Wednesday

Holy Week – An Exploration of the Meaning of Kenosis
copyright 2010 by Sea Raven, D.Min.

John 13:21-32; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Hebrews 12:1-3; Psalm 70

For those who chose not to do the Passion readings on Palm Sunday, Isaiah 50:4-9a is revisited now, but not in the context of Paul’s letter to the Philippians (“at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”).  Now the emphasis is on the willingness of the servant to submit to the will of God: “I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. . . I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.”  John’s Jesus knows who will betray him, and clearly indicates who it is by handing Judas the bread after it has been dipped in the bowl – yet the disciples fail to realize what is right in front of their faces: The hour for Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension has arrived. 

If the readings suggested by The Revised Common Lectionary are simply read in the context of traditional Christian belief, the story of the servant depicted in Isaiah easily becomes a prequel to the suffering and death of Jesus, the Messiah.  The Psalm then is a plea on the part of listeners to be saved from such a death: “Be pleased, O God, to deliver me . . . Let those be put to shame and confusion who seek my life . . .”  The verses cherry-picked from the pastoral letter called “Hebrews” reassures that “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses . . .” we can indeed “run with perseverance the race that is set before us . . .” 

That portion of the sermon by the writer of Hebrews has been used by would-be preachers and genuine prophets of Christianity for nearly two millennia.  In his last speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made reference to those who did not receive what was promised in their lifetimes, but who, like Moses and King himself, had been to the mountain top and had been privileged to see the promised land.  The “cloud of witnesses” refers to a litany of the Judeo-Christian journey (Heb 11:29-40), and the promise of the power of the Christ coming again.  But if read beyond the portion selected by the RCL, the metaphor soon breaks down into a thinly-veiled antisemitism along with the usual threats of hell-fire and damnation: “. . . for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! . . . for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (12:25-29)

Because we already know the story from Mark, Matthew, and Luke, we assume that John’s Judas has already conspired with the high priest Caiaphas to hand Jesus over to the religious authorities for 30 pieces of silver.  We assume that the reason the “chief priests and the Pharisees” in John’s story wanted to kill Jesus was because of Jesus’s demonstration against the money-changers in the Temple.  We never read John 11:45-57, in which the religious authorities plot to kill Jesus.  We never learn that Jesus’s raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead was the last straw for the high priest Caiaphas.  “This man is performing many signs,” Caiaphas tells the meeting of the council.  “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”  (The Romans did indeed destroy Jerusalem, well before John wrote his gospel, but not because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, or performed any other “signs.”)  John then says, “Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples” until the time came for him to return to Jerusalem for the final Passover.  “Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should let them know, so that they might arrest him.”  The stage is set for Judas leading both Roman soldiers and Temple police to arrest Jesus in the garden, not for the exchange of silver or Judas’s eventual remorseful suicide.

Judas’s motives have been the subject of speculation since the story was first told.  Jesus hands the bread to Judas and tells him to “Do quickly what you are going to do,” and Judas goes out into the night.  John’s version of the story says that “Some thought that because Judas had the common purse,” Jesus was telling him to buy supplies for their Passover festivities, or make a donation to the poor – acts of easy piety.  The writer of John’s gospel concludes that Judas was taken over by Satan.  In The Last Week, Borg and Crossan write that “. . . it is possible to gain control of the earth by demonic collaboration.  It is possible to fall prey to the ancient (and modern) delusion of religious power backed by imperial violence.” (p. 206) Quite probably, Judas did what he thought was right.  He abandoned what had to look like a lost cause in occupied Jerusalem in order to save himself from the consequences of being associated with a man the authorities wanted to arrest.  Caiphas did what he thought he needed to do in order to survive and preserve what he perceived to be the Jewish way of life.  Indeed, John has him say that “it is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50).  Ultimately, Pontius Pilate was absolutely correct in sentencing Jesus to death for the sake of preserving law and order and his own position as the Roman ruler of Palestine.

There is nothing supernatural about Jesus’ conviction that he would be turned over to the religious authorities, and likely ultimately executed by the Roman occupiers.  Jesus maintains his integrity in the service of justice-compassion, against the normalcy of civilization, relying upon the same kind of faith as Isaiah’s Servant.  But the kenosis illustrated by the third servant song of Isaiah is not submission to the will of an interventionist God who wants a sacrifice in payment for sin, or who “disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts” (Heb. 12:5-6 ref Proverbs 3:11-12).  Instead this kenosis means actively listening to the desire of a relational spirit for an exiled people to live in justice-compassion.  The servant says, “Morning by morning he wakens my ear to listen as those [do] who are taught.”  The servant listens and continues to teach reconciliation with that spirit and distributive justice among the people.  The servant does this despite persecution, torture, failure, and insult.  He empowers the people to maintain their covenant with God against the demonic forces that impel the people to collaborate with the empire that has carried them off into exile. 

The disciples could not hear what John’s Jesus was trying to tell them.  The others around the table that night apparently had no clue of the danger that he (and they) were in because of the threat that he (and they) presented to law and order under Roman occupation.  Judas was not the only follower of Jesus to be caught up in the mind-set that reduces teachings of non-violent justice-compassion to empty piety.  To live and practice non-violent justice-compassion is to actively counter the imperial forces that seduce us into going shopping, hiring illegal aliens as slave labor, and joining the military because we have been convinced that it is the only way to “be all we can be.” 

