LENT 5
Imagine for a moment that you are a tourist being taken round the world’s most prestigious art gallery, and you are about to view the most prized exhibit in the whole collection. Your guide stops you before you enter the exhibition space and tries to prepare you for what you are about to see and experience. She stops you now, because she knows that once you are standing before such a great and overpowering work of art, you will not be able to take on board the intricacies of its meaning and the subtlety of its hues. And so you need to be prepared before hand. Warned, almost, lest without caution, you miss the heart of what it is all about.
Well, you’re not in an art gallery, you’re in church. But today is the fifth Sunday of Lent, the beginning of Passiontide – and in a very real sense it is a time when we must pause, and take stock of what we are about to do; what we are about to see, and what we are about to experience together, as the broken body of Christ.
As soon as our liturgy begins next Sunday, as we bear palms and remember Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, as we hear the Passion Gospel read and begin Holy Week, there are few opportunities to comment (from the pulpit, at least) Instead we are caught up in the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, the story of our redemption.
You’ve heard me say it before, but I will gladly say it again – Holy Week is the most important time in the life of the church, and it really isn’t an optional extra. You can only know the joy of Easter Morning if you have trod the path from the Last Supper to Gethsemane, and from Gethsemane to Calvary, and from Calvary to the darkness of the tomb. If we claim to follow Christ, and don’t observe Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, then we require a pretty good excuse….
On Friday evening I settled down to watch a film I’d hoped to catch on the big screen but never got round to, and so bought it on DVD instead: “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. Along with his family, 8 year old Bruno enjoys an innocent but wealthy lifestyle in pre-war Germany. But they re-locate to the countryside where his father takes up his post as Commandant of a prison camp. A few days later, Bruno befriends a boy of his own age, strangely dressed in striped pyjamas, named Shmuel who lives behind an electrified fence. Bruno soon finds out that he is not permitted to befriend his new companion because Shmuel is a Jew, and what he naively assumed was a neighbouring farm is in reality an extermination camp.
I won’t give too much away, I promise. But after befriending Shmuel and smuggling food to push through the wire when they meet each day, Bruno is surprised to find him in his house, cleaning glasses. ‘They needed someone with small fingers’, Shmuel explains.
So again, Bruno gives him food. Predictably, they get caught. Facing the fury of a cruel SS Officer, the jewish boy quietly explains that his friend Bruno had given it to him, and that he wasn’t a thief. But as the attention turns back to Bruno, he blurts out: “He’s lying. I’ve never seen him before, he was here eating the food when I came in” And with that, Bruno runs to his bedroom and begins to cry. He is only 8, but knows exactly what he has done.
The next day, he returns to the wire fence – but Shmuel does not appear, nor the next day nor the day after. But when Bruno returns to the fence he sees the familiar cowed shape of his friend, huddled in his filthy grey striped ‘pyjamas’. When Shmuel lifts his head, he is cut and bruised from a harsh beating – which of course, Bruno understands, he could have prevented.
It’s not too difficult to make the connection between a betrayal of friendship between two 8 year old boys and the characters we know all too well in the Passion story. And I don’t just mean Judas and Peter, but all the disciples. Every one of them complicit in the treachery which we conveniently attribute to one or two individuals. As far as the Synoptic Gospels are concerned, without exception, the twelve all forsook Jesus, and fled.
Our Monday evening Lent Course has been paying particular attention to Mark’s version of the events of Holy Week – his of course being the earliest to be written, closest to the events themselves. It’s a useful study, not least because it highlights what we think is there in Mark’s story, but in fact isn’t. But what comes over loud and clear is Mark’s realistic, and deliberately unflattering portrayal of the twelve disciples. From the point where Jesus begins to head for Jerusalem and specifically teach them about what will happen there, they fail to understand. Instead, they argue about trivialities among themselves and fail to perceive the true cost of their discipleship - the cost for them, and for Jesus.
