A Sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III
St. Mark’s Presbyterian
May 7, 2006
From the earliest time of my childhood, I have always had a special concern for things lost. And from the earliest time of my growing up in the church, I have always felt a strong sympathy for Judas Iscariot- the lost disciple. In my Sunday school classes I was a tireless advocate for Judas, troubling my teachers with questions like: If it was God’s will that Jesus die on the cross, and if Judas was helping to fulfill God’s will, then why must he be condemned for an action that he had no choice in doing? Even as an adult believer, I must confess that I continue to be haunted by the story of Judas. I guess I am not alone in my fascination with Judas Iscariot. No disciple, not even Simon Peter the Rock, or the beloved disciple John has so captured the imagination of the church down through the ages as has this Judas, the one who handed Jesus over to death. In early Gnostic gospels that did not make it into the Biblical canon, Judas was portrayed as a hero who understood that Christ must return to God and who helped him along the way. In medieval writings, Judas is portrayed as an object of horror, the quintessential villain who in Dante’s inferno is consigned to the very bottom rung of Hell. And then in more contemporary interpretations, like the one many of us boomers grew up with, the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar, a more sympathetic and ambiguous portrait of Judas is drawn. Recently a new text has been discovered called the Gospel according to Judas, which has brought about another surge of interest in the historical figure of Judas. Who was Judas? Was he the ultimate villain, forever an object of horror? Was Judas a tragic figure doomed to play a role he did not want to play as a pawn being moved around in a chess game between God and Satan? Or was Judas a revolutionary patriot who became disillusioned with Jesus’ refusal to liberate his nation from Roman domination? Who was Judas and why did he betray Jesus? How do we understand his role and his ultimate fate in the salvation drama of Christ’s death and resurrection? And most importantly, what is the witness of Judas Iscariot to contemporary disciples who carry within ourselves, the same capacity to betray the One who remains steadfastly loyal to us?
Let us begin with a quick survey of the three primary texts, which carry the story of Judas. The first is famous story of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany. This is the story of the woman who takes costly ointment and lavishes it on Jesus. And according to Mark’s Gospel when this action is criticized because the money could have been used to feed the poor, Jesus responds, “ Let her alone. Why do you criticize her? She has done a beautiful thing. The poor you have with you always. Truly I say to you, wherever the Gospel is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of her. It is the great irony of this scene that what Judas does in response to this holy waste will be told for all time in memory of him. It is precisely at this moment that Judas sets in motion the plan to betray Jesus. In Mark’s gospel the critical reaction to this lavish waste is generalized, reflecting negatively on the entire discipleship community. But in John’s Gospel a significant shift takes place in narrowing the focus of the story down to just one disciple. It is Judas Iscariot, the designated bookkeeper of the discipleship community who expresses indignation that their financial resources are being wasted on this unnecessary perk for their leader. The synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke are all in agreement that this was precisely the moment when Judas set into motion the betrayal by contacting the high priests. The alleged concern for the price of the oil that was lavished on Jesus and the payment of 30 pieces of silver that he received from the High priests led the church of the middle ages to portray Judas as a villain who was simply motivated by human greed. But this portrait of the greedy Judas that predominates in the first 10 centuries of Christianity was promoted with a grievous twist. This greedy Judas willing to betray his Lord for a paltry 30 pieces of silver, became the scapegoat upon which the church poured out all its anti-Semitic hostility. The greedy Judas became the stereotype for all Jewish people in what the church believed was their collective betrayal and rejection of their own Messiah.
The church must categorically reject this portrait of greedy Judas on two grounds. First this portrait of Judas as the stereotyped representative of all Jews must be rejected as the outlet for the worst anti-Semitic impulses of the church. And the second reason is that the portrait of Judas motivated by greed is simply not a satisfying explanation of why he betrayed Jesus. If we dismiss the heavy handed portrait of Judas the villain motivated only by greed, we can consider another portrait. It is the portrait of Judas as political revolutionary who was looking for a Messiah who would lead his people to overthrow Roman rule. Judas objected to the waste of money that was used to buy the expensive oil lavished on Jesus because it was properly money that should have been used to meet the needs of the poor. This has been the predominant portrait of Judas since the 19th century. Scholars do presume that among the original twelve disciples that there were probably several who were Zealots who were drawn to Jesus message and mission, correctly perceiving that his proclamation of the Reign of God had radical social and political implications for this world. For those who hold this interpretation, Judas became disillusioned with Jesus as the Messiah who refused to lead his people to freedom. Judas did what he did perhaps believing that Jesus would be more valuable to the cause as a martyr would. Or perhaps Judas betrayed Jesus expecting that God would intervene on his behalf to save His Beloved Son and the chosen nation with Him. I find this portrait very convincing. It is the activist Judas, the revolutionary Judas that I empathize with. I can understand and relate to the profound temptation that lies at the heart of the activist engaged in struggle where ends and means to ends become confused. The witness of Judas is a warning and caution to us all. Any disciple, who reduces the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of the Reign of God to a narrow political ideology or particular social agenda is in danger of betraying the Lord.
