ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

A Homily preached by Fr Gerald Beauchamp at Low Mass on the Monday of Holy Week, 29th March 2010

Readings: Isaiah 42. 1-9; Hebrews 9. 1-15; John 12. 1-11

When something is wrong we try to find a reason. We have a pain or we find a lump and we go to the doctor. There are tests. We get a diagnosis. A plane crashes. There's an accident investigation. Black boxes are found. Analysis is done. It was pilot error; the weather; a mechanical fault. A company goes bankrupt. We check the audit. We find out why.

The death of Jesus and its aftermath is a mixture of sorrow and joy. Before we get to Good Friday we have to cope with 'Bad Friday'. Bad Friday: the day of the murder, the killing. So why does this 'bad Friday' happen? Whose fault was it? The gospels are in no doubt that someone with blood on his hands was Judas: the Betrayer. But the Evangelists differ as to what his motives were. According to Matthew he did it for the money - 'thirty pieces of silver' (Mt 26. 14-16). For Luke, he was the agent of Satan (Lk 22. 3-6). For John, one implication of this evening's text is that he was a thief who might be unmasked at any moment by his O-So-Perceptive Friend.

There's an uncomfortable truth here about being human. Sometimes, when things go wrong we can pinpoint a definite cause. We have a pain and a lump because we have a tumour. A plane or a business goes down and there can be a single cause. But often it's much more complicated than that. Bad things happen for many reasons and sometimes all at once.

A banker was recently interviewed about the financial crisis. He spoke anonymously. His face was pixilated. (Just as well otherwise someone might have sent the boys round.) His views were interesting. First of all, he defended people like him making vast fortunes while others were losing their savings by blaming a culture in which high earnings are scorned. People are jealous he said when bankers get bonuses. It's the politics of envy. Then he claimed that it was the government's fault for not regulating the industry sufficiently when of course the financial sector has been lobbying for deregulation for decades.

What the banker was doing is what we all tend to do when things are complicated and we're in pain. We blame someone else. We don't find objective reasons and causes and we don't look at the part we might have played. When we get sick it can be 'just one of those things'. But if we've abused our bodies - smoked, drank too much, over-indulged, taken stupid risks then we need to take responsibility.

There is a danger, however, that we take the blame inappropriately. None of us operate in a power vacuum. Quite the opposite. We're constantly aware of the politics around us. If I say this or do that what will be the consequences? The forces that are around us have a tendency to close in. Power solidifies. Power becomes a 'block'. Power likes monopolies, absolutes. When institutions are powerful ('power full') they become hermetically-sealed. This warps both those who operate within it and those who are damaged by it. When l was a novice in a monastery there were times when I felt that I was being told that black was white. It was almost Kafka-esque.

If you look at the unfolding scandal of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church you can see the pattern. The pope's recent letter to the Irish Church apportions blame but there's little accountability. Hardly anyone has been forced to resign. Many of those abused report that when they began to tell their stories they were made to feel that they were the ones to blame not their abusers.

If we want to examine sin then we have to look not only at what we can identify: the things that offend our consciences - the things that we know we have said, thought, done and not done. We also have to look at our capacity to create cultures, systems and corporate bodies that squeeze out the air and darken the windows. It can happen in any human institution: governments, banks, churches.

Why did 'Bad Friday' happen? Well, certainly Judas had a hand. So did the Pharisees who saw their powerbase slipping away. But Jesus, too played his part. He willed it. He placed himself in harm's way. He did that because he wanted not secrecy but transparency. His death was to be for all to see. He was lifted up high on a cross. If we see there our salvation then the fruit of our salvation will be about our seeing - seeing the layers of darkness in which we can become enmeshed, the ways in which our thinking is corrupted, our power plays distorting the image of God within us and others.

I'm rather glad that the Evangelists have such an uneven view of Judas. It shows that nothing in our religion, not even the bible is all sown-up. Perhaps Judas was a thief. But just because he may have been a thief doesn't mean that he was bound to plot a murder. And just because he was a thief doesn't mean that he couldn't repent.

It's too late for Judas now. But it isn't too late for us. Not too late for us to turn the bad into the good.

Amen