In actual fact, the seeds of denial and betrayal are sown very early in Mark’s narrative – even as early as Chapter 10 when we read of the rich young man who refuses Christ’s call because he just cannot let go of his worldly possessions. Not quite a betrayal on the scale of Iscariot we may think, but a definite rejection of Jesus, none the less. And it is for this reason, like tourists about to experience a great work of art, that as Passiontide begins, we must stop and take stock of what lies ahead of us. We need to proceed with that same caution lest we miss the subtlety (and ultimately also the beauty) of what we are to behold.
Because their rejection, is our rejection. Their denial is our denial. And the betrayal we are happy to lay on the shoulders of Judas, lurks in the shadows of your heart and mine. Perhaps in this generation more than ever, the Church is so tangled up trying to get it right and define what is right that we forget the basic facts of our history. Far from being a band of righteous heroes, the earliest of Christian communities were acutely aware of their fragility and failure.
In his first letter to the church at Corinth, St Paul makes the earliest reference to the practice of sharing the Lord’s Supper, what we now call Communion, the Eucharist or Mass. He mentions it only because the church is getting it hopelessly wrong. Not because they’re not doing it properly, but because in their relationship with God and with one another they’re all over the place. They struggle, and suffer, and fail. And if we weren’t so immune to it, we would be more struck by the words that the church has used at the heart of the Eucharist for 2,000 years. “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread…” Whatever we may understand Communion to be about, it can never be divorced from the acknowledgment that the church (then and now) gets it horribly wrong. We are the body of Christ. But we can only ever be the broken body of Christ.
Well, you’re not in an art gallery, you’re in church. But today is the fifth Sunday of Lent, the beginning of Passiontide – and in a very real sense it is a time when we must pause, and take stock of what we are about to do; what we are about to see, and what we are about to experience together, as the broken body of Christ.
As soon as our liturgy begins next Sunday, as we bear palms and remember Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, as we hear the Passion Gospel read and begin Holy Week, there are few opportunities to comment (from the pulpit, at least) Instead we are caught up in the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, the story of our redemption.
You’ve heard me say it before, but I will gladly say it again – Holy Week is the most important time in the life of the church, and it really isn’t an optional extra. You can only know the joy of Easter Morning if you have trod the path from the Last Supper to Gethsemane, and from Gethsemane to Calvary, and from Calvary to the darkness of the tomb. If we claim to follow Christ, and don’t observe Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, then we require a pretty good excuse….
On Friday evening I settled down to watch a film I’d hoped to catch on the big screen but never got round to, and so bought it on DVD instead: “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. Along with his family, 8 year old Bruno enjoys an innocent but wealthy lifestyle in pre-war Germany. But they re-locate to the countryside where his father takes up his post as Commandant of a prison camp. A few days later, Bruno befriends a boy of his own age, strangely dressed in striped pyjamas, named Shmuel who lives behind an electrified fence. Bruno soon finds out that he is not permitted to befriend his new companion because Shmuel is a Jew, and what he naively assumed was a neighbouring farm is in reality an extermination camp.
I won’t give too much away, I promise. But after befriending Shmuel and smuggling food to push through the wire when they meet each day, Bruno is surprised to find him in his house, cleaning glasses. ‘They needed someone with small fingers’, Shmuel explains.
So again, Bruno gives him food. Predictably, they get caught. Facing the fury of a cruel SS Officer, the jewish boy quietly explains that his friend Bruno had given it to him, and that he wasn’t a thief. But as the attention turns back to Bruno, he blurts out: “He’s lying. I’ve never seen him before, he was here eating the food when I came in” And with that, Bruno runs to his bedroom and begins to cry. He is only 8, but knows exactly what he has done.
The next day, he returns to the wire fence – but Shmuel does not appear, nor the next day nor the day after. But when Bruno returns to the fence he sees the familiar cowed shape of his friend, huddled in his filthy grey striped ‘pyjamas’. When Shmuel lifts his head, he is cut and bruised from a harsh beating – which of course, Bruno understands, he could have prevented.
