This session focuses on the last week of Jesus’ life and what his suffering, death and resurrection has meant for people throughout history and for our own lives.
The Last Supper is a very significant meal where Jesus establish is that he is going to be betrayed and also institutes the Eucharist to be celebrated down through history by his body the church. In Matthew’s Gospel things move very quickly after the supper’s end. The Mount of olives, the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus wrestles in prayer, the betraying kiss from Judas, the mockery of the Jewish trial, the injustice of Pilot all result in Jesus’ crucifixion and death. Yet the Gospel ends with not with hatred and defeat but with the victory of love and the empty tomb. As Lent yields to Good Friday, we wait with the women to anoint the body, and find to our joy that Christ is risen.
‘Jesus now faces alone the mockery of a trial his disciples have fled; Peter follows and watches from a distance but offers no help or comfort. The trial itself seems to have taken place quickly presided over by the high priest at his house, already assembled with the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of scribes Pharisees, Sadducees and elders. Sanhedrin regulations, however, decreed that criminal cases should be tried during the daytime and at its own meeting place in the temple precinct. No criminal trials should occur during Passover. So this trial, if indeed it was one, had seemingly already involved multiple violations of Jewish law.’
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Peter’s denial: ‘William Barclay sees this passage as an example of the ‘staggering honesty of the New Testament’ and goes on ‘if there ever was an incident which one might have expected to be hushed up this was it, and yet here it is told in all its dark shame.’ But he also has a more charitable view of Peter, seeing him less as a coward than a man of heroic courage. He didn’t flee with the other disciples but in his desperate desire to stay close to Jesus he puts himself at considerable risk. He followed him into danger into the very courtyard of the high priest’s house and though he denied knowing Jesus to protect himself, his love for Jesus compelled him to stay there. His love was evident in tears of bitter remorse when he realised how badly he had let Jesus down.’
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Good Friday
There is nothing humane in crucifixion the flogging of Jesus would have left him bleeding lashed and barely able to function. The soldiers epitomise the worst of human nature in their awful degrading humiliation and scorn. Nothing resembling respect or compassion was offered to Jesus – just mockery, gratuitous violence, ugliness and hatred… We are horribly familiar with the details of the crucifixion- the impaling of Jesus’ body on the cross, the nails driven through his hands, his refusal of the drugged wine to deaden the pain the stripping him his clothes and the shoulders casting lots…His death was unique, yet he hung in solidarity with all torture victims whose bodies go into spasms and whose bowels release their contents without restraint. Crucified alongside two criminals the caption signifying him as king of the Jews spoke only of utter irony to the passers- by.
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We thank you, Father God, for the life and ministry of Jesus, and for his willingness to die for our salvation. Give us renewed commitment in our hearts this year, to dedicate ourselves afresh to serving you as Christ’s ambassadors in our needy word. Amen.