Judas

        Father Sean Flannigan, an old Irish priest in Boston was violently anti-British.  His constant diatribes got so bad that the bishop had to call him in and ask him never to mention the British again from his pulpit. Apparently the old priest understood for he said, "Sure, you’re Eminence, and I’d never do anything to embarrass you.   I’ll never mention the dirty British again."    

       The cardinal responded to his apparent acceptance of the admonition with a reconciling invitation to give the sermon at the next high mass in the cathedral.  The text was on the Last Supper, and the old priest gave an extremely dramatic portrayal, climaxing with Jesus’ declaration that one of the disciples would betray Him.  "The blessed St. Peter asked, “Is it I?" and Jesus said,   "No, no me boy,   it's not you." And the blessed St. John asked, “Is it I, Lord?" And the Lord said, “No, it’s not you."   And he went on through the other disciples until he  said,  "Then the thieving,  back-stabbing, black-hearted Judas  said, "I  say, old boy,  is  it  I?"

       Judas has long been a focus for hatred.  In many Catholic countries he is still burned in effigy on Good Friday. Even those who don’t go to that extreme see him as a supreme example of human depravity – the man who sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

       This morning in our Lenten series on People of the Cross, we come to the last encounter between Jesus and Judas before Judas leads the soldiers to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.  In the Upper Room we see two things.  We see the way in which Jesus constantly reaches out to men and women in vulnerable love.  That’s the main thing I want you to see in this sermon – the persistence of Jesus’ love.  We also see the choices we are faced with when He reaches out to us. 

       The rulers have already decided that Jesus must be killed.  But they have a problem.  They can’t arrest Him in the open because the people are on his side and they won’t stand for it. The rulers need someone on the inside who can tip them off as to when Jesus might be away from the crowds. Judas knows that Jesus spends the night in the garden near the city.  He leaves the Upper Room, goes to the rulers and seals the deal he has made some time before.  “The one I kiss will be the man.  Get Him.”   The rulers are also afraid of Jesus’ power.  But Judas is able to say, “Jesus is talking like He’s going to die.  I think He’s tired, defeated and ready to surrender. If you act now I think He’s ready to go with you.”

       But as John 13 opens, Judas still hasn’t taken the final, irrevocable step.  He’s been in touch with the priests.  He’s taken their money.  But he hasn’t done the deed.  He still has an opportunity to turn around.

       Jesus has just finished washing the feet of His disciples. A part of the motivation for this act is to make a final appeal to Judas to turn away from the course he has chosen. Perhaps Jesus hopes that Judas will cry out like Peter; “Don’t just wash my feet.  Wash but my hands and my head as well." But Judas sits there, solid and impervious to Jesus' love -- still set on his purpose. And Jesus still seeks to pull Judas back from the ruin to which he is rushing.

       Several times in the Upper Room Jesus makes comments which were then meaningless to the other disciples but filled with meaning for Judas. In verse 11 He said "Not all of you are clean. Now, in verse 18, Jesus says: "I do not speak of all of you, I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the scripture may be fulfilled, "He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me."  That’s a quotation from, Psalm 41:9. In the full quotation it reads, “Even my bosom friend in who I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.”

       Jesus isn’t expressing anger at Judas.  He’s expressing sorrow.   He’s showing Judas the wound on His heart.  Perhaps Jesus looks at Judas here to see if there is any softening of expression – any sign that there is a man in there who can still be reached.  But He finds no sign.  John records that Jesus then became “troubled in spirit” and declared very plainly. “Truly, truly I say to you, that one of you is going to betray me.”

       Jesus makes it clear that He is not caught by surprise by Judas’ treachery.  We need to know that.  He says, "I'm telling you this now so that after it happens you may believe that I am He."    But although Jesus is in control, He is not uninvolved with what is going on. He is not acting out a play with pre-rehearsed lines.  He is troubled. A bitter ingredient of Jesus’ suffering is the certain knowledge of the moral collapse of a friend and chosen companion.

       One big question in the minds of a lot of people is why Jesus ever chose Judas as an apostle in the first place. The answer must be that he started out like the other eleven with a chance to make good and the possibility of going wrong. Judas wasn’t chosen in order to fill the “traitor spot.”  It didn’t have to be Judas.  When we read between the lines of the gospel record, we can see something of the progressive decline in his character. Luke speaks of him as "Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.' The meaning seems to be that he was not a traitor to start with, but that he became one.                                  

         Things don’t have to start bad to become deadly.  For eight years Sally had been the Romero family pet.  When they got her, she was only one foot long.  Sally grew until eventually she reached eleven feet and weighed eighty pounds. Then Sally, a Burmese Python turned on 15-year-old Derek, strangling the teenager until he dies of suffocation. James 1:15 warns us that sins that seem little and harmless – little foot long sins -- will grow. Tolerate or ignore sin, and it will eventually lead to death.

       Sin is like stepping from an upstairs window. If you had only the single act to consider your problem would be simple enough. You can step or not as you choose.  But once you step you find yourself dealing with a power over which you have no control. You are master of the single step, but you are not master of the gravitation which succeeds it. Judas discovers that his sin is more powerful than he is in its power to become habitual. Sin took an honored apostle and turned him into a traitor.

       Jesus is not caught by surprise by Judas’ treachery.  But the disciples, except for Judas, are very surprised by Jesus' statement that one in the room will betray Him.  It is significant that they don’t all turn and look at Judas when Jesus says this.  He isn’t everyone's number one suspect.  John records that they are at a loss to know who Jesus is talking about.  The other gospels tell us that several of them ask Jesus, "Am I the one?”  They think that they might have betrayed Him in some unwitting way.  Despite the spirit of competition that was present when they entered the Upper Room, each man is more willing to suspect himself than his brother – especially since Jesus has just told them to wash each other’s feet.

