By John Beverly, Reader, Springline Parish
These are some simple story reflections to encourage you during the isolation and downtime we are currently enduring. There is one for each day except Sunday. For Sunday we aim to provide a more detailed (story based) video presentation with a prayer time – Please be encouraged!
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to johnbevster@gmail.com
By the way, Noah only took two of everything when he went into the ark. Try to remember that when you go shopping – except buy one extra for Foodbank – they’re fairly desperate!
Monday – The Best Person Ever: Part One
Jesus had lots of chums. There were 12 who were special mates.
For 3 years these mates experienced at close quarters the greatest love that the world has ever known and for much of that time we can only assume he has responded to that love warmly and spontaneously.
Take Judas.
- At the last supper Jesus is at his most loving – he has washed the disciples’ feet and shared blessed bread and wine. But he senses betrayal and gives voice to it: “Someone is going to hand me over; someone here.” The others are appalled and break into loud protestations. John asks Jesus to be more specific, but he cannot bring himself to name Judas. Instead, he indicates him indirectly. Jesus makes it clear to John that Judas is the person.
- It is also reasonable to assume that Peter knew it was Judas. Why didn’t they ask him, “Where are you going? What are you doing? Later, all Jesus’ mates ran away – deserted him.
- In human relationships the story is only too common. Two people love each other and promise to dedicate themselves to each other’s wellbeing. And then, after a while it goes wrong. What began as full of hope and the best of intentions ends in bitterness and separation.
- This is the first betrayal to Jesus – the betrayal of friendship.
Tuesday – The Best Person Ever: Part Two!
After the betrayal of friends what happened next?
- For us who belong to organised religious denominations it is shocking to recall that Jesus went to his death hated and condemned by the religious leaders of his day. They did this in a premeditated way.
- They did it in the name of the God of Israel and in order to uphold the sacred law. They saw themselves and were seen by others as virtuous men, upholders of the faith and protectors of the holy tradition.
- After the agony of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus appears calm. We are told the band of soldiers and officials are momentarily stopped in their tracks as Jesus appears to them: they fall to the ground as if blinded in some way by the force of his presence. Moments later Jesus comforts Malchus and heals his ear. Jesus is self possessed, full of light and compassion.
- “Who is it you want?”
- “Jesus of Nazareth,” they answered.
- “I am he.”
- This bold utterance of Jesus “I am he” confirm the picture of a man who is completely at home in his own identity. He is being fully himself – loving, healing, inwardly strong and composed.
- As Jesus stands before Annas (they probably knew each other – we are told, for example, that one disciple at least was an acquaintance of Annas) he remains impervious to condemnation and has no sense of guilt. On the contrary he speaks firmly and assertively.
- “Why do you question me. I taught openly in the Temple. If you want to know what I said, ask them who listened to me.” For this remark he received a blow to the face. He does not accept the accusation and refuses to feel guilty. Instead he replies, “If I spoke amiss, state it in the evidence against me: if I spoke well why do you hit me?”
- In what ways are these representatives of organised religion not being true to themselves? In what way can we say that Jesus is being fully human?
- Is there a way that belonging to an organised religion can miss the truth?
This is the second betrayal done to Jesus – the betrayal of organised religion.
Wednesday – The Best Person Ever: Part Three
- Pilate was an ambitious Roman administrator. He recognised Jesus’ innocence. Furthermore, Matthew tells us his wife warned him that Jesus was innocent. He made attempts to avoid committing Jesus to death. But, still, Pilate goes on to condemn Jesus when it is in his power to set him free.
- When the chief priests accused Pilate of not being a friend of the Emperor, they knew they were hitting a tender spot. They were making a scarcely veiled threat to report him to Rome for releasing someone who was a blasphemer and a threat to Rome.
- What is it that drives Pilate to act with complete inauthenticity?
- Jesus, on the other hand, is completely without power and yet calm. According to John, Jesus attempts to engage Pilate in rational dialogue. The culmination of this is Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” – the cynical comment of a man ruled by political expediency and the fear of forfeiting power. Rather, Pilate has to think of what will please the Emperor and preserve his own position.
- It is not Jesus who is troubled in spirit. He speaks directly and is flogged and humiliated. He retains his inner strength and is prepared to maintain silence as Pilate seeks to question him further. He even has the compassion to focus on Pilate’s mounting guilt feelings and to speak words of comfort: “The deeper guilt lies me with the man who handed me over to you.”