It’s not too difficult to make the connection between a betrayal of friendship between two 8 year old boys and the characters we know all too well in the Passion story. And I don’t just mean Judas and Peter, but all the disciples. Every one of them complicit in the treachery which we conveniently attribute to one or two individuals. As far as the Synoptic Gospels are concerned, without exception, the twelve all forsook Jesus, and fled.
Our Monday evening Lent Course has been paying particular attention to Mark’s version of the events of Holy Week – his of course being the earliest to be written, closest to the events themselves. It’s a useful study, not least because it highlights what we think is there in Mark’s story, but in fact isn’t. But what comes over loud and clear is Mark’s realistic, and deliberately unflattering portrayal of the twelve disciples. From the point where Jesus begins to head for Jerusalem and specifically teach them about what will happen there, they fail to understand. Instead, they argue about trivialities among themselves and fail to perceive the true cost of their discipleship - the cost for them, and for Jesus.
In actual fact, the seeds of denial and betrayal are sown very early in Mark’s narrative – even as early as Chapter 10 when we read of the rich young man who refuses Christ’s call because he just cannot let go of his worldly possessions. Not quite a betrayal on the scale of Iscariot we may think, but a definite rejection of Jesus, none the less. And it is for this reason, like tourists about to experience a great work of art, that as Passiontide begins, we must stop and take stock of what lies ahead of us. We need to proceed with that same caution lest we miss the subtlety (and ultimately also the beauty) of what we are to behold.
Because their rejection, is our rejection. Their denial is our denial. And the betrayal we are happy to lay on the shoulders of Judas, lurks in the shadows of your heart and mine. Perhaps in this generation more than ever, the Church is so tangled up trying to get it right and define what is right that we forget the basic facts of our history. Far from being a band of righteous heroes, the earliest of Christian communities were acutely aware of their fragility and failure.
In his first letter to the church at Corinth, St Paul makes the earliest reference to the practice of sharing the Lord’s Supper, what we now call Communion, the Eucharist or Mass. He mentions it only because the church is getting it hopelessly wrong. Not because they’re not doing it properly, but because in their relationship with God and with one another they’re all over the place. They struggle, and suffer, and fail. And if we weren’t so immune to it, we would be more struck by the words that the church has used at the heart of the Eucharist for 2,000 years. “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread…” Whatever we may understand Communion to be about, it can never be divorced from the acknowledgment that the church (then and now) gets it horribly wrong. We are the body of Christ. But we can only ever be the broken body of Christ.
But let us return to those two 8 year old boys sitting cross-legged on either side of the wire fence. Despite Bruno’s betrayal of friendship they talk – and Bruno says sorry. Almost matter-of-factly, Shmuel accepts his apology and pushes his dusty hand through the wire to grasp his friend’s. In writing his gospel the way he does, Mark is not trying to grind us down, to batter us with our own shortcomings. Instead he wants to impress on us that, like the first disciples, we are on a journey – a journey from desolation to restoration; from betrayal to grace…
Time and again, our failings as disciples bring us face to face with the unremitting love of God in Christ. The steadfast love which in spite of our sins, takes him to the cross. The self-giving love which conquers death. The life-giving love which erupts at Easter.
Time and again, our failings as disciples bring us face to face with the unremitting love of God in Christ. The steadfast love which in spite of our sins, takes him to the cross. The self-giving love which conquers death. The life-giving love which erupts at Easter.
So today stop. Take stock of where you are.
Be warned of what is to come.
But make the journey – and make it your own.
Amen.
FILM CLIP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNKQHM7_uWc
The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus' Final Days in Jerusalem
Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan/SPCK 2008
Private Passions: Betraying Discipleship on the jourey to Jerusalem
Douglas Davies/Canterbury Press 2000