Rad Isaiah 50:4-9; John 13:21-30
Wright begins by reminding us that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that some of the worst of the types of sins we commit are mentioned in the story of Holy Week and actually lead Jesus to his death:
“If you drew up a catalogue of the deepest and darkest sins the human race can commit, you might find that a good many of them feature in the story of Jesus’ final days, and that they tend to have something to do with getting Jesus put on the cross.”
He names lying, injustice, oppression of the weak and the poor, idolatry, love of power and says in today’s reading we come to the worst of all, betrayal.
Wright points out that Judas was one of Jesus’ closest, most trusted friends — after all, he kept the money. He’s had a front row seat while Jesus healed lepers and raised the dead. When Jesus said “one of you will betray me,” no one at the table automatically thought it would be Judas. Listen to what Wright says,
“We don’t know why Judas did it. We do know that being betrayed by a very, very close friend is extremely nasty. Trust is one of the most precious things in human life; breaking trust is one of the most horrible. And the point I am making is this: when we speak of Jesus ‘dying for the sins of the world’ we don’t just mean that there was some kind of abstract theological transaction going on. We mean that the sins of the world, specific instances of some of the nastiest things that human beings can do to one another, happened to him directly. He wasn’t immune to the normal human emotions. He didn’t just ride it out without caring. He was the very embodiment of vulnerable love. He took the worst that can be done, took it from every angle, and gave back only more love. When we are betrayed, or treated unjustly or violently, we react angrily and often seek immediate vengeance. It is part of the inner core of meaning of Jesus’ death that he didn’t do that. He took the worst that evil could do. He allowed it to do its worst to him, emotionally as well as physically. And he kept on loving.”
What does this mean for us? Here’s Wright’s suggestion:
“What this means for us — and this is quite close to the heart of the meaning of the cross — is that the bad things that have happened in our lives, to us personally, or in our community, to our way of life, can be brought to the foot of the cross and left there. He has taken them: lies, injustices, betrayals, insults, physical violence, the lot. He meant to take them, because in his great love for us, he did not intend that our lives should be crippled by them. Even when we have been partly responsible for them; in fact, particularly when we have been responsible for them. That’s what forgiveness is all about: not saying “It didn’t really happen’ or ‘It didn’t really matter’ but rather ‘It did happen, and it did matter, but Jesus has dealt with it all and we can be free of it.’ Jesus didn’t want us to be bowed down under that weight, turning us into grumblers and blamers and moaners. He wanted to take all that evil and set us free from its weight.”
For us, Holy Week is the time to remember stories of betrayal, our own of others, others’ betrayal of us, to name the reality that they did hurt and they did matter, and to toss these heavy burdens at the foot of the Cross, and thank Jesus for dying to set us free from that crippling load. THIS is why we celebrate so wildly on Resurrection Sunday!
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