From the Daily Lectionary for Tuesday in the Third Week of Advent
Luke 22:54-69
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house. But Peter was following at a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, “This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” A little later someone else, on seeing him, said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not!” Then about an hour later yet another kept insisting, “Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!” At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” They kept heaping many other insults on him.
When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council. They said, “If you are the Messiah, tell us.” He replied, “If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”
Jesus has been betrayed into the hands of “sinners,” a.k.a. the powerful elite. That is to say that sin, for the New Testament writers, is not about the individual bad choices we make; rather, it is about the structures of our world that oppress and alienate and disenfranchise. Sin will turn neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Sin would have us believe that the resources we hold in common are scarce. Sin engenders envy and suspicion. Falsehood is its modus operandi.
The result of sin, displayed in this passage from Luke, is violence and indignity. Here, we are told, Jesus is beaten and mocked. Violence and indignity. The bottom line is that, at its dark core, sin seeks to dehumanize, thereby undermining the sacred solidarity of the human community.
As people of faith, as people who follow in the way of Jesus, ours is to stand against the sin of the world. That means that calling out injustice in our common life is not a mere sideline of our faith; it is at the heart of it. The act of standing against injustice, indignity, and violence, is a spiritual practice. Compassion and empathy are our means, because they are the chief rudiments of love.
Without the human capacity to love, sin would have swallowed us up millennia ago. It is love that heals and sustains us. It is love that leads us into our true humanity, which is to say, into Christ Jesus, the one whom we acclaim as God’s anointed to show us the means of the truth, the means of love. Jesus is not “super nature.” He is true nature. And therefore the truth is not unknowable, not beyond our reach. It is merely saying no to sin, and yes to love.
A Prayer for Social Service (BCP p. 209)
O God, whose blessed Son came not to be ministered to but to minister: Bless, we ask, all who, following in his steps, give themselves to the service of others; that with wisdom, patience, and courage, they may minister in his name to the suffering, the friendless, and the needy; for the love of him who laid down his life for us, the same your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
