The Gospel for December 9, 2004
Luke 22:1-13
The feast of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was now drawing near, and the chief priests and the scribes were looking for some way of doing away with him, because they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered into Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was one of the Twelve. He approached the chief priests and the officers of the guard to discuss some way of handing Jesus over to them. They were delighted and agreed to give him money. He accepted and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them without people knowing about it. The day of Unleavened Bread came round, on which the Passover had to be sacrificed, and he sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and make the preparations for us to eat the Passover.’ They asked him, ‘Where do you want us to prepare it?’ He said to them, ‘Look, as you go into the city you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house he enters and tell the owner of the house, “The Master says this to you: Where is the room for me to eat the Passover with my disciples?” The man will show you a large upper room furnished with couches. Make the preparations there.’ They set off and found everything as he had told them and prepared the Passover. -- The New Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1995, c1985
A Study
Judas is cast as one of Satan's workers. The facts are that he was an essential player in what happened next, and that without him, Jesus' execution would have had to have happened some other way. Many think that he was one of many who considered Jesus to be a failure as Messiah: after all, he didn't come in glory and wipe out the bad guys as everybody expected. He never gave the "expected answer." So the next day, when Pilate asked the crowd to decide between the thief and Jesus, they could well have been convinced that he was a failure, too.
A Reflection
"Therefore let us keep the feast" is said during the Anglican Eucharist's liturgy in reponse to "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us."
That Jesus kept the feast of the Passover as a good Jew should never escape our memories. Jesus observed the rituals of his time in an appropriate and reverent way. Commemorating the event that led to their escape from Pharaoh reminds Jews of this: that YHWH considers all of us who are sealed into Him to be his own beloved children. Jews were sealed into Him with the blood of a sacrificed lamb, spread on their doorposts. We are sealed into Him by Baptism and the Body and Blood of the Eucharist, "that we all may be one."
When disciples come to our houses, our hearts, do they find that we have made all the preparations to receive Him and His Sacrifice?
A Collect
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
9:31:32 PM 
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