Friday 22 August 2014

Background

Steadily, step by step, John's Gospel ratchets up the tension ofthe drama and takes us deeper into the person of Jesus and hisstruggle. No wonder that John's story of the passion of Jesus hasbeen such a powerful expression of sorrow, courage and love. InBach's setting of the St John Passion the chorus constantly reflecton the pathos and suffering love of Jesus and ask that he supportand encourage Christians in their struggles.

At this point, John's Gospel paints a vivid scene of the friendsof Jesus reclining on benches as they eat their meal close to thePassover festival. There will be items to buy for the feast, andtraditional donations to make to the poor. None of them seem awareof his emotional turmoil. Although John pictures the cross as avictory rather than a tragedy, the Gospel makes it clear that Jesussuffered genuine anguish as he anticipated the conflict to come.Jesus' words are solemn and deliberate as he announces that someonein the group will betray him. He declares - the Greek wordliterally means 'testifies' and is the word from which we derive'martyr' - that there is a traitor among them. Just as many of thePsalms speak of the agony of being betrayed by an intimate friendrather than a sworn enemy, so Jesus seems to speak out of deepsorrow rather than out of a desire for revenge.

Once again, and by now we shouldn't be surprised, the disciplesare confused. There has been an enormous amount of speculationabout the identity of 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' (verse 23).Although an early tradition identified him with John, the author ofthe Gospel, this is by no means certain and plenty of othercandidates have been suggested, including Lazarus, and even Judashimself!

Jesus uses another symbolic gesture - passing a piece of breadto Judas (verse 26) - to underline the depth of his treachery. Thepassage ends with the terse phrase, "And it was night". John'sGospel is not just telling us that it is the end of the day, butthat darkness is threatening the light. From now on the "truelight, which enlightens every one" (John1:9) is threatened by an encroaching darkness, yet neverovercome.

To Ponder

• What are the powerful emotions that come to you as you readthis passage?

• What experience have you had of being betrayed of let down bythose close to you? How have you dealt with that?

• How does this passage affect your understanding of Jesus?