Wednesday in Holy Week

When we read the passion story on Palm Sunday, I always see in my mind the way we used to enact it at the church I used to attend in the mid-to-late 1980s. There, they had an altar in the middle of the crossing on a hexagonal platform. The narrator, Jesus, and assorted characters stood around the platform and, as the narrative moved forward, they would move clockwise around the it on the points. It was as though the gears of inevitability grinding away had become manifest. I no longer remember who ended up in the front at the end of the passion; probably it was the narrator.

So it is today. Every year when we hit Wednesday in Holy Week, I feel as though we have turned a major corner. No longer is this journey to Golgatha theoretical; it has become real. No longer are we talking about friendships; we are talking about betrayal. It is a huge shift. I always have a hard time proclaiming this gospel (John 13). We have moved a quarter round on the clock to half-past the hour.

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The combination of the words ‘betrayal,’ and Jesus’ term of affection for his disciples, ‘little children,’ stand in stark contrast to one another. This is the only place in the entire gospel of John where the tender term, ‘little children’ shows up (teknia in Greek, a diminutive). It appears before Jesus’ handing the disciples the commandment to love one another. Jerome of the fourth century relates the story that in John’s old age his message was reduced to this: ‘My little children, love one another.’ (1)

Before exploring that exquisite summation, we must remember that Jesus says these words in the context of the last supper in his last discourse to the disciples. In other literary genres, it would be akin to the dying father handing over his testament to his children. Jesus announces his imminent departure just before announcing to them what they are tasked to do after his death, ‘love one another.’

Raymond Brown, whose in-depth commentary, The Gospel According to John, is the apogee of biblical scholarship, writes:

‘Yet love is more than a commandment: it is a gift, and like the other gifts of the Christian dispensation it comes from the Father through Jesus to those who believe in him.… The love Jesus has for his followers is not only affective but also effective: it brings about their salvation. It is expressed in his laying down his life, an act of love that gives life to [all] (612-13).’ Brown emphasizes that for John this love is for all Christians, but not for all people. Again, we must remember the context of the gospel, written at the end of the first century, when Christians were still considered thrown out of the synagogue. There tended to be a ‘circle-the-wagons’ survival mentality and that is expressed here.

Brown continues: ‘This new covenant was to be interiorized and to be marked by the people’s intimate contact with God and knowledge of Him — a knowledge that is the equivalent of love…. The mark that distinguishes God’s love expressed in the covenant from even the noblest forms of human love is that it is spontaneous and unmotivated… (614).’

Jesus gives this new commandment to love one another just after he has washed the disciples’ feet, an act of submission in his culture, an act of love. It is that action that could well have been the unifying act of Jesus’ followers instead of the eucharist.

‘My little children, love one another.’

As always, there are questions:

What is loving one another in the selfless, spontaneous nature that God loves us?

How do we love one another in ways that are genuine, no-strings attached?

How aware and thankful are we aware of the gift of God’s love for us and the fact that we humans have the capacity to love?

And how do we live with the realities of our lives where we fall so short of expressing this divine love?

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Without going into the depth of it all because in this short time I couldn’t, I find myself struggling for words about love on the fifth anniversary of the US bombing of Iraq. Regardless where one stands on the justness of this war, one cannot help but mourn the thousands of deaths — the nearly 4000 deaths of US forces and the untold number of Iraqis and the countless maimed survivors.

It is in this frame of mind that I remember the context of Jesus’ words of love that are then followed by his betrayal by Judas. The Last Supper— when Jesus was about to offer himself up not only to the twelve but for humankind. The Last Supper, the time at which Jesus commanded us to love one another — the one commandment, mandatum, by which we have the name, Maundy Thursday.

In the midst of the betrayal, Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Love — not a romantic or sappy emotion, but a God-based love. For it is in loving our neighbour that we find God and we are to love God, too.
The other part of the foundation of love is our neighbour. We find our identity not only in God but in other people. Our life and death are inextricably intertwined in the lives and deaths of our neighbours. As children of God, we are interconnected.

Yet, as we have seen over and over again, one human or one people has killed another. In those deaths, we lose a piece of ourselves.

When Judas betrayed Jesus, it was night. Right now it would seem as though collectively this past century and now in this new century humanity has entered night. (The Nobel Peace Laureat, Elie Weisel even entitled his first book, about his concentration camp experiences, Night.)

Somehow we have to trust that it is always darkest before the dawn but that the dawn does come. We walk toward that dawn, Easter, knowing we have yet to walk further into the night. But may our journey be only spiritual. Somehow, may you and I make a difference in our own neck of the woods so that our entire world not be enshrouded by night, but shine with the radiance of God’s light.


END NOTE
(1) Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John, XIII-XXI, Vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, The Anchor Bible, 1970), 607. All subsequent citations are from this volume.

[image: Enigmatic Jesus and Judas in a depiction from a National Geographic display; New York Times, 9 April 2006; Without Judas, History Might Have Hijacked Another Villain]