Telling
(Theological) Tales
Text:
Matthew 26:31-56
by Dr Graeme Garrett
This weekend we are working on the
interface between faith and culture, taking movies as the point of
contact. I know that not everyone here has been a part of the discussion
of the two movies we have seen thus far. So I won't be referring
directly to those films in this sermon. But I do
want to carry on the theme we have been investigating, that is, the
theological interpretation of stories. This morning I want to look at
the story that stands at the centre of Christian faith. The story of the
passion of Jesus, or at least the part of that story as told by Matthew
in the reading we have just heard.
The story as
Matthew relates it faces us with the gradual but relentless isolation
and final abandonment of Jesus. At the start, the stage is
crowded with actors, bit players and stars alike. By the end, nobody.
"Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." (v 56). Why
this is the case, why the story of Jesus works out this way, is not easy
to fathom. Some things can be said. But at its heart lies a holy
darkness our eyes cannot penetrate: the mystery of God's engagement
with a violent world for its judgment and healing.
Why does Jesus
go the way of the cross? Let me start with that sliced ear. Why on earth
does that bit of graphic detail get into the story? After all, here's
the Son of God heading for the climactic confrontation of his entire
mission-the world's salvation at stake no less-so what does this
odd, gory little episode have to do with it? No doubt it's
rough for the high priest's servant, losing an ear in the melee. But
he's just a nameless bit player in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That's about it, isn't it? And yet Matthew, Mark and Luke all report
it. Luke even goes so far as to say it was his right ear that was
severed. What's that about, for heaven's sake? Is the episode there
to underline the bumbling incompetence of the case for the defence?
Whoever it was-and the text doesn't say-pulls out a sword, goes to
brain the high priest's servant, misses the target and manages to
slice off an ear. Big deal! Or is it there to highlight the non-violent
intentions of Jesus who defuses a potential all-out brawl before it gets
going? I'm not sure.
But look at
something else. Just before the fiasco of the amputated ear comes the
dramatic report of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. And how does he do
it? With a kiss. With the mouth. "Greeting, Rabbi!" (he said)
and kissed him." (v 49). Then look at the incident before the
betrayal scene. It's that agonising hour of prayer where, with drops
of sweat and blood on his brow, Jesus debates with God the wisdom and
worth of what is coming: "if it is possible, let this cup pass from
me." But Peter, James and John, specifically asked-well, begged-by
Jesus to stay with him in this desperate vigil, what do they do? They
fall asleep three times, "for their eyes were heavy",
the text explains. The eye that cannot stay open. The mouth that cannot
act truly. The ear that is cut off.
Is it just an
accident of narrative that eye, mouth, ear are all named in this story
of Jesus' suffering? Is it drawing a long bow to let our minds
wander back over the course of Jesus' ministry, and remember how many
of his healing miracles have to do with restoring the eyes of the blind,
with healing the ears of the deaf, with opening the mouths of the dumb?
The very gifts of the kingdom of God which Jesus came to bring: that we
might see clearly, speak truly, hear deeply-and I'm deliberately
hovering here between literal and metaphorical meanings of eye, mouth,
ear, since this is also what the Gospel do-these very gifts are the
things whose distortion, misuse or disablement speed him on the way to
death.
Peter, James and John are right
there with Jesus in his prayer battle. But they just can't see what's
really going on. Their eyes can't look into that heart of darkness
that Jesus faces. They sleep again and again. Judas is there also. With
his mouth kisses Jesus off to his execution. His voice says
"Rabbi", but his lips say, "take him". And the ear
man-the high priest's servant. This fellow is obviously there to
report back to the high priest on what's happened. He's supposed to
be the ears of the religious court in this matter. But you can bet your
bottom dollar he won't hear much while he's grubbing around in the
dark trying to find that severed ear.
As we contemplate
Jesus' passion as depicted in this story, this truth faces us: the Son
of God goes to torture and death, which means God in his love for the
world goes through hell, at least partly because people-like you and
me-just don't see clearly what is going on before our sleepy eyes in
this world; and because we find our mouths spouting all sorts of things
that suit our ends for the moment, and don't care too much what lies,
dissembling, untruth do in God's world and to God's purposes; and
because our ears are damaged somehow and we can't pay heed to the
truth which the Word of God speaks and enacts in front of us. The cross
is, at least in part, about impaired vision, dishonest talk and damaged
listening. Our eyes, mouths, ears are implicated here, along with
those of the world at large, of course.
But I don't want to take the high
moral ground and point the finger at these actors in the passion drama,
as if they are somehow weak and reprehensible people who ought to have
known better and acted otherwise. Perhaps they should have. And yet
would I have done any better? Almost certainly not. But that's not the
whole story. The complexity of the situation is signalled by the differences
in the circumstances that gave rise to the various distortions that the
story sets out.
Those sleepy
eyes. They shut because they've seen all that they can bear of Jesus
agony and can take no more. The three don't choose to sleep.
