Has anybody ever let you down? A close friend, a relative? How did you feel? Upset, possibly devastated if it was a close friend or relative and the let down was for something you were really hoping to receive of share. What if the ‘let-down’ was brought about by someone you had put on a ‘pedestal’ ? A celebrity, an MP?
We all have our own beliefs in people, expectations as to how they should behave or act, and when they don’t, the resulting disappointment can be life-shattering. Sometimes we can’t or won’t accept it when someone does act so out of character; we turn a ‘blind-eye’ to their actions.
I wonder in reading this passage whether it was this ‘blindness’ that stopped the disciples from seeing what was going on in front of them. In the reading Jesus only tells one of the disciples, but surely the others were listening; it was Simon Peter who urged the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ to ask Jesus, possibly because Simon Peter wasn’t sitting close enough to ask himself.
And yet when Judas went out neither Simon Peter, nor the unnamed disciple made any attempt to stop him, or take any action to make sure Jesus would be safe and not betrayed.
Are we so blind that we sometimes refuse to see the injustices going on in our communities, wherever they are and in whatever context; because they are inflicted by people who we thought we knew, people who we had grown to love and trust?
And as for how Jesus felt in knowing he would be betrayed – well perhaps that is for someone else to reflect on.
Mike Aspinall
Chapel Street & Hope United Reformed Church, Salford
