Deacon Susan Erickson

Dear Friends,

Today is the Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. (The feast day is “transferred” to today. Normally it falls on December 27. This year, however, December 27 falls on a Sunday.)

John is often referred to as the “beloved disciple.” He is the disciple to whom Jesus entrusts his mother from the cross. But in today’s reading from the Gospel that bears his name, John plays something of a walk-on part. In fact, he is identified only as “the one whom Jesus loved.” The real focus of this scene is Judas Iscariot. At supper, just after washing their feet, Jesus announces to his disciples that one of them will betray him. Since John happens to be reclining at table next to Jesus, Peter motions to him to ask Jesus who the betrayer is. Jesus says it will be the one to whom he gives a piece of bread that he’s dipped in the dish. Then he gives the bread to Judas, telling him, essentially, to get it over with.

But the disciples remain clueless. They don’t understand the meaning of this interchange and give it a more banal, benign interpretation: they think Jesus is telling Judas to carry out an errand with their common purse. Meanwhile, Judas, in whom Satan has “entered,” abruptly departs. Our Gospel passage concludes with an ominously short sentence: “And it was night.”

The disciples fail to recognize both the evil and the True Light in their midst. In the following chapter Jesus will say to Philip, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” (John 14: 9). It’s as if the disciples could only have understood who Jesus was by also recognizing who Judas was.

John may have been the beloved disciple, but his belovedness didn’t guarantee him understanding, at least not at this point in the story. He didn’t fully grasp whom he was reclining at table with. And he was as unprepared for the unfolding of evil as the other disciples — perhaps even Judas Iscariot himself.

We are all too well acquainted with the manifestations of evil in our own world. We ask God to “deliver us from evil” each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and I believe this is a petition to deliver us not only from evil without, but also from the evil that may “enter” into us, as it did into Judas. But I don’t think Jesus promised to banish evil from our midst if we followed him. Rather, we need to pray for understanding — for the wisdom that comes from God from before creation, in the language of today’s passage in Proverbs — in order to truly see who Jesus is. Then we can become, like John, evangelists of the Light of Christ, pressing outwards against the darkness.

Deacon Susan Erickson

Today's readings: Pss. 97, 98
Proverbs 8:22-30
John 13:20-35