Sunday Readings
Commentary

Sunday Readings Commentary

Father Andrew Wadsworth offers a short commentary on this week's Sunday Lectionary readings.

To read the relevant Bible passage just click on the reference.

Before reading and reflecting on God's word you might like to use the following prayer:

O Lord,
who hast given us thy word
for a light to shine upon our path:
Grant us so to meditate upon that word
and follow its teaching,
that we may find in it the light that shineth
more and more unto the perfect day:
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Maundy Thursday

The festival on which Passover was based was originally a nomad festival at the move from winter pastures in the plains to summer pastures in the hills. A fine lamb was offered to placate the gods, so that they would not harm the rest of the flock; it was eaten at the first full moon of spring, after the spring equinox (March 21st). Blood on the door-posts of the tents was a sign that the offering had been made. Water is scarce for nomads, so the lamb was roasted, not boiled – cooking-pots were packed, anyway! This primitive festival was taken up by the Hebrews to commemorate the great move from Egypt through the desert, and – most of all – the covenant made in the desert of Sinai, when God made Israel his own people. It was celebrated each year, and the blood of the lamb sprinkled over the altar (representing God) and the people signified their union in the covenant.

Paul gives us the story of this meal, which he himself had received from what was already traditional, hardly a dozen years after the Last Supper, well before the Gospels were written .
Jesus himself was the lamb who was to be sacrificed, and his new covenant was sealed, not in blood sprinkled, but in his own blood consumed . It was a ‘memorial’, that is, an effective re-enactment, actually renewing the act of dedication and union . In today’s reading Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for re-enacting this significant moment thoughtlessly, as though it was an ordinary festal meal; they had lost the intention and the seriousness . They were no longer proclaiming the death of Jesus, no longer engaging themselves in the new covenant . It is a dangerous thing to commit oneself to a new covenant sealed by death and leading to new life.

This moving gospel reading is the immediate prelude to the account of the Last Supper and the Passion. It is full of Jesus’ dread and confidence at what he knows is approaching. In the gospel of John there is no agony in the garden before Jesus’ arrest, for in John the story of the Passion is so shaped that it is clearly the triumph of the Son of man. There is no mention of humiliation or mockery. Jesus remains in control from the beginning, when he permits the guards to take him into custody, till the end, when he calls out that he is ready to die, ‘It is complete’. This is all the hour of the exaltation of the Son of man, when Jesus is raised up in every sense. All the more important, then, for John to show before the Passion that the cost for Jesus was real, with this little dialogue in prayer between Jesus and his Father. This is John’s equivalent of the prayer in the garden. The second reading from Hebrews shows that there were in early Christianity strong but slightly variant traditions of Jesus’ prayer before his Passion. All express his very human fear, his unshakable commitment to his task and his loving confidence in his Father’s care.

Good Friday

These four poems occur in the second part of the Book of Isaiah pronounced by the prophet in the last days of the Babylonian Exile, a time which was vital for the consolidation and re-formation of Israel. They seem to hang together and form a body somewhat, but not entirely, separate from the rest of the prophecy.

The fourth Song continues and intensifies the theme of suffering; many details of it are fulfilled in the story of the Passion of Jesus, to the extent that it seems that the Passion Narrative itself was even composed with this Song in mind.

Who, then, is this Servant? In its primary meaning it has been understood as the prophet himself, reflecting on his own experiences as God’s messenger to Israel, though the difficulty here is that, as well as having a mission to Israel, he is identified as part of Israel. Is that identification in the second Song a later addition? The sufferings described in other Songs must be personal. Perhaps it is the prophet precisely as identified with Israel. Should a further extension of the meaning be understood as the long-term suffering of the People of God in witnessing to the values of Judaism? Certainly Christianity sees the prophecies to be fulfilled in the mission and sufferings of Jesus.

