Maundy Thursday

You may recall from Sunday that I love Palm Sunday. Well, I also love Maundy Thursday. [Footbaths and all the stuff that God is really into..yeah!] Brad Neely aside, [google it] today is a great day. Today, Jesus sits down for a final meal wit his best friends. If I knew I was about to die, that is exactly what I would do. Tears are filling my eyes as I imagine sitting around my parents' dining room table, eating and drinking and laughing with those I hold dearest. I just made a list, because I am super into torturing myself with shit like this, and I'd have 19 people instead of 12 but that is SO FAR from the point that we are just going to move on like I didn't put that in your head. Okay, cool. Tonight, I'd be sitting with them, assuring them that there were necessary things that would happen in the coming days, and that they would have each other, afterward. And that I would never really leave them.

Next, I think about who is my Judas. [Hear me out.] When you approach it this way, you think much better of Judas. [Hear me out.] Judas sets everything in motion. Without the kiss of Judas, the events of the three days do not take place. What if, instead of Judas' actions betraying the teacher he knew and loved, what if Judas was Jesus' most trusted disciple? What if Jesus knew he could count on Judas? What if Jesus knew he could rely on Judas to accept his instruction without protest? What if Jesus knew that Judas could be trusted to appear untrustworthy?  What if Judas and Jesus had a private agreement that this would happen?

What if Judas is the Beloved Disciple?

When you hear the story of Judas the betrayer of your Lord, step back. Could it be that Judas did what needed to be done and those who told the story did not know the whole narrative? The other eyewitnesses who became the sources for the Gospel writers could not have been privy to this most delicate of relationships. In order to explain this unexplainable behavior, they've labeled Judas' kiss of peace [kiss goodbye?] as kiss of ultimate betrayal, kiss of death. Could Jesus' words of impending betrayal around the table at the Last Supper be the gospel authors' attempts to explain what they have been unable to understand?

Could it be, therefore, not that Jesus knew ahead of time that Judas would betray him, but rather that Jesus entrusted the perfect timing of his arrest -- this most definitive moment of his life -- to his dearest friend, Judas, secretly, ahead of time?

Wouldn't you choose your dearest friend to control your moment of impending death?

Wouldn't you?

Holy Wednesday

Today's theological reflection doesn't come from the story of the passion, but rather from what I spent the afternoon reading in preparation for class tomorrow. First, take a gander at the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25.

     When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.  

     Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  

     Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. 

This parable is told often, and interpreted in a way that is unhelpful. You can probably guess that we, the ones sitting in the pews listening to the sermon are, of course, the sheep at the right hand who have done what the Father asks of them. We're doing it now, by being in church on Sunday, aren't we? And by volunteering at that homeless shelter sometimes? And making sure our teenagers go to youth group on Wednesdays. Following in line in our sheep-y ways. And those who do not do good in the world are surely the goats at the left. They have not done what has been required of them. They're not even listening. They're probably eating trash somewhere. Like goats are wont to do.

This is one of the most "us v. them" parables ever -- and I'm just going to come out and say that, if this is what it means, I hate it. But! we're in luck! In her book On the Mystery, Catherine Keller takes this parable apart and redeems it from previous awful interpretation and use. [Italics are hers, bold is mine.] She writes that, "it isn't just our agape toward the marginalized  that counts as care for this Lord. But in failing to care for one of these--at least one? a particular one? every one?--we doom ourselves." Whoa. And she goes on, a paragraph later, to say:

"If in the face of the child abused next door, or joining a gang downtown, or starved and terrified in Darfur, we do not notice the Christ--we have missed him. Which is to say, we betray the ultimate meaning, the "final" meaning, of our own lives. Of our shared creaturely life. It is not just that Jesus is inseparable from the most vulnerable members of our own species; it is that he is teaching that inseparability as our own ultimate condition."

And as if I wasn't obsessed enough with this already, she goes after the sheep and the goats! After this great sticking together of all creaturely life, we've been unstuck in this parable, have we not? She writes:

"Both for those of us who find ourselves marginalized, and for those content to leave the margins as they are, our humanity is at stake. For after all our humanity--and humanity means nothing but a shared life--remains in process and sometimes truly on trial. Our inner "goat" (goats seem to have symbolized to ancient farmers a greedy, competitive aggressor) couldn't care less about those inconsequential others."

And as for the sheep, she writes:

"In an ancient agricultural context, sheep had connotations not of penned-in, passive, and petty obedience, but of a roving co-existence in the wilderness. The parable puts a premium on that cooperative, peaceful spirit, countering the culture of competition and predation. We are not called to be sheepish. No one sheepish visits prisoners or works for the homeless or challenges the predatory systems that keep some poor that others may have abundance. We are called to "flock"--to congregate, to gather, to conspire in the original sense: to collaborate in the spirit of just love."

Boom, sucka.  Think about that for a second. Read the parable again. Read her words again. You'd probably like to be a sheep now, right? And in a different way than you wanted to be a sheep before. And nobody's destined to remain a goat. We're all harboring that inner goatiness. There's not really a division on God's right and left hands. I mean, we know this. But what can we do with the knowledge of our new sheepishness? Sheep of a feather flock together...[sorry].

Holy Tuesday

I learned that Monday through Wednesday are totally allowed to be called Holy this week. Or Great, in some Eastern Orthodox circles. So! Holy Tuesday it is. And today was a great day. Got a lot of work done in various coffee shops and the library with all sorts of my dearest classmates. And Kelsey and I got free Ben and Jerry's scoops. Sure, we waited in line for like thirty minutes with like 200 of our closest Cal undergrad friends. So worth it.

Anyway, there's not a lectionary text for today, but the middle of the passion story is sort of assigned to these days before the triduum, and I've been ruminating on this part:

While Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her .But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” (Mark 14:3-9)

And, like, I don't know what nard is. Or like, why she pours it over his head. Or why, in John's gospel, she puts it in her hair and then onto his feet. That's not the point, interestingly enough. The point is that, here, Mary (she's named in John's gospel) pours her heart into Jesus as she pours out this jar of ointment. And yet, those observing are unable to understand the nature of her giving, but rather are appalled that such valuable ointment has been "wasted." Jesus, of course, understands. This woman has understood where Jesus is going, and has given all she can to him. And what's interesting about this passage, too, is how true Jesus' last sentence is, there. This is part of the (rather hefty) lectionary text for Palm Sunday. Every single Palm Sunday, the story of this woman is told. Every time the good news is proclaimed across the world, each Holy Week, what she has done is told in remembrance of her. Her act of deep love is told in accordance with his. Every year. In the most important week in our tradition. 

What does this say about the women in the Holy Week stories? There are a few women whose stories we hear this week (all the Marys, let's be real). This Mary and her sister Martha, the sisters of the dead-and-raised Lazarus; Mary, the mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, to whom the risen Christ first appeared.

Women, though sideswept in first-century society, are often at the forefront of Jesus' ministry. The men in the room never know what to do about it. I can just see Jesus smiling, putting up a hand to calm their sputtering, and then spouting beautiful words of wisdom regarding the faithful acts of these women. 

These women, who could have been me.