[Sermon delivered at St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona (https://stmarysphoenix.org) for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16, 2021]
✠ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
It is a common sentiment among our brothers and sisters of the Eastern Church that the Gospels of Ss. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were written for evangelism and catechesis; St. Mark being the bare bones Gospel (which modern scholarship attributes to its being the oldest of the Four), St. Matthew being geared toward a mostly Jewish audience, and St. Luke being aimed at a larger Gentile audience. That leaves the Gospel of St. John, the Gospel of Mystagogy, being the Gospel used to draw new believers further into the Mystery of who Jesus of Nazareth was and what were His deeper teachings. This was the Gospel fed to the newly Illumined (what the early Church called the newly Baptised), and the Gospel used by missionaries today to feed new converts to the faith. It is at once stunningly simple…until you start scratching at it, revealing depths that Christians have spent centuries contemplating in wonder.
Today we heard a prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, part of what is often called the “Farewell Discourses,” teachings He gave just before His Passion. In the discourses, the Evangelist conveys to us the deeper truths picked up by the Disciples prior to the Passion and Resurrection. From this, there are two statements I would like us to explore more deeply:
“I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.”[1]
“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”[2]
There is a school of thought among Christians today that shy away from any hint that Judas was abandoned and left to perish eternally, accursed for his role in the Passion. “How could a loving God,” many say, “take Judas, whom He loved, and so callously throw him away?” Their struggle is mine, too. Here I offer something St. John Chrysostom once said as he preached on this very section of the Gospel: “They will not be lost at my instigation or because I abandon them. But if they start going away on their own, I will not force them back.”[3]
The gist of it, then, is that God did not abandon Judas. God did not un-forgive (is that a word? It is now) Judas. God did not force Judas into this path. God did not entice Judas into this. God did not forbid Judas a way back. But neither did God wipe out Judas’ will and deprive him of choice and free-will and self-determination. Judas could have chosen not to make the deal. Judas could have chosen not to betray the Son of Man with a kiss. Judas could have chosen to throw his lot in with his suffering Lord. Judas could have chosen not to hang himself. Everything Judas had done could be forgiven if he were to turn back to God and abide in that forgiveness that was there, that was always there, but he did not. Judas let his shame get the better of him, the same shame that caused Adam and Eve to hide themselves in the Garden, cutting themselves off from the life-giving presence of God.[4]
Judas was lost not because of the capricious spitefulness of God, but because he hid himself in his shame from God. Knowing we are not worthy and acknowledging ourselves not to be worthy is worlds different from hiding ourselves from God and rejecting His mercy because of the shame that accompanies that knowledge. Remember this, God is not going to force our hand. Wrath is not God being vindictive and petty. Judgement is not God being arbitrary. Wrath is the result of our self-exclusion from the circle of God’s love, judgement is merely the statement of what is. Guess what, brothers and sisters? NONE of us will meet that bar, NONE of us can ever be found worthy, NONE of us are so blameless or free of corruption that we merit grace on our own. God did not come to acknowledge the righteous but to make those who are willing to accept the gift righteous. We are justified in St. Paul’s discussion in Romans because we are not just to begin with.[5]
What about this whole “destined” thing though? A lot of Christians take this to paint a very deterministic view of salvation, citing Early Church fathers, but chiefly St. Augustine. Here is one such typical statement he made concerning this very passage: “…those who are truly children are foreknown and predestined as conformed to the image of His Son. They are called according to His purpose so as to be elected, as is evident in the fact that the son of promise does not perish, but the son of perdition does.”[6]
Now, while Augustine does hold that the “son of promise” has been chosen, predestined to be justified and enjoy everlasting felicity, but by implication there is no ability for the "son of promise" to make freely that choice on his own. That may not have been Augustine’s intent, but he was implying that God has done everything to ensure that the “son of promise” would not fall by the wayside. The earlier part of this passage states that many, like Judas, were indeed in the household of faith, but they did not persevere in that faith, that they stepped outside of the circle of the love of God, and did not pull themselves back in. Was that some fatalistic stamp on the very form and substance of the person, or merely the result of bad choices? We need to remember and balance these statements with ones such as this from St. Peter’s second Epistle: "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”[7]
So that brings us to the second statement of Our Lord Jesus that I quoted earlier on. He does not ask that we be taken out of the world, or that we be shielded from the incidental joys and sorrows that accost us throughout our lives. No, He asks that we be protected from the evil one. That is a concept a lot of us are completely unprepared to accept, and that is the existence and presence and actions of Satan and the demonic. Part of the problem is that we have cartoon or horror movie imagery of this dimension embedded in our subconscious, or we have been thoroughly indoctrinated in empiricism and just do not believe they can exist. Both are a mistake and result when we messily confuse the physical with the metaphysical. I could go on for hours about this, but fear not, I shall spare you today.
Our Lord has no problem confirming Satan’s existence. He knew him well and flatly called him a murderer and a liar.[8] Satan’s true power lies, well, within lies (pardon, again please, the pun). Satan’s interaction with us, according to our tradition, began with a lie, and the goal was our destruction. Not crass physical murder the fundamental and existential murder of an immortal humanity as the beloved of God by ripping them from God’s life-giving embrace. The core of the lie was two-fold. First, we do not need God and can exist on our own. Second, if God should happen by, we must hide ourselves from Him out of shame. By getting humanity to divorce itself from God, Satan accomplished the goal of killing a creation dear to God by depriving humanity of a loving relationship with the source of Light and Life. Throughout the ages our Tradition teaches us that while God is beckoning to us, telling us to turn to Him, to come to Him, to share in Life everlasting and His forgiveness, the Accuser whispers to us, “You are not good enough, you cannot be forgiven, there is no grace for you, there is no point in trying to abide in His Love, just give up, enjoy yourself, and die.”
These whispers are lies. These are lies designed to get us to give up, to turn inward, to forget about the other, to think all but yourself is an illusion. And when we succumb to these lies, we die. And the Adversary adds another to his staggering body-count.
Dear friends in Christ, we do not have to include ourselves among the casualties. Two weeks ago, we read in St. John’s first Epistle, “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…he commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”[9]
That is Our Lord’s prayer for us, our salvation from the atrocious attempt on our lives, that we abide in His love, that we love our brothers and sisters up to and beyond the point of sacrificing ourselves, to live for Him and for those He loves. His prayer is that we be shielded from the lies that the Enemy whispers to us that we do not deserve His love and His forgiveness.
The best lies have a kernel of truth, and Satan as the author of lies is the consummate master of twisting truth. Are we undeserving of forgiveness? None of us are, but did that stop God? Do you think Saul of Tarsus, head of the Judaean Inquisition, the adulteress thrown at Jesus’ feet, Zacchaeus the corrupt agent of the Roman Internal Service, the Peter who flat out swore an oath and perjured himself that he did not know Jesus in Our Lord’s darkest hours deserve grace and forgiveness?
DON’T BELIEVE THE LIES! Judas did, and we mourn him.
WE ARE REDEEMED CHRISTIANS FOR GOD’S SAKE! Abide in that love, love your brothers and sisters. Remember it is ultimately up to us, but God is waiting for us. He does not desire that any be lost, He did not desire to lose Judas, but Judas was murdered, Judas believed the lie, Judas did not trust there would be love and forgiveness. Let us not make that mistake and pay heed to the one whose desire is our final destruction. Resist him, firm in your faith.
After all, Our Lord resoundingly kicked the stuffing out of him at the Resurrection and will do so again. Abide in the love of Christ Jesus.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
Mosaic of the Last Supper, Basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, 6th century A.D.
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