Fifth Sunday of Easter - Sunday, May 19, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Fifth Sunday of Easter - Sunday, May 19, 2019

Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

Our gospel today picks up as soon as Judas is sent out. His betrayal may be the most famous one in all history, not only because of whom he betrayed, but also because of who he is---not an enemy outsider but one of the inner-circle, who has been with Jesus from the start. Betrayal by an intimate destroys trust, it robs the past, and it deadens the heart.  In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest circle of hell is reserved for such a one.  Throughout the centuries Judas has been a classic example of scapegoating for all who have denied their own tendency to betray themselves, those they love, and God.

The ingenious Hebrew ritual from which the word “scapegoat” originated is described in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, a priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. The goat was then beaten with reeds and thorns and driven out into the desert. It was a vividly symbolic act that helped to unite and free people in the short term. Instead of owning their sins, this ritual allows people to export them elsewhere—in this case onto an innocent animal.

The French philosopher and historian René Girard (1923–2015) recognized this highly effective ritual across cultures and saw the scapegoat mechanism as a foundational principle for most social groups, including monasteries. The image of the scapegoat powerfully mirrors and reveals the universal, but largely unconscious, human need to transfer our guilt onto something or someone else by singling that other out for unmerited negative treatment. This pattern is also seen in our private, inner lives.

We seldom consciously know that we are scapegoating or projecting. In fact, the effectiveness of this mechanism depends on not seeing it. It’s automatic, and ingrained. Sadly, God has been used to justify violence and hide from the parts of ourselves and our religions that we’d rather ignore. The Scriptures rightly call such ignorant hatred and killing “sin,” and Jesus came precisely to “take away” our tendency to commit it—by exposing the lie.  Jesus refused to stand above or outside the human dilemma. He refused to be the one to scapegoat and instead becomes the scapegoat personified. He dramatically exposed the fact there is no such thing as redemptive violence by refusing the usual pattern of revenge by teaching us that we can follow him in doing the same. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys—in both short and long term. He replaced the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of redemptive suffering. He showed us on the cross how to hold the pain and let it transform us, rather than pass it on to those around us. The interaction with Judas at the last supper anticipates it.

In the case of Judas, we tend to think of him as a fringe member of the group. If anything, he is the most trusted of the twelve---the one in charge of the money to feed them and the poor.  For three years the twelve did everything together, including hearing Jesus’ teaching and seeing his miracles. Just before today’s gospel, Judas has had his feet washed by Jesus with the others.  If Judas were really the odd one out, the others would not have had to look around and ask when Jesus was talking about which one would betray him.

The wisdom hid in this story is that the Church has far less to fear from outsiders than from insiders.  We are much more likely to encounter the enemy within our midst than in the world beyond our doors.  To understand Judas and our reaction to him is to understand the shadow side of the church where we have it in us to betray those we love.  But it is not possible to understand Judas without understanding Jesus as well, because Judas does not act in a vacuum. Jesus makes choices too, choices that may change the way we see the one Judas made.  Was Judas a villain or just a pawn? Was it greed, or was it disappointment that Jesus had not turned out to be the kind of Messiah Judas had hoped he would be? Did Judas believe that he had been betrayed? Jesus’ instruction: “Do quickly what you have to do”, sounds more like an assignment than a choice.

Whatever Judas’ degree of guilt and whatever his motive, it is extremely important to note that Jesus identifies his betrayer by feeding him, after having washed his feet. Knowing who Judas is and what he is about to do, Jesus bathes and feeds him.  Jesus never held himself back but went on giving himself away to the one who would give him away because his faithfulness did not depend on anyone but himself.  When he dipped the morsel into his cup and handed it to Judas, he not only revealed who Judas was, he also revealed who he was---the One who feeds his enemy, who goes on treating them as friends, loving them to the end.

Jesus gives them and us a new commandment---that they and we love one another as he loved Judas, and will love them and us, even after they and we have denied and abandoned him. Having Jesus as a model undoes all the limits. Love asks for everything. It does not calculate the cost. In John’s theology, Jesus is present through the love of the disciples. To live in Jesus is to love and to love is to live in Jesus. That is how people will know who they and we are. Of everything he taught them, and teaches us, this is crucial: love for one another, not knowledge, piety, or good works, will be the one true mark of discipleship. Followers of Christ are meant to be the visible compassion of God on earth. We are not simply to use words to tell people about the meaning of the cross and resurrection; we are to love one another as a way of embodying the truth that Christ reveals through his death and resurrection.

This episode with Judas sheds light on our understanding of the Eucharist as well. His presence at the Last Supper is our lasting reminder that this is a meal not only for the good, the right, and the faithful.  For Christians it is the ongoing touchstone for the spiritual journey, a place to which we must repeatedly return in order to find our face, our name, our absolute identity, who we are in Christ, and thus who we are forever. The Eucharist tells us that, in some mysterious way, we are not just humans having a God experience, we are God having a human experience. The One at the head of the table, broken and poured out, whose faithfulness does not depend on ours, and whose death-defying love knows no end, gives himself to us, offering to feed us again and again. He is the food and drink that saves our lives, thawing our frozen hearts by taking them into his own.

+Amen.