Sermon: Betrayal and Communion
Have you ever watched the 1998 American movie Armageddon? When it first hit Korean theatres, it was a massive sensation, with Bruce Willis front and centre on its eye-catching poster.
The film follows a team of oil-drilling roughnecks sent into outer space to destroy a giant asteroid threatening Earth. Like many American disaster films, it follows a familiar pattern: A white male protagonist is called upon by the U.S. government or NASA, essentially, America itself, to join the mission. The president gives his personal approval, and our hero sets out to save the world. Against all odds, he succeeds and, upon his return, whether to Earth, an Air Force base, or a naval ship - he is reunited with his wife and young child, who have been waiting and praying for his safe return. (I know that’s not quite how Armageddon ends, but my point stands)
On the final day of the mission, (the moment of salvation for all nations, achieved by one entity alone: the United States) a dramatic scene unfolds. Across the world, people in India, the Arab world, East Asia, and Africa gather at their temples, praying and weeping.
I was in grade eleven at the time, and these American disaster films always left me puzzled; who makes these movies? They certainly seek to glorify benevolent imperial power, the “Good American Saviour,” the ideal of the heterosexual nuclear family, and a world entering Pax Americana, (worldwide peace created by America’s influence) happily ever after.
It felt so wrong. Are all nations and races, except white Americans, truly this powerless? Do they simply express gratitude, without objection, for their dependence on an American saviour? Who created this narrative? How is it that America, so utterly self-absorbed, feels no shame in it? Has the Pax Americana foreign policy really only done good? It betrays everything I know about the world.
What’s happening south of the border - isn’t it just the flip side of the same coin? The ideal of the American saviour has never disappeared from the minds of certain leaders or the voters who elect them. As we see, depending on who’s in power, the so-called imperial power of a “saviour” can just as easily flip into the imperial power of a bully; shaping policies on immigration, equality, social services, and other critical issues. The notion of American superiority and its supposed contribution to world peace often unfold in ways that ultimately serve its own economic interests. Donald Trump is simply the embodiment of the past and the present of America.
When it comes to foreign policy, this imperial dominance has never ceased. The U.S. has joined ‘just wars’ in progress, like World Wars I and II, but all the wars they’ve started have been ‘unjust’, pursuing economic interests driven by the hunger for oil, resources and political control. Nations in strategically vital regions—often surrounded by major powers—inevitably suffer. Historically, the U.S. has created, maintained, or imposed conditions that leave these nations with little choice but to become U.S. allies, accepting American terms and free trades, sacrificing their own farmers, labor unions, and more. These interventions often depend on the cooperation, or submission, of national elites, many of whom are corrupt or complicit.
If America has contributed to peace, then what does that peace truly mean? What was its cost, and whose peace did it actually serve? While America presents itself as the beacon of democracy, the ‘city on a hill’, its closest allies and “friends” have often been authoritarian rulers whose regimes do little to promote democracy and, in many cases, actively suppress it.
The economic and political issues that have been easily dismissed and ignored as “Third World” problems are now increasingly being experienced by Canada and EU countries with Donald Trump. Indigenous peoples have faced these realities since the first contact with colonial settlers. Their sovereignty has been stripped away, their resources seized, and their lands plundered.
If the imperial power of both saviour and oppressor are merely two sides of the same coin—rooted in self-importance and a sense of superiority—then what, would you say, is the true opposite of that coin? A coin with no Caesar’s face, no name, no inscription of years in power—what would that look like? I believe today’s Last Supper story offers us a profound lesson: Who are our true friends and allies? What kind of value must communion embody?
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War’s devastation, President Ho Chi Minh envisioned overcoming destruction with a different kind of strength. He taught his people to “Change hate into strength”–It stood on a destroyed school, on walls of rubble–and inspired them with this conviction: "Every inhabitant of the land should be able to paint and draw, to learn a foreign language, and to make music.” Meanwhile, Vietnamese people referred to President Nixon as the “President of the United Dead”.
This is the reality of Pax Americana—a foreign policy that normalizes violence and coercion, executed in plain sight, maintaining global dominance through military bases, alliances, and economic policies. And yet, early this year when Justin Trudeau responded to U.S. tariffs by saying, “How could you impose tariffs on us? We were friends and allies. We have a legal trade agreement that you created in your first term.” Donald Trump dismissed him, calling him Governor and suggesting that Canada should be annexed as the 51st state.
If such violations shock, disappoint, or enrage us, then perhaps they serve as a warning gift: a call to reflect on the experiences of the Third World and Indigenous nations, even within the news we hear about Canada, even within First World life.
Through the lens of communion—the body of Christ—and the idea of a true commonwealth, we must ask ourselves: Whose friends and allies are we truly meant to be?
Jesus said at the Last Supper, “This is my body, broken, for you, this is my blood, poured out for you” But reading the whole chapter, we soon realize what he actually said: “This is my body, broken for “all of you”, This is my blood, poured out for “all of you””.
How could he accept such agony, such powerful suffering? It was not because he was helpless. At the Last Supper, he embraced his suffering because he believed in the changes that would come because of his sacrifice. The changes of the reality of the world - not just in the future, but already in the present, not about heaven, but about earth, especially with the new questions, new declaration about who friends and allies are to us. Denouncing or confronting political power and unjust religious collaboration is dangerous in both the first century and 21st century alike.
What is communion?
communion is not an institution. It did not begin as one.
