Holy
Week – An Exploration of the Meaning of Kenosis
copyright 2010 by Sea Raven, D.Min.
Wednesday
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.
BLOG
ARCHIVE
Gaia Rising! Website