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Sermon - Holy Week Reflection - Graeme Watts - 4th April 2007
Saint Alban's Epping 7:45pm
While I will get to some comments about the readings, I would first like to comment a little about reflecting.
Reflections can be a challenge. And sometimes reflections get people into bother. With his book Reflections in Glass Archbishop Peter Carnley certainly upset some people, particularly in Sydney, as did Bishop John Spong with his reflections in such books as Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Resurrection: Myth or Reality. More dramatic was the case of heresy brought against the Rev Dr Peter Cameron of St Andrew’s College in Sydney by the Presbyterian Church after he had preached a sermon on “The Place of Women in the Church”, and other matters ,as recorded in his book Necessary Heresies.
To be fair, the reaction of church authorities is often in the intended interest of protecting the faith of their followers. In general, the church, in a pastoral sense, tends to prefer to shoulder the responsibility for thinking for its flock.
That may seem exaggerated but the point has not gone unnoticed.
In the Russian novel The Brothers Karamazov (by Fyodor Dostoyevsky) there is inserted a dramatic episode called The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.
In this episode Christ returns to a medieval market place, he is immediately recognized, people flock around him and he heals them and even raises a child from her coffin. However all this is observed by the Grand Inquisitor who immediately has him imprisoned and when he visits him alone in a cell late at night upbraids him for returning. The Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that at his instruction in the morning the people would burn him at the stake for they have long ago begged the Church to take their freedom in return for protection from having to think for themselves.
Well, hopefully with nothing so dramatic in mind, where could reflection take us as we look at the reading from the Gospel of John.
Take a question of the general context. Why, for example, did John report the last supper, and subsequently the crucifixion, taking place a day earlier than the other Gospel accounts? John comes last in the sequence of Gospels and commentators point out that his choice of timing for the last supper has some advantages. It avoids the problems raised by the synoptic accounts in having orthodox Jews running around during the Passover night which is a blatant ritual violation, and also provides John with the opportunity to employ the symbolism of the Lamb of God as the Passover victim.
Does it matter? Does it trouble us that such important events are not consistently recorded?
Consider the role of Judas in this passage. Should one even reflect about Judas? His press has been so damning that his name is a metaphor for betrayal. But if we reflect on the reference in our reading it is a little puzzling in a way. Jesus says one of you will betray me. Who is it they say. Jesus says quite clearly (to the disciple whom he loved) it is the one to whom I give this bread and he hands it to Judas. No-one says anything, no-one does anything, and finally Jesus says quietly to Judas “Do quickly what you are going to do” and then proceeds to his farewell discourses.
In the recently published Gnostic Gospel of Judas, Judas is portrayed as acting on the instructions of Jesus, and, in fact, is presented as the only disciple who really understands the role of Jesus at this time.
After the betrayal John says no more of Judas. Matthew reports that he repents, returns the silver bribe, hangs himself and the priests buy a field. Luke (in Acts) reports that Judas buys the field in which he then falls down and his stomach bursts open. Some commentaries combine the accounts by having Judas try to hang himself but as he does so he falls down a steep embankment and so dies in a field.
Again, is it helpful to reflect on such different accounts? Do inconsistencies matter?
Over at least the last three or four centuries there has been a vast literature devoted to people reflecting on such matters. I have mentioned contemporaries such as Peter Carnley and John Spong, but there are many others such as Albert Schweitzer in his The Quest for the Historical Jesus, and particularly a number of German theologians of the 19th century. Even some 300 years ago there was something of a sensation when John Mill, Fellow of Queens College Oxford, published in 1707 a Greek edition of the New Testament. In so doing he referred to some 100 existing manuscripts and tried to reconcile their differences. With his edition Mill added an appendix detailing the variations he had noted in the existing texts. Some were relatively major issues such as I have just mentioned but there were many, many minor items as well. In the event, Mill listed in his appendix some 30,000 differences!
Again, does this matter? The church is understandably cautious about such reflections but ordinary people are interested.
I think that something of the appeal of books and movies such as the Da Vinci Code and The Secrets of Mary Magdalene is that in that context issues which are crucial and fundamental to ordinary people can be explored, just even thought about, in a safe fictional context.
In this Parish, we are all conscious of the differences in our own close Anglican communion, let alone the broad Christian tradition, where the interpretation of Bible passages and even the language in which this is conveyed is regarded as fixed (“If the King James was good enough for Saint Paul, it’s good enough for me”).
I am grateful for the tradition of St Alban’s in encouraging reflection and some flexibility in interpretation.
So where does this Holy Week reflection lead me? Not just of the Gospel extract which we have read but of all the messages of this week. For myself, some details seem conflicting, some I find irrelevant, some I choose to interpret as allegory.
Yet of all weeks of the year this remains central. At the end of this week three days project the essence, the irreducible core of the Christian faith, a faith which withstands all seeming inconsistencies, which on the one hand can be expressed “as for a little child” but at the same time remain as a challenge to the most insightful theologian.
From the collective messages of Holy Week, the essence remains, without adornment, simply:
Jesus lived
He died
And he lives evermore
Amen