- In what ways is Jesus behaving fully human and authentically?
THE THIRD BETRAYAL DONE TO JESUS IS THE BETRAYAL OF POLITICAL POWER
Thursday – The Best Person Ever: Part Four
- The soldiers who crucified Jesus are brutalised by a system that forces them to do inhuman things.
- How must the soldiers have viewed their job? They were under superior authority and for them to do anything than carry out orders must have been unthinkable. Not to have pushed him along the streets, not to have stripped him naked, not to have nailed him to the cross, not to have lifted that cross into its vertical position so that everyone could mock and gloat – not to have done these things would have been to fail in their duty and to court disgrace and probably their own execution.
- John tells us that there were four soldiers whose duty it was to crucify Jesus and each probably had his own particular responsibility. Perhaps one would have stripped him while another held him down and the others hammered in the nails. It is an intimate form of execution. Flesh touches flesh and blood spurts everywhere.
- A few hours later the centurion in charge of the crucifixion will bear witness to the fact that the love of Jesus has indeed broken through and irradiated the horrific climax: “Truly, this was the Son of God.”
- How are the soldiers lives less than human by living under authority? How are they brutalised and demeaned by their jobs?
Friday – The Best Person Ever:Part Five
The Divinisation of Humanity
- We hear Jesus’ last words from the cross. They are:
- Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.
- Eli, Eli lama sabachthani: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
- I Tell you this: today you shall be with me in Paradise.
- Mother, there is your son.
- Son, there is your mother.
- I thirst.
- Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
- It is accomplished.
- He experiences the full range of torment. He knows what it is to feel utterly desperate, abandoned by God in whom he placed his trust (2 & 6). He knows what it means to grasp the hope which lies beyond despair and to trust again beyond all reason (7)
- He knows what it is to be open to relationship at every level. He receives the respect and love of the condemned thief and responds in fullest measure without the least trace of judgement or withholding (3). He is loved and hated with intensity. To the hatred he responds with complete forgiveness (1).
- He sees through the blood and sweat of his agony and in the semiconsciousness of his dying hours, his mother – a middle aged peasant woman who loves him passionately but who has to let him go – and his dearest friend, probably a young man from a different class and superior intellect. Both, he knows, will experience his death as the most appalling tragedy and their lives will be shattered. He joins them together. (4 & 5)
- When the final words comes from his lips, “It is finished,” we hear the proclamation that a human person has achieved the fullness of being. Jesus shows us how to be fully human, authentic and whole. “It is finished,” is the proclamation of the New Age. A New Age when, through Jesus we also can be fully human.
Look back over the week. – friends, religious people, politicians, soldiers. None of these behaved in a way that is authentically human. There is something of every one of us in these stories. Those people, if we are honest, are like us. Jesus took all that on to the cross on our behalf.
Saturday – The Best Person Ever:Part Six
Look back over this week’s reflections. The truth is to be like Jesus, to be true to self, loyal to friends, honest in religious practice and faith, transparent in dealings with others, unpossessed by power of others.
However, there were some people who remained totally authentic and human. When Jesus could no longer rely upon others, he rested in the love of four women – the four who had overcome fear and were free from the shackles of religious bigotry and political power games.
- The life of Jesus is rich with stories of his encounters with women: moving and intimate conversations with his mother, with Mary and Martha from Bethany, with the Samaritan woman at the well, with the woman with an issue of blood, with Jairus’ daughter, with the widow of Nain, with the woman caught in adultery. It comes as no surprise that Jesus was loved by women.
- Against the stark brutality inflicted by the religious, political and military men, the women bring compassion: Pilate’s wife, Procla’s dream life reveals Jesus’ innocence, the women of Jerusalem weep as he walks to Calvary; there is the tradition of Veronica who hands Jesus a napkin to wipe his bleeding face which is then forever imprinted on the fabric. At the foot of the cross four women wait in sorrow and love.
- There were four women watching Jesus die that first Good Friday. Three were female members of his family including his mother, Mary; the fourth is Mary Magdalen – healed of a mental illness by Jesus and one who loved him profoundly and who was later to be privileged to be the first who encountered the risen Lord.
- Compared to brutal contribution of men to Jesus’ last hours, what was the contribution of these women?
- In what ways were they brave?