The Letter to the Hebrews contrasts the supreme High Priest with the transient high priests of Judaism. In order to bring humanity to perfection Jesus had to share completely in our humanity. He was ‘tempted in every way that we are’, sexual temptations, temptations to anger, to intolerance, to cut people down to size. He was ‘capable of feeling our weaknesses’, fear, frustration, laziness, boredom. In the gospels few of these are mentioned: his exhaustion at the well in Samaria, his grief at the death of his friend Lazarus. But, as he had a very human personality, he must have suffered the fears and incomprehension of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence, as well as the more complex troubles and sorrows of adulthood, not to mention the unremitting opposition of those who rejected him – all under the overarching passion for his Father and his Kingship. All this would have enriched his personality still further, until he offered the whole of his humanity in obedience to his Father’s designs. Just as martyrdom is the crown of a life of Christian fidelity, so Jesus’ final sacrifice was the crown of a life of love, obedience, and generosity.

The second part of this reading is the heart of the Letter to the Hebrews which dwells on the priesthood of Christ. Here the author prepares us for the coming celebration of the Passion by reflecting on the double aspect of the human fear and pain of Jesus, and his complete, loving obedience. It says his prayer was heard. What prayer? Not the prayer to be spared death, for that prayer was not heard. Rather the deeper prayer, the prayer which was at the heart of his burning desire to establish the kinship of God in human hearts, bringing peace between heaven and earth by his perfect obedience. How then did he ‘learn obedience through suffering’? The secret of the Cross of Jesus is that here he reached the perfect obedience to his Father, giving everything to his Father’s will. His whole life and ministry had been devoted to the Father’s will, to establishing the Father’s kingship on earth. Now it reaches its highest point. His perfect obedience overrode and expunged the disobedience of Adam, that is, the archetypal disobedience of the whole human race. So by accepting defeat, pain and humiliation he obtained for himself and for all victory, bliss and exaltation to glory.

John’s narrative of the Passion is different from that of the synoptic Gospels in important respects. Some of these differences are matters of emphasis, others spring from a set of different facts. After Caiaphas’s decision no Jewish trial scene before the high priest, no meeting of a Sanhedrin to prepare a charge to put before Pilate, was necessary. Instead John gives an interrogation before Annas, the ex-high priest and father-in-law of Caiaphas. The trial before Pilate may well be built on the same incident as that of the synoptics, but in John it is highly elaborated for theological reasons.

The Johannine account is not the story of a condemned criminal being dragged to the disgraceful and tortured death reserved for slaves. Jesus is the majestic king, who proceeds royally to his triumph in death. There is no painful prayer for release in Gethsemane. From the beginning it is stressed that Jesus is fully aware of what is to happen. Before he can be arrested his captors repeatedly fall to the ground in an involuntary gesture of reverence at Jesus’s pronouncement of the divine name, “I am”. Jesus commands them to let his followers go, and is taken only when he gives the word (Jn 18:11). The humiliating elements of the other accounts, such as buffeting, spitting and the challenge to prophesy, have disappeared. Jesus is emphatically declared king in the three great world languages by the very man who condemns him to death (19:20-22). John even notes that the proclamation was publicly acknowledged by “many of the Jews”. not only is Jesus king; he continues his role as revealer and judge as well. In the interview with Annas it is Jesus who challenges and questions the high priest, reiterating his own teaching which he has given for all the world to hear. Similarly at the trial before Pilate, Jesus questions the governor and shows his control, until Pilate collapses with the feeble evasion, “What is truth?” – a humiliating self-condemnation in this gospel of truth. The judgement reaches its climax when the Jewish leaders, in a formal and balanced scene, condemn themselves before Jesus: he is enthroned on the judgement seat as judge and crowned – with thorns – as king, still wearing the royal purple robe of his mockery, while they deny the very existence of Judaism by declaring, “We have no king but Caesar” (Jn 19:15). If the God of Israel is not universal king, then Israel has no point or purpose.

The final scene has special significance. Jesus carries his own cross, unaided, and is enthroned on it – no agonising details of nailing and hoisting – between two attendants. There is no final psalm quotation of seeming despair (as in Mark and Matthew) or of resignation (as in Luke), no wordless “great cry” as Jesus expires. In John Jesus prepares the community of the future. In contrast to the other Gospels, Mary and the Beloved Disciple stand at the foot of the cross and are entrusted to each other’s care to constitute the first Christian community, the woman and the man, the mother and the ideal disciple. This is cemented by the gift of the Spirit, as Jesus – with typical Johannine ambiguity – “gave over his spirit”. Does this mean “breathed his last” or “gave them the Holy Spirit”? Only then does Jesus consent to die, with the words, “It is fulfilled”.