TUESDAY OF HOLY WEEK, Year C: March 30 2010

Preacher: Fr Peter Waddell
John 12:20–36a

'Now my soul is troubled.'

I feel I should begin with an apology tonight. For a start, out of that long, involved Gospel I am going to choose just one verse to preach upon, in an appalling example of how not to handle Scripture. And secondly, and more seriously, I'm not quite sure of what I have to offer you on this text. What I've come up with is something that feels like just the beginning of something that needs a lot more thought and reflection and work — and something that isn't necessarily, or obviously, what orthodox Christians are meant to say. So to a certain extent, I'm abusing the hospitality of Father Andrew's lectern and for that I am sorry — but I hope there is something here at least which might be helpful for someone, if only to spark thought and prayer.

A third, and this time, not very sincere apology. I know that preachers, especially in churches in certain cities and certain traditions, are meant to be deeply cultured people. My musical allusions should be to Bach and Mozart and Beethoven at the least. Well, I want to start from somewhere else: from the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the music of Tim Rice. As I was growing up — and even to a certain extent still now — their Jesus Christ Superstar was an important part of how I came to think of Jesus, and especially of how He approached the final days of His life. This is nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the treatment of the Garden of Gethsemane — of which we caught an echo in tonight's reading from St John: 'Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I came to this hour...'

Tim Rice has Jesus say it this way:

'Why should I die? Let them hate me, hit me, hurt me, nail me to their tree? I'd have to see, I'd have to see, my Lord. And if I die, what will be my reward? I'd have to know, I'd have to know, my Lord. Why should I die? Would I be more noticed than I ever was before? Would the things I've said and done matter any more? Can you show me now that I would not be killed in vain? Show me just a little of your omniscient brain? Show me there's a reason why you're wanting me to die! You're far too keen on where, and how, but not so hot on why!'

Apparently, when Jesus Christ Superstar was first staged in my home town, there were Christian pickets outside the theatre, outraged at what they saw as the irreverence verging on blasphemy at this portrait of a doubting, tormented, even angry Jesus — angry with God. For other Christians, of course, it was precisely this very human portrayal of Jesus that was so refreshing, which made Him seem so real and one of us. That's certainly how it seemed to me. But looking back, I suspect the pickets would have said — and I think they'd be right — that the real problem was that for Rice and Lloyd Webber that's all Jesus really was — one of us. A remarkable one of us, yes; one of us with a special relationship to and mission from God, yes; but fundamentally just one of us. And therefore His tears, His turmoil, His anger are fundamentally unproblematic.

But what if Jesus is God? What if, as classic Christian teaching puts it, whenever Jesus says, does, or thinks anything, it is God who says, does, and thinks? Jesus simply is what God looks like made flesh. Well, what then can we make of tears, turmoil, and anger? Is God, in the Garden, bewildered? Reluctant? Is God frightened?

Is God frightened? It might sound a ludicrous, blasphemous question, but I think we have to ask it. Because to me a Jesus who does not know the turmoil that Lloyd Webber and Rice depicted is, quite simply, not credible; but simultaneously, with the whole Church, I want to say, equally simply, that Jesus is God. So, was God frightened?

One answer might be to say that God experienced fear in His human nature, but not in His divine nature. It is tempting to say that that would be the answer given by orthodox theology — although interestingly, perhaps not, because fear might imply that the human nature in Jesus did not have absolute, unswerving, confidence and communion with God, a point on which orthodoxy has normally wanted to insist. Jesus might be allowed to register a momentary unsettlement, a brief discomfort, but this is all but instantly swallowed up in His abiding confidence. It is rather like the picture we get in tonight's Gospel, with the instant, smooth, and surely implausible transition between 'Now my soul is troubled' and Jesus' dismissal of that trouble: 'And what should I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I came to this hour...' Neither the Gospel of John nor orthodoxy, it seems, can cope with real, gut-wrenching, tormenting, screaming fear in Jesus. Together, they may present Jesus with a real humanity, but it is a decidedly odd one.

But that isn't the only, or most fundamental, objection to those who would locate the fear of Gethsemane safely in the human nature of Jesus, held apart from an undisturbed divine. The difficulty is, I think, that they imagine the divinity and humanity of Jesus as if He simultaneously had two minds, two consciousnesses, one of which was in agony, one of which was unperturbed. They imagine, as it were, a still centre of Jesus, possessed in peace somewhere beyond the screaming. Whereas — and I'm afraid it would take a much longer sermon to justify this — for me it seems that what Incarnation means is precisely an end to such dualism, such separate compartments for divinity and humanity. There is but one life, one centre, one mind, one consciousness in Jesus. And that oneness is fully human and fully divine. If it loves, or forgives, or rejoices, both humanity and divinity love, fear, and rejoice. And the same is true of fear. If Gethsemane is real fear, then that fear is God's fear too.

What does God fear, facing the Cross? So much more, it seems to me, than physical torture and pain and even death. Brave people, after all — much braver people than me — have always been able to steer themselves into those darknesses. I wonder — and this is where, incidentally, the health warnings I raised at the beginning really begin to be relevant — I wonder whether in the agony of Gethsemane there is a bigger fear at work: a fear that belongs to this death alone, the death of God incarnate. And the fear can be put in a simple question: will it work?

Will it work? The Cross, after all, marks the moment in which God takes upon Himself the full weight of the world's sin and deadliness. It is where He enters into battle, in person, with all the forces of chaos and darkness and destruction: the strangest battle of all, where His first and only move is to offer himself for slaughter. After the resurrection, we know this as the power and wisdom of the Cross. But before the resurrection — perhaps even to God — it could only be the great risk of the Cross. The great folly. God could have given Himself, and died, and stayed dead. The Cross is the great contest with Death, which God does not know in advance He will win. And so the fear and trembling of Jesus of Nazareth is perhaps only the translation into human terms of what was happening in the heart of all things that Holy Week. Battle is to be joined, and it may not be won. The enemy is powerful, and there may not be a future.

I note that on the church publicity I am billed as giving addresses and not sermons. And for tonight I think that is a good thing — because sermons are about preaching, and preaching is always, fundamentally, about the Gospel: about the victory of Jesus, about the coming of the Kingdom, about triumph and joy. The time for that will come on Sunday. For now, we are on Tuesday of Holy Week — a time for addresses, not sermons; a time not to rush ahead to the proclamation of victory, but to stay awhile with the sense of darkness, the sense of threat, of what it would be to have lost. We are here tonight with Jesus, watching Him troubled in soul; watching Him gird for battle, watching Him tremble, watching Him fear. We cost our God not less than everything: to Him be our thanks and praise for ever and ever.