Garrison Keillor tells the story of his uncle who, at annual family gatherings during Holy Week, would read the story of the passion and death of Jesus. And each year, when he came to the verses describing Jesus' betrayal, he would burst into tears. The family would sit awkwardly until the man was able to continue the reading. Keillor commented that his uncle took the death of his Lord "so personally." He'd pause in his story, then add: "The rest of the church had gotten over that years ago."

(Leon Spencer, from the Sermon “Taking Jesus’ Death Personally,” as printed in Witness Magazine, 2005.)

Jesus was betrayed --- We’ve gotten over it.

Even without the added complications of Easter’s springtime festivities, we’ve told this story either so often that we’ve grown numb to it or told it so poorly that it has become irrelevant in our lives.

When we celebrate communion we mention it: On the night he was betrayed, he took bread and broke it and gave it to his disciples.

During Holy Week we tell part of Judas’ story. Bad Judas! We enjoy wagging our finger at him. He’s the nemesis of the story. His role is crucial, or so we think. It takes Judas’ betrayal to bring Jesus to the cross, and somehow that cross is what we’ve been waiting for. Over time it has come to mean salvation for us. We sing it in our hymns, we have preached it forever: Jesus died for us.

Truth is, that message is rather compelling. We like the idea of someone else taking on our sin and suffering so we don’t have to. But it sounds a lot like the goat presented on the Day of Atonement described per Leviticus 16 in which the community places its sin on a goat then drives it out into the wilderness. It’s where we get the word scape-goat. To me, Jesus then becomes our scape-goat, or at the very least, Jesus gets a strong correlation to the Passover Lamb that saved Israel – he’s driven out, slaughtered, so we can forget about our own responsibility for our sin and wrongdoing.

The message then becomes that God sent his Son to die in our place. It’s morbid, awful, something no parent in their right mind would do. There are plenty of stories that make this leap, and they are meant to rip your heart out, but they usually just make God seem really creepy. Nevertheless, Jesus did make a supremely human sacrifice, but I don’t think it was particularly about being sent by God to die on a cross, it was about being sent in God’s name to love. Jesus was sent by God to love us, unconditionally, completely, until the very bitter end in which everyone, even his closest friends would turn on him.

Do you weep, uncontrollably, on hearing this story of Jesus’ best friends falling away? Do you cry so much so that your family has to wait for you to stop to hear the ending?

In good Garrison Keillor fashion, there’s probably both some truth and some tall tale woven into the story about his uncle. Perhaps the truth is the part about the church. We’ve gotten over it. We’re not even really affected all that much by Jesus’ pain and anguish. It just seems a part of the story, the narrative that takes us where we want to go.

But can you imagine, just for a minute, the intensity of the love that Jesus has for his disciples, for us? The gospel of John does a pretty good job of conveying that intensity with words. He uses the word love over and over again. He loved them to the end. He commanded them to love one another. But Jesus’ own actions go further. He washed the feet of those who would injure him in unpardonable ways. He remained patient with the overzealous Peter who wanted to touch everything “Jesus” but then would deny even knowing him. He breaks bread with those who wouldn’t even stay up one night to pray with him in his darkest hour. When he said, “Love your enemies,” he meant it. He did it.

The story is not triumphant; in this part, it’s tragic. It’s a sad, sad story about how human beings get things so twisted because of our own interests and desires. Self-preservation becomes more important than love. Money, or power, or fear keeps us from loving as Jesus loved us. Jesus ended up dying to show us a new way. Love is the way through. Love is stronger than death. The disciples didn’t get it, and most of the time we don’t either.

We trip all over ourselves these days trying to tell someone why the cross is so important to us. We’ve learned the words, but until we’ve cried the tears, it’s hard to really get the story. Maybe there should be a lot more tears at the telling of Jesus’ betrayal. Yes, the cross did pave the way for salvation, but it’s not because Jesus died in our place, it’s because Jesus died by our hands. Jesus died because those that he loved, still loved other things more. Jesus’ last instructions to the remaining 11 after he sent Judas away were, “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Perhaps it took Jesus dying before they understood that it wasn’t about a new King in Jerusalem, that it wasn’t about a hostile take-over of the church, that it wasn’t about being known as the disciples of the best preacher, or healer, or teacher. It was about and always will be about love, right here, right now for all of God’s people. The disciples of Jesus are known by how they love each other. At times, it will be imperfectly. We are, after all, on this side of heaven. And yet, the commandment still holds, “Love one another.” When it’s hardest to love, that’s when we’ll need Jesus the most. It’s hard to love the people who will betray you, who will deny you, who will wound you to your very core. Jesus only knows. Jesus has been there.

Amen.