At the centre of the Paschal celebration is a Lamb.  At Passover every Israelite is ‘counted in’: the number of lambs is exactly related to the number who will eat; small families are to unite for the meal.

And so the Lamb who uncomplaining goes forth represents the totality of the people.  Everyone is counted in to his sacrifice; everyone is touched and healed by his sprinkled blood. He is mute alike in the face of supercilious interrogation and a torrent of ridicule and ribaldry.  He is undeterred even by the scorn and hatred of those he has come to save.

The events of the Passion show human beings at their worst—callous, craven, cowardly.  Yet our focus is not on the political machinations and manoeuvres.  This Lamb, we are reminded, was ‘sacrificed from the foundation of the world’. [Apocalypse 13.8] The sacrifice of this Lamb is the perfect outworking of the immutable will of the Love who is the Maker, Redeemer and Sustainer of the world.  He goes forth with trust in the power of that Love.  He invites us to follow him and, counted into him, to share in his triumph over Satan and sin and death. For ‘the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign.’ [Apocalypse 5.11]

The Eucharist is the meal of a people on the march, not a leisurely banquet. Priestly vestments are outdoor clothing; when the Bishop celebrates wearing his coat and hat, carrying his walking stick, the point is inescapable.  Even the name mass, from the Latin word missa, cognate with the familiar word dismissal, is redolent of action. 

This stems from the prescriptions of the Passover: ‘You shall eat it like this: with a girdle round your waist, sandals on your feet, a staff in your hand.  You shall eat it hastily.’  It is a meal unlike any other, meat roughly pulled from the carcass, served with a slab of unleavened bread and a mess of bitter greenery.  

Yet care is taken in the choice of unblemished animals, their proper slaughter.  Even leftovers must be properly disposed of.  Most significantly, everyone who is to eat the Passover must be prepared, cleansed outwardly and inwardly.  And when the Lord and Master of the feast himself strips off his outer garments and kneels slave-like to wash the feet of his disciples, the Perfect Love that over and over calls his people out of darkness into light, out of slavery into freedom, out of death to Life that is worthy of the name, is seen uniquely and unmistakeably. 

‘Spy Wednesday’ this day is traditionally called, a day in which darkness and danger are palpable.  ‘Where shall we go to prepare?’ the disciples asked Jesus, and the question is pertinent to us as well.  To follow Jesus on the way of the Cross in the coming days will demand reservoirs filled with strength.

We follow not as observers of a play but as participants, as sharers. [Philippians 3.10] We find ourselves in the midst of a fickle crowd, acclaiming Jesus one day and the next demanding his death.  We are the Pharisees and Scribes and Sadducees, zealous to protect our interests and wellbeing.  Ours is the cravenness of Pontius Pilate, the narcissism of Herod.  And when all the disciples desert Jesus and run away [Matthew 26.56] we gallop as fast as any of them.

‘Not I, Rabbi, surely?’ Judas slickly inquires.  But I did is written across the pages of the Passion Gospel.  And our confession makes possible our forgiveness, our healing, our restoration.  Our reservoirs are re-filled with the strength we need to bear our own crosses and follow Christ.

One of you will betray me.  Long earlier, in a cryptic aside, Jesus had told his disciples that he knew one of them was ‘a devil’ and his betrayer. [John 6.70-71] No one, apparently, took much notice of the remark; remarkably, though, Jesus didn’t separate himself from Judas Iscariot, as any of us would have done.

Some have concluded, in ancient as well as modern times, that Jesus and Judas were in some kind of collusion; or that Judas ‘forced Jesus’s hand,’ demanded that Jesus be heroic, wield his sword to cleanse the holy lands of the taint of sacrilegious colonisers. 

Jesus, though, was sent to be a different sort of Servant of God.  His life, his death, his triumph over death would fulfil prophecy to make him ‘the light of the nations’.

Night had fallen when Judas departed from the presence of the Lord, the longest night imaginable, ‘darkness’s hour and its reign.’ [Luke 22.53] When light again dawned for the disciples, with it came both pardon and vocation: a call to follow Jesus’s own path of servanthood, so that salvation, not condemnation, would reach the ends of the earth. 

Strikingly, Judas Iscariot is the only one of Jesus’ twelve disciples not native to Galilee, the region far to the north of Jerusalem.  Iscariot is probably a reference to Judas’ home, Kerioth, a town in the south. [Joshua 15.25] How did he come to be in the north? How did he come into contact with Jesus? We can only speculate.

What is apparent from the Gospels, though, is that Jesus and the others trusted Judas.  He was apparently their treasurer, and in that capacity he complains about the profligacy of a woman who had poured spikenard, the extraordinarily expensive lavender-like spice used in the burials of the well-to-do throughout the ancient Middle East, over Jesus’ feet.

