In the name of God our Creator who created us out of passion. In the name of God the Son who chose willingly to bear God’s passion in the world. In the name of God the Holy Spirit whose passionate breath blows that passion into our lives. Amen.
On this Sunday of the Passion I have a question for you. Does Jesus’ Passion save us from our bodies? Or does Jesus’ Passion save us into, and more deeply into, our bodies? The Gospel of Judas has gotten a lot of press this week. What many people seem focused on is the question; did Jesus really ask Judas to betray Him? Was Judas really a good guy after all? But that is not the point of the Gospel of Judas. The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic text and like all Gnostic texts it has one central viewpoint and that is that the body and the material world are evil and are to be escaped. And that the only way to be saved is to escape the body, to escape the flesh, to escape the world into a realm of pure spirit. But the reason that the Gospel of Judas and all the other Gnostic texts were not included in the New Testament is not because of some Catholic Church conspiracy, as some novelists would have it. It is because the Jesus that the earliest Christians knew was a Jesus very much of the earth and very much of the body. A Jesus who came to redeem earth and body, not escape from them and not to invite us to escape from them. This kind of Christianity, this incarnate embodied Christianity is what led one of the great Archbishops of Canterbury of the past century, William Temple, to say: “Christianity is the most materialistic of all the worlds religions. Jesus’ Passion, His love is embodied in Him and embodied for us. As each of us who has ever tried to love knows, as soon as you try to love you will hurt. To bear love is also to bear pain. To love is to suffer, it is to suffer joy along with others, it is to suffer along with others, it is to suffer confusion, it is to bear with whatever another person is feeling and to bear with it in your body as they bear with it in theirs. Whether it is something as minor as a bum shoulder, or the acne that is driving you, as a teenager, crazy or something as deeply disturbing as a heart that is so broken that it will never seem to be repairable. We know what it is like to love in the body and to love others who are embodied and we know that we cannot escape it though we might want to. To love is to be open to suffering and bearing with.
And so the Jesus who comes to us in today’s story that we call His Passion is an embodied passionate Jesus. Who loves in his body and loves you and me and people outside this place, people who have never heard the name of Jesus, people who would not dare to follow Him. He loves them in their bodies as well.
If you think about this story, the parts we didn’t hear, but will hear later this week on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, Easter Eve, and the parts that we did hear. You will notice that the body is everywhere. Of course, it began months ago for us in our liturgical seasons; Jesus embodied as a baby in the straw of a manger. Straw that will shine like gold the hymn that we just sang says. But this is the Jesus who also was embodied at every moment of His encounter with us and with every person He encounters in the Gospels. This Jesus, who today rides upon a colt and is cradled there by palm branches and garments, isn’t that a wonderful thing, that He was willing and wanted to receive cradling. Not just as a baby but as a full grown man facing His death knowing He needed to receive cradling because He wasn’t going to get much of it the rest of the week. Can you come with this Jesus this week and allow whatever part of you needs to be cradled, to be cradled with Him? And every part that you bring of other people’s lives that you carry inside yourself, people you know, people you only read about or hear about, can you bring them this week and let them and you be cradled along with Jesus. His body, your body, their bodies.
But its doesn’t stop with His being cradled, of course. The shocking parts of His Passion involve those things that we would rather never have happened to Him, to us, to anyone except perhaps, on our bad days, our worst enemies. This Jesus, this Jesus is going to be betrayed. You just heard about it. The part we didn’t hear but you’ll hear on Maundy Thursday if you come to church that night, is that as He was about to be betrayed, He had a meal with His friends and He deigned to get down on His knees and do what only slaves would do. He washed their feet. He washed the feet of the man who betrayed Him. He washed the feet of Peter who denied Him. He washed the feet of James and John who fell asleep on Him. He washed all their feet and it says they all fled. Will you let Him wash your feet?
And then He fed them. And, yes, He fed every one of them. He fed the one who betrayed Him. He fed them with bread and wine and He said “It’s my body, take me. It’s my blood, I’m yours.” Will you let Him give Himself to you? It will make a difference if you let yourself be washed or cradled or fed or not. This is the Jesus who is to be spat upon and mocked and is to die. Every one of us knows what it is to be mocked, from childhood playgrounds to adult cocktail parties; in front of our faces where we know it and behind our backs when we’re being stabbed and don’t know it. And though we may never have been physically spit upon, though some of us have, we all know what its like to be treated as if you are being spat upon because someone has decided you are not made in the image of God. This is the Jesus who took His own spit and mixed it with earth and healed the blind. Will you let Him take those times when you have been spat upon and mix it with earthiness, with body, and heal you.
And all of us have lost someone to death. A beloved grandparent, a lover, a spouse, a brother or sister, an aunt or an uncle, a dear friend. You and I are still alive, but we know what it’s like to be right up against the edge of crucifixion because we have suffered with others who are dying. We know what its like to suffer with those who are dying around the world whose names we will never know. Those who are hungry, who cannot get medicine to heal them of HIV, or forgotten.
So what are we to do with this Passion, His Passion, our Passion? Are we just to look on and feel sad or to look on and be enraged at the injustice of His fake trial and all the injustices of the world that seem never to be healed. Are we just to look on in amazement that He can love in the midst of all of this? All of those are good things to do and I would not take them from you, but let me suggest two other things. First, walk with Him this week, walk every step that you can match. Let Him be with you and you be with Him as you remember all the hurt, all the joy, all the hunger and thirst, all the pain and suffering that you have ever suffered, that anyone you love has ever suffered, and that those will our suffering even now. And will you let His body cradle you? If you will not, you will not be able to do the second thing that I ask, because He asks that you do.
The second thing is to learn from Him how to take suffering and let it become love again. To suffer love, to be His body in the world because, as Theresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks out with compassion on this world, Christ has no body now on earth buy yours.” If you will not let Him cradle you, feed you, comfort you, you will never be, nor will I, able to cradle and solace and feed others. But if we will let Him do that for us, then we can do it for Him and for one another and for those outside these doors who need it.
So, let us be Christ’s body this week and every week. That we might love like Him, die like Him, and in the love of God, rise like Him. For Christ has no body now, no way to bear love now, except through us. Amen.
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