Don Friesen
It was almost thirty years ago that Dorothy and I were expecting our first child, and like all prospective parents we were excited! We were eager to share the news of Shauna's birth, and when I called my parents my mother answered the telephone. I told her all about this bright, beautiful child – brighter and more beautiful than all others – and added that she was born with a full head of hair!
"What colour," asked my mother.
"Bright red," I replied.
"Well," said my mother, "as long as she's alright otherwise."
My mother disliked red hair, a dislike she shared freely with all of her children – with the four of us who had red hair, as well as the remaining child, whose beard was red. Of course, she also didn't like beards.
I didn't take my mother's attitude toward red hair very seriously, however, for her favourite child was the one with the brightest red hair – much brighter than mine! Later I also learned that aversion to red hair was not simply a peculiarity of my mother. Antipathy toward red hair has a long tradition, going back to biblical times, for it is thought that Judas had red hair! There is nothing in the Bible that indicates anything distinctive about Judas' physical appearance, but artists needed ways of pointing out the traitor in a biblical crowd, and over the centuries they developed a repertoire of attributes to distinguish Judas Iscariot from the other disciples! Not content to remove the nimbus from Judas' head, or to give him a dark-coloured nimbus, or to show him hiding a stolen fish, artists outfitted Judas with red hair! (Ruth Mellinkoff, "Judas' Red Hair and the Jews," Journal of Jewish Art, Volume 9, 1982)
Antipathy toward red hair is not restricted to the visual arts; it's also embedded in literary tradition. Remember the uncouth, loud-mouthed miller of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales? "His beard as any sow or fox was red," wrote Chaucer. And for good measure Chaucer added a wart on the miller's nose, out of which grew "a tuft of hairs red as the bristles of a sowe's ears." ("The Prologue," Canterbury Tales) Other writers, including Shakespeare, shared this aversion to red hair.
I don't know why red hair is considered such a detestable attribute. Some trace it back to ancient Egypt, and the evil god, Seth, but disdain for red hair also crops up in the Greco-Roman world, where the slave in their comedies always sported red hair.
Quickly into the Night
Well, the Gospels are not comedies, and today's Gospel reading, in fact, is the beautiful passage in which Jesus gives his disciples, whatever the colour of their hair, a new commandment. "I give you a new commandment," Jesus said to them, "that you 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." (John 13:34-35) It was hardly a new commandment. You can find it in the Old Testament, but it was new in the sense of being re-stated, as if to say, "I give it to you anew". It's an old commandment that Jesus wants to underscore.
"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another." (John 13:34) It is a beautiful commandment. Who can argue with love? Amazon-dot-com lists almost 500,000 books on the topic of love. Books like:
What makes Jesus' teaching on love more vivid than most is its context. For one thing, this teaching is found in what the Gospel of John has framed as Jesus' farewell discourse. Jesus' departure is imminent, and no doubt the disciples, realizing this, and beset with separation anxiety, were hanging on his every word.
Secondly, the immediate context of this teaching has to do with Judas' departure. Jesus had just washed his disciples' feet, and they had shared their last supper. Judas was one of those at the table, but John tells us that Judas left right after supper! One version reads, "Judas ...went out quickly – into the night. (John 13:30, PHL) An apt literary expression for the darkness of his intent! The darkness thickens as this episode unfolds.
Judas has left the building! He's gone out to make arrangements for Jesus' arrest! The night had begun, and it is in the sombre shadows of betrayal, danger, denial and death that Jesus shares with the remaining disciples his commandment of love. What a contrast! Judas goes off into the physical and spiritual darkness of the night to accelerate an impending conflict; Jesus turns to his remaining disciples and addresses them with great tenderness, saying, "Little children, I am with you only a little longer." (John 13:33)
John also accentuates the darkness of Judas' departure by contrasting it with the brightness of Jesus' glory, speaking of his glory repeatedly, saying, "When (Judas) had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once." (John 13:31-32) The word, "glory," has to do with honour and praise. To make glorious is to adorn with lustre, to clothe with splendour. Jesus' glory was very evident at his transfiguration. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus was transfigured "his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white." (Matthew 17:2) Whiter, adds the Gospel of Mark, than "(any)one on earth could bleach them." (Mark 9:3)
Amid the sombre shadows of the night, the love and glorious light of Jesus grow brighter! It's a vivid contrast. Judas is everything that Jesus is not. His is the night; Jesus' time is the day. Judas is a thief; Jesus is generous with all that he has, including his life. And Judas's betrayal is in stark contrast to Jesus' loyalty and commitment, to which he will hold, whatever the cost.
