Wednesday in Holy Week, Bible comment



Wednesday morning still dark, 73° 91% wind SW 12mph, waves lapping loudly ashore at my feet, seven stories down. Ospreys: their shrill peep or shriek, is their vision so sharp they can fish in the dark? IDK, but they are noisy this morning, calling back and forth to each other.

 After a beautiful evening, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I may be in my house-clothes all day, may pause to shave, shower and change. Daily rise and coffee about four o'clock, five o'clock this day, breakfast later. Dinner about two o'clock in the afternoon. Sometimes with a glass of wine, or without, a snack on 7H porch as the sunlight fades. 

 Monday we tried the new to us electronic shopping, Publix then delivered our grocery list to 7H door on Tuesday afternoon. It worked so well that today Sam's Club is to deliver a few things: I'm hoping they don't run out of steak before picking my order. Will the shopper pick the same steaks I would have selected?

 Today is Wednesday in Holy Week, and the Collect is apt:

 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.

 We are not going to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time because they are real, not hypothetical, and surrounding, not distant; but we can make the best of it, including adapting day to day, and learning many new things to make everything better both now and later, and loving our neighbor by keeping at a distance. In time, all may be well though different, hopefully better in our treatment of each other even if some things we once treasured collapse in the Duration. May we come out of it having discovered, within the US and round the world, that we are interdependent, and that love is more powerful than hate. (In the news: coronavirus causes a gangland truce). We could find out that the people we hate and are killing are more than whatever we were hating and fighting about.


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 Here's the Gospel for today, and a comment.

 John 13:21-32

 At supper with his friends, Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, "Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me." The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his disciples-- the one whom Jesus loved-- was reclining next to him; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, "Lord, who is it?" Jesus answered, "It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to do." 

 Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, "Buy what we need for the festival"; or, that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.
When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once."

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We are Christians, so Jesus is always in the limelight, and here Judas Iscariot is "also starring", but beside Jesus is "- - the one whom Jesus loved - -" a quietly anonymous one whom history and tradition call John the Beloved Disciple when in fact that disciple "- - the one Jesus loved - -" stepped forward to introduce himself at John 11:1 "Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to Jesus, saying, 'Lord, he whom you love is ill.'” 

 It's the self-introduction of the one whose own signatory cameo appearances come several times after that, then finally signs off at John 21: 24 "This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true."

 A Bible study exercise in class would be to take a side trip by looking at the two endings of the book we call The Gospel according to John, 

 John 20:30 "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name." This seems self-evidently to have been the intended ending of our Fourth Gospel. 

 But the story immediately picks up with Chapter 21:1 "After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he revealed himself in this way. ..." and talks about the postEaster meeting on the beach where Jesus cooks breakfast for the disciples who had been out fishing, and the back and forth "Do you love me?" "Feed my sheep", and further exchange between Peter and Jesus evidencing Peter's jealousy of that other disciple "- - the one Jesus loved - -" and finally the second conclusion asserting authorship of the gospel.

Questions might be, 

  • What do you make of this apparent double ending of the Gospel according to John?
  • Visualize the scene at supper that evening: do you think it was lively? Subdued?
  • How do you suppose the resurrected Jesus felt that morning in John 21, about Peter, who'd denied him?
  • How do you imagine Peter felt that morning, seeing Jesus whom he'd denied?
  • What moral difference, if any, do you see between what Judas did and what Peter did? 
  • Look through the four gospels and see how each evangelist describes Judas Iscariot. The views differ: why?
  • More, was his treacherous betrayal Judas' divine destiny? 
  • It could have been whatever each gospel evangelist wrote, but what do you think might have been Judas' motives?
  • Postulating an afterlife beginning with a day of judgment, might you say that Judas would face a forgiving or an enraged and vengeful Judge?
  • Imagine if time were to go back and you were at the table that night, knowing what you know now. Which disciple are you, and how are you feeling? What will you say and do?

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