Whatever his motivation, Judas carries out the betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is the way in which Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss that continues to haunt and disturb the church. Does the kiss of Judas represent the epitome of cynicism or does it reveal perhaps an even more disturbing possibility, that Judas even in the act of betrayal still loved Jesus? The church has been divided on this question. A significant number of interpreters including Origen, the great theologian and Bishop of the 2nd century, have said that the kiss suggests some residual goodness that is left in Judas. The Rock opera JC Superstar also leans in this direction portraying not John, but Judas as the Beloved disciple. What is so disturbing about the kiss by which Judas betrayed Jesus is that it reminds us that most betrayals do not occur as pure malevolence disguised as affection. Most betrayals occur in the ambiguity of competing loves and conflicting agendas. With a kiss, Judas betrayed Jesus. And immediately Soldiers and officials converge on Gethesmane and Jesus is arrested with only a brief struggle. He is carried away, humiliated and tortured by Imperial guards, forced to endure a sham trial held in the cover of night. He is condemned to an execution by crucifixion that is reserved for slaves and subversives. All of his followers, now fugitives are nowhere to be found, except for a handful of women who journey to the foot of the cross and risk their lives by their open expression of grief. The discipleship community is scattered, broken, left to grieve not only the death of their leader but how each of them had denied, abandoned and betrayed Jesus in their own way. I have come to the conclusion that Judas betrayal was not qualitatively different from the abandonment and denial and desertion of the rest of the discipleship community. When at the Last Supper Jesus said, one of you who sups with me will betray me, they all said, “ is it I Lord? Is it I? Each one asks that question secretly knowing that they could be the one; that they each had that capacity to do what Judas did. It could have been any one of them who betrayed Jesus because in the end it is in fact the entire discipleship community that betrays Jesus, each in their own way. By always blaming Judas, by making him the perfect villain, we have tended to overlook our own betrayals. To the extent that Judas is the personification of pure wickedness, he tends to exonerate the rest of us from our share in Christ’s suffering. It’s by forgiving Judas that we begin to take responsibility for ourselves and then to find forgiveness for our own betrayals.
The last text we will consider in the story of Judas is preserved only in Matthew, which points to the possibility of a repentant Judas. In Mt. 27: 6-8 Judas realized what he had done returned the money to the high priests and in profound remorse he hung himself. The chief priests take the blood money and use it for a potters’ field where the homeless stranger can be buried, a resting place for the unmourned dead. The question debated here over the centuries has been did Judas really repent of his sin? And if he did repent, did God forgive him? I don’t think there is any question that the text from Matthew makes it clear that Judas felt genuine remorse. What is so troubling and tragic about the story of Judas is that even if God forgave Judas, Judas could not forgive himself. And so in bottomless despair, he took his own life. As one member of our congregation recently said to me, he cannot remember Christ’s passion without feeling a profound sadness in response to the death of Judas. His words remind us as contemporary disciples that perhaps our first response to Judas is to go to the potter’s field, the place of the unmourned dead and to mourn the death of our brother Judas. The discipleship community has unfinished grief work to do. If we are willing to mourn the death of our brother Judas, perhaps we will then be ready to finally wrestle with the question, which is really the crux of the matter in the witness of Judas to the church. That question: Are there sins that are so evil as to be beyond the grace of God? Can one so completely betray the truth of ones life that what results is spiritual death and eternal separation from God? We should hesitate a moment before offering a facile answer to this question. Because evil is real and we see much evidence in our world of the power of evil to overcome and completely disfigure the human spirit. I want to share with you what I have believed since I was a child and still believe to this day. If Judas is not saved then none of us can be saved. Just as we are all like Judas in our capacity to betray that which we love best, may we finally come to understand through Judas this important truth. In spite of our betrayals, there is One whose loyalty to us can not be broken and whose love for us is unconditional. There is One whose grace has the power to forgive us our sins of betrayal and to redeem us from all evil. There is One who will find us in our lostness and will carry us home to God, on his back. And that One is Jesus the Crucified and Risen Christ. This is the hope of the discipleship story. If Peter having denied Jesus three times, could later be brought back into the discipleship story by the appearance of the Risen Christ, then why not Judas? The Risen Christ invites all of the disciples then and now who can not faithfully follow Jesus in the way of the cross back into the story. The Good news of Easter to all who seek to follow Jesus and who have failed is that our denial and desertion our betrayal of Christ does not have to mean the end of the story. Our stories as failed disciples do not have to end in tragedy. There is no discipleship story that has ended in failure that can not be redeemed with the grace of a new beginning.
( This sermon is indebted to the book entitled Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple by Kim Paffenroth.)