gives in to them, and orders that Jesus be crucified.

The Roman soldiers mock Jesus, spit on him, and strike him again and again, pressing a crown of thorns on his head. And then he has to carry the cross toward Golgotha, the place of execution. Under its weight in his weakness he struggles, and Simon of Cyrene is then compelled to carry it.

Jesus is then crucified. And with the suffering from the pain inflicted by the nails, he is slowly losing his capacity to breathe. The Jewish leaders mock him, and call him to save himself. Others join in. While at the same time God’s salvation is at work through Jesus even during those moments. At last Jesus says, “It is finished.” He then commends his spirit into the Father’s hands, and breathes his last.

We know the end of the story. Jesus indeed rises again, and thereafter lives in God’s power. The resurrection is not only the end of the story for Jesus, but the end of the story for us who are in Jesus, as well as for all things in the new creation in him.

But now in the way of Jesus we must accept the way of the cross and the way of weakness. That will involve implicit obedience out of love for God and for others for their salvation. It will mean turning the other cheek, loving our enemies, praying for our persecutors, blessing those who curse us. Being willing like Jesus to be misunderstood. But for us who unlike Jesus are sinners, it will involve humility in acknowledging our sins and limitations. Our ongoing need for forgiveness through Jesus, and life in him.

Out of that weakness can come God’s strength. So that part of our calling in Jesus now is to indeed be weak in him in becoming more and more like him in his death. Something we naturally shun, but that is part of our calling and life in God through Christ, here and now. Only in this is the way of Jesus.

Do we shun the way of Jesus by holding on to our own strength and wisdom?