Author: CCW

“God, be merciful to me a sinner”

The theme of divine mercy triumphs over human presumption and folly. Divine mercy, however, makes no sense whatsoever if we do not know ourselves to be, in fact, sinners. In a way the shadows of the Cross reach backwards as well as forwards. We are illumined, paradoxically as it may seem,  by the shadows of the Cross.

There is the grace of revelation and the grace of redemption and nowhere, perhaps, is that seen more wonderfully than in the 18^th chapter of the Book of Genesis both in terms of this morning’s lesson and in terms of what precedes it, namely, the encounter between God and Abraham under the shade of the oaks of Mamre, a scene in which God gives the promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, the proverbial ‘promised son’. God appears to Abraham in threefold aspect and Abraham prepares a meal for them and waits upon them. The scene becomes the basis for the icon of the Trinity in Eastern Orthodoxy, an image at once of the Eucharist and the Trinity, the communion of our humanity with the communion of God. All under the shade of the oak of Mamre for such is the grace of revelation which in turn signals the grace of redemption which is what we see in the story which immediately follows and which is our first lesson this morning.

We are presented with a most remarkable exchange between Abraham and God about human wickedness and divine mercy, about the power of righteousness and the powerlessness of sin. The question has to do about Sodom and Gomorrah, cities which are the proverbial images for all that is wicked and perverse, a wickedness and perversity that has very much to do with our hearts of judgment and self-righteousness.

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“He that is not with me is against me: and he that
gathereth not with me scattereth”

It is an intriguing and, to my mind, a terrifying Gospel. It signals the moment of the most intense kind of darkness in the Lenten journey, at least before the heart-rending darkness of Holy Week. And yet, there is a great good for us in the discovery of the “dark wood” of the soul, as it were, a light in the darkness. It is about awakening to the light of Christ without which we are simply in darkness and despair. It may be, like Dante, that we shall discover there “a great good” precisely through the darkness of the “dark wood” of the soul.

The Gospel shows us the picture, the terrifying picture, of the despairing soul. And what is at the center of that darkness and despair? Simply ourselves as divided against ourselves. Simply ourselves as presuming upon ourselves to fix ourselves and everything else around us. Simply ourselves, too, when we are buried in our own griefs and sorrows for that, too, is really all about us. The devil is in us when we forget about who we truly and fundamentally are in the sight of God. We become the enemies of God, our souls divided against ourselves because we are separated from God.

This is the great truth and insight of the great religions. Our humanity is radically incomplete without God. That basic insight is intensified in the Christian understanding; we are more than merely incomplete, we are destructive and dangerous to ourselves and to others. This is where Jesus’ stark words come fully into play. “He that is not with me is against me.” There is, we might say, no neutral ground, no place for indifference. It is a matter of being with God or being against God. Without God there is simply a great emptiness within the human soul, a God-shaped hole, we might say, in our very being.

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This is the second in a series of four Lenten devotional reflections given by Fr. David Curry on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal & Forgiveness in the Scriptures. The first is posted here.

UPDATE (22 Mar.): The four addresses have been compiled into a booklet, which can be accessed here.

“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”

There is something wonderfully appropriate about commemorating St. Matthias in the course of our Lenten Programme on the Kiss of Judas. The Feast Day for St. Matthias is February 24th which this year fell on a Sunday in the season of Lent. The Feast of St. Matthias frequently, though not always, falls within Lent; sometimes it coincides with the pre-Lenten season of the Gesimas. But whether during the Gesimas or in Lent, if the 24th is a Sunday, the celebration of St. Matthias is transferred to the following Tuesday. What makes this wonderfully appropriate, even providential, is that the story of St. Matthias is directly related to the story of Judas. Matthias is the apostle chosen to take the place of Judas, the betrayer of Christ.

The readings for the Feast of St. Matthias are wonderfully illuminating about this connection to Judas. The lesson from Acts tells the story of Judas’ reaction to his betrayal – his self-destruction by falling headlong, bursting asunder and all his bowels gushed out (other accounts have him going out and hanging himself) – and the subsequent decision to choose another among those “which have companied with us” (Acts 1.21) and with Jesus “to be a witness with us of his resurrection” (Acts 1.22). The story of Matthias is about the one chosen by lot to take the place of Judas the betrayer. The Gospel from St. John is the last of the seven ‘I am’ sayings in which Jesus identifies himself in relation to us as the vine; we are the branches (John 15.5). We live from him. The image is inescapably sacramental and recalls us to the night on which he was betrayed, the night in which he institutes the form of his sacramental presence with us.

The kiss of Judas marks the greatest betrayal, one that gathers into itself all of the forms of betrayal. Not least is the idea of the betrayal of brotherhood and fellowship, betrayals that are related to our betrayals of ourselves and God. In a way, those aspects of betrayal are captured best in the Old Testament story of Joseph and his brothers and in the New Testament story of Peter’s betrayal of Christ. Both stories bring out the nature of betrayal and the prospect of forgiveness through contrition and repentance; paradoxically, the very things refused and denied by Judas himself.

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