‘It could have been sold, and given to the poor’ Judas complained.  Three hundred denarii was pretty much the annual wage packet of a working man.  But Jesus retorted that ‘You have the poor with you always; you will not always have me.’   He is that Servant of God who will not ‘break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame,’ he who ‘became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.’ [II Corinthians 8.9]

Today is a solemnity - and we remember such an important person in the history of our relationship with God - Joseph, husband of Mary. The Gospel todays starts with just the ending of Matthew's Genealogy of Jesus - Jospeh was Jacobs son, Husband of Mary, Mother of Jesus.

Joseph was either enraged to find that his betrothed was pregnant, or, I think more hopefully, was trusting and not willing to interfere in this remarkable intervention of the Holy Spirit in Mary's life. Either way - he responded with no difficulty to Gods call in the plan, and kept Mary as his wife and protected her and in due course, the child from those with evil intent.

Later, Jesus taught us that the name of God our Father - Abba. He must have personally experienced a superlative role model in Joseph's foster-fathering to be Abel o do that.

Joseph, pray for all Fathers, that they might follow your example and welcome Jesus into their families lives.

This, the fifth week of Lent, we have a conversation between Jesus and the Jews (From John Chapter 8) for most of the days of the week.

The reference to Jesus writing in the sand - can be a puzzle that we could spend time pondering - what was he writing? A list of their sins perhaps? It may be more profitable to just take the scene at face value. By writing in the dust, Jesus was just giving the Pharisees time to reflect on what they new perfectly well - as we all do - that we are sinners and we need Jesus to save us and heal us. A very common sin in today's word - singling out other's poor behaviour (e.g. media stars...) but not admitting to our own.. seems to have been present in Christ's time also. Note that Jesus respects the woman - giving her time to speak, and he does forgive the woman - and asks her to go and to not sin any more.

Was the person she was committing adultery with one of those to pause, reflect on their sinfulness, and then go without throwing a stone?

The region around Lake Galilee, far to the north of Jerusalem, was known as ‘the Galilee of the Gentiles’. [Matthew 4.15] There were profound cultural differences between north and south; it was Peter’s distinctive northern accent that revealed him as one of Jesus’ disciples on the night of Jesus’ arrest. [Matthew 26.73] On foot the journey from north to south required several days. [cf Luke 2,44-46]  Most especially, to the Pharisees, zealous for the purity of the law, Galileans were presumed to be acculturated to Gentile, non-Jewish ways.

‘Prophets do not come out of Galilee’ one of the senior Pharisees reproved Nicodemus.  He had once come to see Jesus secretly, under cover of darkness, probably during Passover. [John 2.21]  John is subtle in his portrayal of Nicodemus, but today’s Gospel reveals that this earnest Pharisee has recognised in Jesus his own teacher [cf 3.10] On the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, Nicodemus came with an expensive array of spices to give Jesus a proper burial. [19.39-40] Though a ‘secret’ disciple, Nicodemus had found in Jesus his own Way, Truth and Life. 

‘When the Christ appears no one will know where he comes from.’  The notion that the Messiah would appear suddenly from a place of hiding was a commonplace among Jews of Jesus’ day.  Indeed, throughout John’s Gospel people find and recognise Jesus in secret encounters: so Nicodemus the Pharisee comes to Jesus by night [3.1-21]; a woman of Samaria meets Jesus in territory that well-bred Jews assiduously avoided and she declares him the Messiah of pious expectation [4.29-30]; and in a burial garden, a place avoided instinctively by the devout, Jesus reveals the Glory of God. [11.41-44]  

The deepest truths are made known to us in concealed and out-of-the-way places; as the motto on St John Henry Newman’s cardinalate coat of arms put it ‘Heart speaks to heart’.  The most important things we will never understand superficially, but only when the depths of God can speak to the depths of our own hearts. [I Corinthians 2.10-11]

Yet secrets are meant for revelation. [cf Matthew 10.27] When we understand the truths of God we find that our own interiority will not suffice to contain them.  We learn eternal truths not for ourselves alone but so that we can transmit them to others.  Having been transformed by a Will and Purpose that is deeper than the universe itself, we are bound to witness to that Truth before the whole world.

‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.’  [John 4.34] Many of the signs are followed up in John’s Gospel with explanatory discourses which amplify and deepen the meaning of the sign.  In this teaching Jesus asserts that his Father ‘will show him even greater things than these’, greater, that is, than the healing of a man paralyzed for 38 years.  On another occasion he declared that ‘the works I do in my Father’s name are my witness.’ [10.25b]  

More remarkably, speaking to his disciples just before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus asserted that ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; he will perform even greater works.’ [14.12]  By observing and being spiritually built up by the signs Jesus performs we will become in truth his disciples and continue the work of our heavenly Father until it is completed. [cf Philippians 1.6]