April 11, 2001, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 69:7-15,22-23 Salvum me fac
Hebrews 9:11-15, 24-28
John 13:21-35 or Matthew 26:1-5,14-25
Some years ago in Chicago, a young man came to the vicarage begging for help with his life. He was addicted to cocaine, and ruining every relationship he had, misusing people and stealing from them, he said. He had a terrible cold. He was sweating with fever, trembling. He was not well. I had compassion on him, and talked with him and decided to give him some food. I went to get hot soup from the kitchen, served him a steaming bowl, and went for bread. When I came back, he was weeping in sorrow there, his elbows on the table, his arms as around a treasure trove. He said he never tasted soup like that, it was the first time for soup like that--in fact I forget what soup it was. He finished his meal, used the linen napkin I insist upon as an emblem of faded elegance, and bowed out the door. After he left, I noticed a dust-free place at the corner of the little stand with potted plants, that stood next to the table before the sunny window. My favorite toy had stood there--an expensive short-wave radio, with which I listened to news from BBC and from far away Nicaragua. The vacant spot where there was no dust, and now no radio, glared at me like a gaping wound. My weeping guest had gone out the door with the radio under his coat, and would no doubt sell it cheap for his next fix.
What hurt me most was the meal we shared. I can still remember his compliments for my soup; I have been tempted ever since then to peep under the coats of compliments. I will always remember that meal in a special way, for its soup of betrayal, its deceitful "delicious." Who can betray us more treacherously than those with whom we have been compaņeros-- companions-- sharers of bread and table? So it is that at the last meal that Jesus has with his friends, one close enough to dip into a dish with him is the one who is capable of selling him out. It is always confidence (faith!) that makes the "con man" possible. The gospels indicate that the early Christian community believed that Jesus MUST HAVE KNOWN that there was betrayal under the biscuits that night, that there was there, at the heart of the litle ekklesia, sharing the morsel with him, the fatally flawed character who would take in with his shared tidbit more than the Lord had given by his own hand. John the gospel writer says that after Jesus gave Judas the morsel, dipped in the common dish of oil, it was Satan that Judas swallowed. Judas swallowed Satan's agenda, whole, he swallowed his treachery and betrayal, whole.
John says that Judas and Jesus had a little conversation then that no one could hear but himself, for he was as usual next to Jesus at table, as his beloved. And he heard it. The others, he said, thought that he and Judas were discussing finances, for that was Judas's responsibility, for he had the money box. But it wasn't money or the distribution of something to the poor that they were really talking about. Jesus was saying, "You can go now, and do what you're going to do." Intimacy makes love possible, and it also makes treachery easy. Apparently, Jesus had a better insight into the character of Judas by this time than I had of my young druggie friend dipping his bread into the soup bowl that day at lunch.
Jesus had called Judas to be a disciple, and must have had great hopes for him at one time. Perhaps even as they came to this supper together in the Cenacle. "Who is to betray you?" the others had asked, and Jesus said, "Watch! It's the one I'm sharing with now, most closely." The mystery of intimacy is that it can be the greatest of gifts--it was young John, the least mature, the one one who was at the heart of Jesus always, who became his beloved, and to whom he would commend his mother's care from the Cross.
Judas, more mature, more trustworthy with money, was perhaps the one most depended upon to be there and be responsible. To him Jesus had given the administration of the gifts; he kept the money and the books. And when he left the party, Satan went with him and Jesus said, not "Now I am undone! Now I am betrayed! Now I am put to shame!" but instead he said, according to the Beloved, "Now the human one is glorified and God is glorified. You will only see me a little longer, and so I need to tell you something: Love One Another, as I have loved you." Judas was gone by then, into the night. John makes much of that, that Judas had gone out into his own obscure ambience of shadows now, taking along Satan whom he had swallowed whole, with him. He has had his fill of sharing; now he wants it all.
Jesus does not see himself as undone by betrayal but renews his call to his disciples to go on loving, even as he has loved them. Everyone will know you are my students, he says, if you have love for one another. It will be your diploma--proof that you graduated with honors.
There is always Satan lurking under the delicacies of the community's dish--there is always the option of treachery under the common loaf, and the temptation to spit one's own agenda into the common cup. The siren song of the thirty pieces of silver, out there in the night, beckons the traitor away from the gospel's clear call to share. Judas wants his cut and he wants it first. A common cup is never enough for the entrepreneur, the venture capitalist. Jesus calls us away from the "Me First World" we have created with its silver stock certificates. Jesus calls us to eat of his life, to drink of his communitarian life style, as we come to this table. But it is always a table of judgment, of crisis, along with the life and death of the Liberator, we are always offered here the possibility of nibbling at Satan's bait. That would be in our failure to get our fill of love at this table. A new commandment, a new mandatum, a new Maundy, is available here--that you love one another.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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