A Love with Broad and Amazing Implications
Jesus' commandment to love had amazing and broad implications, as evidenced in our reading from the book of Acts. There we witness an amazing transformation in Peter's thinking. To love one another sounds simple, but the gospel of love soon ran into complications – big ones! Acts, chapter 11, deals with the critical transition of the Christian community from a Jewish community to a mixed Jewish and Gentile population. It collided with a deeply embedded "we-versus-them" mind-set. Yes, Jesus, I promise to follow your commandment to love ...but... I don't think that includes Gentiles! I know that God so loved the world, ...but... I think he meant our little world. I know that Jesus told us to love our enemies, ...but... some of our enemies have weapons of mass destruction!
The Apostle Peter shared the typical prejudice toward Gentiles, but Acts, chapter 10, tells us the story of Cornelius, a devout Gentile man with a devout family. Cornelius gave generously to those in need. (Acts 10:2) He was a good and noble man, and when, through a series of circumstances Peter met Cornelius Peter could think of no good reason to withhold fellowship from him. He said to Cornelius and a bunch of others that had gathered, "You ... know that it is unlawful for (me) to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection." (Acts 10:28-29)
Clarence Jordan, the founder of Koinonia Farms, which our youth group visited in March, phrased it strikingly in his Cotton Patch version of the Bible, where the Apostle Peter says, "Y'all understand how uncustomary it is for a white man to socialize or stay with people of a different race, don't you? All right, but as for me, God has made it plain as day to me that I'm never to think of any man as inferior or no good. That's why I came without batting an eye when I was sent for."
Peter's acceptance of Gentiles into Christian fellowship, and allowing himself to be accepted into their fellowship, was a watershed experience that forever defined the nature of the Christian community and the Church. The practise of love can get complicated – and there remained questions about the terms on which Gentiles could be admitted into fellowship (Acts 15) — but Peter was convinced that a new work of God was afoot in the world, and he answered his critics, "If ...God gave (Gentiles) the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" (Acts 11:17)
The Teaching of Contempt
How ironic, then, given Jesus' commandment to love, and the breathtaking implications of that commandment for the polarized racial context of the Early Church, that Christians should try to reverse this development. I can understand Christians being less than fond of Judas. I can understand the arts loading up Judas with all kinds of undesirable attributes. If my mother had written one of the four Gospels Judas would definitely have had red hair, but the colour of his hair is the least of it! Artists and writers also gave Judas distinctly Jewish characteristics, though I can hardly see where that set him off from the other disciples! It did, however, make Judas the poster boy for all they despised about the Jewish race! There is a history of hatred associated with depictions of Judas, an invidious linking of Judas, the "betrayer of Christ," with Jews! A systemic antipathy that does no honour to Christians.
This week a number of Christian leaders met with a rabbi, and he used the phrase, the "teaching of contempt". I had never heard the phrase before, and I wondered whether it meant more than is conveyed on its simplest level. I was intrigued to discover that it has its origins in a book written in 1964. It's a phrase popularized by Jules Isaac, a French history professor who, with the Nazi invasion of France, began to research the subject of the inexplicable silence and apathy of Christians toward Nazi persecution of European Jews. Isaac himself lost his wife and most of his family in the Nazi death camps.
Jules Isaac wrote a book entitled The Teaching of Contempt: Christian roots of Anti-Semitism (1964), showing how contempt for Jews is embedded in many of the Church's writings and teachings. Isaac often pleaded his case before Christian leaders, and in a private audience with Pope John XXIII he requested a formal removal of the "teaching of contempt" from Christian tradition – a hope realized with Vatican II, which acknowledged that there is no room in the gospel of love for the teaching of contempt.
Jules Isaac examined the historical writings of the Church through the ages, challenging them with historical evidence to the contrary, but also appealing – and rightly so – to the Scriptures and to the spirit of Christ. Why, he asked, in contradiction to his own gospel of love and forgiveness, would Jesus condemn his own people, the only people to whom he chose to speak? It's a community in which he found enemies, to be sure, but it also provided the raw materials of the Christian Church!