Drawing from Dorothee Soelle’s Three Phases of Suffering (a non-linear exploration of how we move through suffering) we start with conviction—the belief that we live in a world that can be changed. Change is possible, and we must begin there.
Soelle describes the most extreme form of suffering as mute suffering—the unbearable pain, the moment of terror, horror, and shock. When disaster strikes, it may feel unendurable. But history tells us otherwise. A hundred years of colonization shows us how even the unbearable becomes normalized. Without realizing it, people come to live within suffering, adapting to it. Helplessness sets in. Autonomy is stripped away. The situation takes control. Events once thought unthinkable become endurable. The autonomy that once insisted this must not happen gives way to submission. They cannot even think that change is possible. This is the first phase of suffering: the suffering that makes one mute.
But then comes a shift: from silence to lament, from numbness to language, from speechlessness to crying out. This is Phase Two—the emergence of a voice, a language that, at the very least, names what is happening. The Psalms are a powerful example: “Hear me, O God; hear my supplication.” Communion, before anything else, exists in this space. It is where the community gathers—not only to break bread but to give voice to those in extreme suffering.
The Third Phase is this: coming to know that the suffering inflicted by society can be fought and overcome—that even the deepest structures of oppression can be changed. This is the conquest of powerlessness. And this is where solidarity is formed.
The spiritual and ultimate purpose of every communion must be rooted in this understanding. When Jesus said, “This is my body, broken for all of you. This is my blood, poured out for all of you. As you do this, remember me,” he was not calling for his own importance to be exalted. He was setting the Last Supper as a time of remembrance—for those least likely to be remembered, including himself, especially without the movement of his disciples.
From the depths of extreme agony—within the space of suffering, phase two—he utters, “Remember me.”
To remember Christ is to remember the ones who are most easily replaced, unnamed, pushed away, and forgotten. Communion is not just about looking back; it is about refusing to let the least among us disappear from history.
The Last Supper was Jesus’ sovereignty feast. It was an expression of his sovereignty - God’s sovereignty in our lives. It embodied the ethic of commonwealth, where “they had everything in common and shared with those in need” (Acts 2)—the very opposite of the power grab that defined Rome’s military occupation and taxation and the religious authorities’ collaboration.
Now, let’s think about Judas. What is the right question to ask about him?
From my reading, Judas represents anything, or anyone, that disrupts and dismantles the anti-institutional meaning of communion. Judas means siding with the wrong friends and allies—those who deal in death. In the Bible, they are Herod, Pilate, and the religious leaders. It means striking a deal to betray the innocent.
Judas’ motivations must have been conflicted. Perhaps, as a zealot, he wanted to force Jesus to reveal himself as the powerful ruler of the Jews—the divine image he carried within him. But Jesus’ new interpretation of the meal had nothing in common with Caesar’s coin. Jesus was not about dominion. He was about God’s sovereignty.
Judas’ betrayals must pay their death-dealing: genocide, apartheid, slavery, ecocide, the arrest and murder of peacemakers, unjust wars, the destruction of nations.
Today’s Judas is not just Donald Trump or Elon Musk, or the crisis at the southern border, or even Netanyahu.
Judas lives, Judas acts, in the service of Superiority.
Invincibility.
Racial purity.
Zionism.
MAGA.
Territorial expansion.
Climate change denial.
It's like playing endless Whack-a-Mole: Judas is always replaced by another Judas. As long as society insists on the necessity of superiority and dominance—whether for the economy or in the name of peace (but not the true spirit of peace - for example, when Ukrainian sovereignty is excluded from the negotiating table in U.S.-Russia collaboration.)—Judases return, both within the church and in the world. It doesn’t matter where. Evil and death-dealing forces are not always outside the church; much of it has occurred within—through slavery, residential schools, right-wing extremism, trans-hate, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and more.
And yet, in the midst of all of this, on this Second Sunday of Lent, today’s Last Supper story invites us to sit and recline at the table with Jesus, with the community of Christ’s friends and allies - Judas included. On the night of Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane, carried out in stealth, not to incur the riots of the masses because they knew their plan for his arrest was unjust. On that night the ritual of communion was born. It seemed like an ordinary supper, just like the day before.
But that day held sacred creation: in the breaking of the bread, Jesus’ heart found comfort, found strength. Even when the disciples could not understand with their minds, they heard, with their hearts, the anguished cry of Jesus, Remember me. If I am powerless, let me remember those who are just as powerless—perhaps even more so. This was the birth of an anti-institutional communion--not to accept suffering but to overcome it. It is the ritual that encourages us to move from mute suffering to expression, to solidarity.
And let us remember: despite how difficult it may be, this invitation remains—again and again. No matter the name, the face, or the form Judas takes, the invitation continues. And yes, Judas is invited. Not to set the terms – only God can set the terms. They are invited to admit their brokenness, to accept that reminder of the perfection that was broken for our wrongdoings. For God has poured out endless mercy upon this community—a community that, from the very beginning, has included Judas.
And let us remember: Jesus’ final battle before his death was nothing like Armageddon—not like Pax Americana, which aligns itself either with the imperial power of a saviour or that of a bully—two sides of Caesar’s coin. It was a revolution born from powerful suffering, crafted for the healing of a broken world—his body broken and poured out for all of us: for Jesus’ friends and allies, and even for the Judases at the table. Because at the heart of it all is our faith: the belief that hope and change are possible. And this hope and change—this is our calling.
Comments
Post a Comment