The creators of the Revised Common Lectionary leave out verses 10 and 11 of Isaiah 50, and they should not because the Servant addresses those very conditions that produce empty piety instead of an active counter to imperial retributive systems.  The Servant wonders “who [among you] walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God?”  The conclusion is, few if any.  But in a post-modern world, where the interventionist god died long ago, the Servant’s challenge to faith has meaning only if we accept the invitation to participate in the ongoing great work of justice-compassion.  Then we become partners with the kenotic servant God in restoring God’s justice-compassion to the world – which belongs to that kenotic servant God.  And the life and death of the servant-teacher Jesus is the model.

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Holy Monday

Holy Week – An Exploration of the Meaning of Kenosis
copyright 2010 by Sea Raven, D.Min.


John 12:1-11; Isaiah 42:1-9; Hebrews 9:11-15

The reading from John’s Gospel for Monday of Holy Week revisits the story of the woman with the alabaster jar.  The story is so powerful that it appears in all the gospels, and is considered twice by the lectionary readings in Year C.  For that reason, some form of this incident may very well have actually happened.  The question is when, and under what circumstances.  She must have been an important member – even a leader – in Jesus’ entourage, even though she is unnamed in Mark, Matthew, and Luke.  Mark, Matthew, and John place the story in Jesus’ last days as he journeys toward Jerusalem, death, and resurrection.  In Luke’s version this demonstration was not associated with Jesus’s last days.  It was an intrusion on a symposium, or banquet, for men only.  The woman was a penitent prostitute (by legend, Mary Magdalene), and the story is treated as a scandal.

John assumes she was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, close friends of Jesus.  In John’s version of the story, “six days before the Passover,” there is a dinner for Jesus at the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus has raised from the dead.  At this dinner, Lazarus is one of those at table with him, and Martha serves.  Mary takes a pound of expensive perfume and anoints Jesus’ feet with it, then wipes his feet with her hair.

The Revised Common Lectionary includes Hebrews 9:11-15 with the readings for Monday of Holy Week.  The writer of Hebrews argues that the Christ came as a high priest from the mysterious order of Melchizedek.  This high priest overthrew the old ways of purification through animal sacrifice.  “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!”  Heb. 9:14.  The writer is talking about purity and redemption (buy-back) for transgressions committed under Moses’s old covenant.  It is because of Jesus’s pure blood sacrifice that “those who are called” can “received the promised eternal inheritance.”  These passages – lifted from the context of the full argument – place anti-Semitism like a faint watermark in the background. 

But from Israel’s ancient past, Isaiah’s “suffering servant” models a different kind of power that brings God’s justice-compassion.  Whether the servant is a person – perhaps a future king – or represents the collective people of ancient Israel, power is redefined as kenotic power.  That is, power that is self-denying, not self-aggrandizing.  In the first of these “servant songs,” the prophet says that the former ways of doing business are well established, but new ways are coming.  The mandate is unmistakable: the servant is a partner with God in establishing God’s justice, and “the coastlands” – the earth within its coastal boundaries – actively wait – anticipate – look forward to hearing – whatever the servant has to say.  Suddenly there is no threat of retributive mayhem or payback, and the universe – perhaps weary of the constant bombardment of human unwillingness to live in trust and wholeness – is waiting for that teaching. 

Mary’s action at Lazarus’s dinner party claims unequivocally that the first part of the prophecy in Isaiah 42 has been fulfilled in Jesus.  The meaning of this story is far removed from what is presented in Hebrews. 

    "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.  He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.  He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching."

Three times, God says his servant will bring justice, and while it will come with non-violence, and without fanfare, it will come nevertheless with power.  How is justice brought forth with power and without violence?  Here is where post-modern Christian exiles must part company with the Christian orthodoxy represented by the writer of Hebrews.  Jesus death was not a blood sacrifice required to “purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God.”  Jesus’s death was in the service of God’s distributive justice-compassion.

That death – although violent – did not happen in order to bring about God’s distributive justice-compassion.  That violent death was a result of subverting the old ways of doing business – retributive justice, payback, the usual power structures.  Isaiah says that the servant “will bring forth justice to the nations.  He will not cry or lift up his voice . . . a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”

The poor and those denied access to the usual social and political powers afforded to citizens of civilized societies (the disenfranchised) demand justice because they live with injustice daily.  But any human being is susceptible to the corruption of political, social, economic, and personal power systems that lead seemingly inevitably to what John Dominic Crossan calls “the normalcy of civilization.”  Justice under this “normal” condition is retributive.  Power-over others and getting even define the only power that seems to make a difference.  The rich – the privileged – who control access to the usual expressions of political or social power are the ones most easily corrupted by the power they hold. 

This may be the trap Judas found himself in.  Mary, Martha, and Lazarus may have been among the rich patrons who supported Jesus.  Lazarus sponsored a dinner party for Jesus.  Mary may have bought the perfume herself.  So what is Judas complaining about?  In John’s story, Judas is outraged by Mary’s extravagant waste of a commodity that could have been sold and the money given to the poor.  But it is a false piety.  “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief,” says John.  “He kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”  The writer was probably setting up Judas for the betrayal to come.  But money is not what brings God’s distributive justice.  What brings God’s distributive justice is “my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”  Mary uses the money to buy a pound of pure nard, and instead of keeping it “for the day of my burial,” as Jesus suggests, she anoints Jesus’s feet with it.  Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”  Money designated by the rich for the poor merely continues to buy into the normal systems that keep injustice and violence in place.  Instead of making the expected donation, Mary has acknowledged Jesus as the servant of God, and has anticipated his death.  The writers of both Luke and John say that the reason Judas betrayed Jesus was that he was possessed by Satan.  Without working through the metaphor suggested by this characterization (“the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” 1 Timothy 6:10), it is possible that after Mary’s extravagant misuse of the company funds, the only way Judas could see to ensure his own economic survival was to turn Jesus in to the collaborators with Roman authority.

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