Twisted Forms of Love
Jesus' commandment to love one another is a beautiful commandment, and the word, "contempt," is jarring alongside it. It casts shadows on Jesus' beautiful and redemptive teaching. The hymn, "Renew Your Church," includes the words:
(Hymnal: A Worship Book, #363)
Love within families is a sacred thing, but just as love almost ran aground on the shoals of first-century racial animosity, so it can become somewhat twisted within families. We have become aware that there are wrong kinds of love. There are false forms of love, like verbal forms of love that find little evidence in action – the kind of love that the Apostle Paul likens to a "sounding gong or a clanging cymbal". (1 Corinthians 13:1) There is an overbearing form of love that wants to control others, to smother and devour them. We say we love each other, but we nurse our grudges and cling to our antipathies like teddy bears. We love with our fingers crossed! Our love is seldom pure. Fallible human beings that we are, our expressions of love are often mixed with selfish and impure motives. There are unhealthy forms of love, entangled and manipulative forms of love that do not deserve the name.
C.S. Lewis examined the various Greek words for love and concluded that they come down to one seminal distinction – the difference between what he called "need love" and "gift love." Need love, he wrote, is always born of emptiness. It's a possessive love. It's a greedy love that reaches out to others in order to transfer value back to itself. Often when we say, "I love you," we are saying, "I need you, I want you. You have a value that I very much desire to make my own, no matter what the consequence may be to you." (cited by John Claypool, "Loving as Jesus Loved," May 9, 2004)
There is another form of love, however, a form of love that Lewis says is utterly different. He calls it "gift love," and instead of being born of emptiness, this form of love is born of fullness. Its aim is to enrich and enhance the beloved rather than to extract value. Gift love reaches out to bless and to increase rather to acquire or to diminish. Gift love is more like a bountiful, artesian well than a black hole. The Apostle Paul called love "a ...more excellent way" to live. (1 Corinthians 12:31) C.S. Lewis concluded that the uniqueness of the biblical vision of God's love is gift love, and that we are made in the image of such everlasting and unconditional love.
God Poured out His Love
The good news is that Jesus' death and resurrection were not just an example of gift love, they free and empower us to love. Jesus' spirit of love resides within us, shaping us in his loving image. Paul assures us, in the book of Romans, that "God ...poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us." (Romans 5:5)
"Amid sombre shadows of the night, where greed and hatred spread their blight," the bright love of Christ's spirit brings relief. The glow of Christ's bright glory assures us that the blight of night is not the final word. "The true light, which enlightens everyone, (came) into the world" (John 1:9), and his love is brighter than our darkness, stronger than our fears, more enduring than our grudges, truer than our false loves, more powerful than our unredeemed needs and mixed motives.
The gospel assures us that we are blessed with love even in the darkest of times. Betty Turcott tells the story of Tina, a thirteen-year-old girl who went missing! The family hoped and prayed that she would be found alive, but after many weeks they received news that her body had been found in a field in a nearby village. Friends gathered, bringing food and offering help in a multitude of practical ways. Support came from many places. Friends of Tina held a candlelight vigil of remembrance and invited the family to participate. There was comfort and blessing in the large number of teenagers who came to express their loss and to comfort each other at the funeral. The people of the village near the field where the body was discovered built a memorial to Tina to remember her and to honour all who have been abducted and murdered. (Betty Radford Turcott, "Blessing in the Dark Valleys," There Is a Season, page 52)
Into this dark place in the life of Tina's family came a great outpouring of love and practical support. Sharing the pain did not make the pain go away. Tina's family went through deep sorrow and anger at their loss, but there was blessing in the knowledge that one does not go through the dark valley of the shadow of death alone. The light of Christ's love shines even in the darkest valleys. Thanks be to God.
Love is a popular topic, although many of the books on love have to do with the difficulties and aberrations of love, leading someone to note that it's a good thing that love hurts, otherwise all of our country music songs would have to be about root canals!
Amid sombre shadows of the night
Jesus' commandment of love has relevance not only to the relationships of races, but also to relationships in our communities and homes. I'm a fan of the television show, "Everybody loves Raymond," because its twisted family relationships are very familiar to me. Whenever the mother in that family interferes with another family member in a particularly manipulative way, she says, "I do it out of love. It comes from a heart of love, a mother's love," and who can argue with that, especially a week before Mother's Day?
where greed and hatred spread their blight,
O send us forth with power endued.
...
Teach us your word, reveal its truth divine;
... (and) let it shine.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.