They go out to it in face of a horror that swamps them. I remember when
Jane, my youngest daughter, was about 9 years old. We were travelling
through Scotland in a bus. It was winter and bitterly cold. Snow lay in
great drifts along the sides of the road. We came around a sharp corner
and there on the side of the road was a young deer. It had been hit by a
car or bus. We stopped. But there was nothing we could do. The deer gave
a few weak kicks and lay still. Jane watched this drama with anguish.
And then, when we got back into the car, I would say in 15 seconds,
anyway no more than 30, she was asleep. Completely out to it. Her mind
just shut down from the overload of pain.
Perhaps something like that was the
situation the three watchers faced. They could see far enough to know
that Jesus was in a terrible struggle with God and with evil. But it was
way out of reach for them. The terror of it shut them down. "The
spirit is willing", said Jesus, but ordinary flesh and blood, our
flesh and blood, has limits. And these goings-on were well beyond those
limits. With Judas it is different. He chooses to plant that
kiss. There's freedom here, and he exercises it in a destructive way.
And the high priest's servant. He's different again. He loses his
ability to hear because things just get out of hand and suddenly (boom!)
it happens. He's a victim in the drama rather than a perpetrator.
All this is
true of our participation in the passion of God, isn't it? And true also of the wider world? The
problem of evil and violence, the anti-God realities at work in the
world, the de-creative forces that break the world asunder, much of this
stuff is just beyond us. It's out of reach of anything we can muster.
These past 12 months-all the violence-religious, ethnic and
political-that we have witnessed around the world; and some awful
goings on in the public life in this country: at times it seems just too
much. Our lights go out. Our eyes get heavy and we have to close them or
drown in despair. We sleep when we shouldn't. That's just the way it
is.
But at other times
we speak and we kiss, but we do so in bad faith. We betray what we know
to be true and good, because it suits us; or it's profitable; or
somebody with power told us to; whatever. We say "Rabbi", but
we mean, "take him".
And then there are
other moments when we get hit by the system. The sword comes out of
nowhere, we don't even know who's wielding it, until
"crash!", we're hurt and we simply can't do what needs to
be done. We were there to hear, but our ear's been cut.
Weakness, wicked
choice, unlucky damage. They all play a role in our life. They affect
where we are, and what parts we play, in the passion of our Lord.
Which is why I come back to the
matter of the progressive isolation of Jesus in the story. It's not a
marvellous image, I know, but somehow it has stuck in my mind this week.
I think of those staged rockets they use to blast satellites or
telescopes or what-have-you into space. At lift off they are massive,
huge at the base, then narrowing down in 3 or 4 stages until they reach
the nose cone of the rocket that carries the precious payload. The
rocket blasts off. A thousand feet into the air the first stage burns
off and falls away. A mile up the second stage is exhausted and breaks
away; then the third stage and the fourth, until at last, as it bursts
into space and its aimed-for orbit, only the payload remains to carry
the task through to its completion.
The story of the passion is a bit
like that. At the start any number of followers begin the journey,
swearing they can and will stay to the end. But as Jesus moves
relentlessly toward the cross, one by one they fall away: the general
band of disciples, the three watchers, Judas, the swordsman, until in
the end "they all forsook him and fled." And the story goes on
until through trial and torture Jesus makes his way to Calvary. There alone
he is nailed to the tree.
The early Christians had a
particular interpretation of this story. It wasn't the only one, of
course. But it was an important one. They called it the Christus
Victor [Christ the Victor] theory of the cross. This interpretation
sees the cross not so much as the man Jesus moving with great
courage and conviction through the violence of both hostile and friendly
fire (as they say of war these days), toward his destiny. He is that, of
course. But more than that. Christus Victor sees the cross as God
taking the final responsibility for God's world, in all its glorious
wonder and all its violent disability. God in
Christ takes the fight right to the heart of darkness that lowers in the
breast of creation. And strikes at that dark heart with the sword of
love. That battle is God's. In the final analysis, it is not
something we can do for ourselves. We can stand on the sidelines; we can
watch (and sometimes sleep); we can speak (and sometimes betray); we can
listen (and sometimes lose our hearing). But we cannot do it. Nor
are we asked to. This is something God does; does for God's sake and
for the sake of God's creation. God will not allow creation to be
battered to violent death. And so, in the cross, God takes violence into
God's own life and, in the resurrection, swamps it with love, peace,
justice.
Of course, in contemplating this
story, it is worth contemplating what in our seeing, our speaking and
our listening, contributes to the violence of this world, contributes
even to violence against God. But the centre of the story finally is not
our seeing or lack of it; not our speaking truth or lying;
not our hearing or mishearing. The centre is God's journey in
Christ to the heart of darkness (whatever that terrible phrase of Joseph
Conrad's means), where alone and on our behalf, which means on behalf
of the whole threatened creation, God makes it clear that life and love
are God's hallmarks. And because they are what God is, they are what
we must deal with finally, in all our doing and being, in life and in
death.
Dr Graeme Garrett
3/11/2002
Kingston Baptist Church
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