       If we visualize the Last Supper from Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting, (project picture) we think that Jesus and His disciples were all neatly seated in a row on one side of the table. Nothing could be farther from fact. Jesus and His followers did not sit at the table at all. They reclined on cushions around a low table.  The left arm of each person rested on a cushion on the table and the right arm was left free for eating.  Seated in this way in a U shape with the host at the center, each man's head is literally in the breast of the person reclining on his left.   (insert picture on screen)

       Jesus, as the host, is sitting at the center. John, the beloved disciple and the author of this gospel is seated at Jesus' right. The Apostle Peter must have been sitting to John’s right because he could easily communicate with him.

       But it is the place of Judas that is of special interest. It is quite clear from Matthew’s account that Jesus could speak to him quietly without the others overhearing.  That means there is only one place Judas could have been occupying at the table. He must have been on Jesus' left, so that, just as John's head was in Jesus' breast, Jesus' head was in Judas's.  The revealing thing is that this is a place of special honor. The seat at the left of the host was a seat for an intimate friend.  Before the meal began, Jesus might well have said to Judas: "Judas, come and sit with me tonight.  I especially want to talk with you."

       When Jesus says, "One of you will" betray me" Peter gestures to John to lean over so he can whisper.  Peter thinks that maybe John knows who Jesus is talking about. But John doesn’t know either.  He leans back to where he can talk quietly with Jesus and asks, "Lord, who is it?"  Jesus says that HHHhhiov\0qo4v\o\hthl , ,e will point out the traitor by an action. It is implied but not stated that Jesus’ words can only be heard by John.  It is clear that Jesus does not want to identify Judas to the whole group – especially with hot-tempered Peter packing a sword. 

       Jesus takes a morsel of food, dips it, and hands it to Judas. Dipping the meat or the bread into the common pot and then handing it to a person at the table was a sign of special friendship.  When Jesus hands the morsel to Judas, everyone but John sees it as a sign of special affection.

       We can only imagine the look in Jesus' eyes as He hands Judas the morsel of food. This is Jesus’ last appeal. But it does not reach a responsive chord in Judas’ heart.  Instead, he gives Himself more fully to evil. John records that "Satan then entered into him.”  Judas accepts the pledge of friendship and makes the final decision to betray at the same instant. Jesus sees that Judas has crossed the point of no return. He says to Judas, "What you have decided to do, do quickly." There is no point in going any further. Every appeal has been rejected. Judas leaves the Upper Room followed by the eyes of Jesus.

       That’s the story as John tells it.  Now let's try and get behind the story to understand the man.   

       What led Judas to the place of betrayal?

       There is an interesting theory of this man's defection, which was developed among the Germans and brought to the English-speaking world in a essay by a scholar named De Quincey. It says that Judas was not so much a bad man as a mistaken disciple and that in turning Jesus over to the authorities his purpose was not to betray his Master but to force him to act. The idea is that that mind of Judas was so thoroughly enmeshed in the Jewish thought of Messiahship that he never dreamed Jesus would allow himself to be killed. He was sure that when the time was ripe Jesus would call on His supernatural power and rout His enemies. Judas became impatient with the continual delay and thought he would bring matters to a head and force the hand of Jesus. So his betrayal is pictured not so much the act of an enemy as that of a misguided friend whose purpose was to provide his Master with an opportunity to get on with his work.

       The theory is that Judas saw Jesus, as did many others, as the Messiah who would kick out the Romans and restore Israel to glory.  But as he traveled with Jesus, he gradually became concerned.  Jesus was too ready to forgive sin. He was too ready to eat with tools of the Roman government like Zaccheaus.  Remember that Jesus had eaten with Zaccheaus the tax collector while he was on His way to Jerusalem for the Passover. But in spite of all this disillusionment, the theory holds, Judas still had confidence in Jesus.  Even though Jesus had refused to start a revolution on Palm Sunday when he was being cheered by the crowds, it could still happen. All that has to happen is for Jesus to be backed into a corner where He will finally have to use His power to fight back. The theory suggests that Judas saw himself as the catalyst -- the means of backing Jesus into the corner where He would finally have to show His stuff.

        You can almost hear Judas say to himself, “Why doesn’t Jesus get going?   If he raised his little finger all the young men in Palestine with red blood in their veins would rise to his call. Nothing could withstand him. We couldn’t lose.  He can even raise people from the dead. And here He is fleeing from one place to another, talking about this mad idea of love, babbling about a cross, saying that he must suffer. Why doesn't He act?”

       According to this modern theory, no one is more surprised than Judas when Jesus is crucified. He had expected Jesus to fight back -- not die like a slaughtered lamb. In his shock at how things had actually turned out he threw the thirty pieces of silver on the floor of the temple treasury and went and hung himself in remorse and sorrow. He had never thought that he was betraying Jesus to death.  He only wanted to make Jesus finally show his hand and get on with being the kind of Messiah Judas wanted Him to be.

       Some even see Jesus' words to Judas at the last Supper as an indication that Judas could have thought that Jesus wanted Him to do what he had planned. "One of you will betray me"..."Here is this morsel as a sign of my special favor Judas". "Now go and do the job. I know what you plan to do and it's okay. I can't strike the first blow, Judas. It wouldn't look right. But you fix it so they come after me and then I can claim self-defense."

       That’s an ingenious theory.  The only trouble with it is that the Bible knows nothing about it.

The picture in the Bible is of a man who starts out with the respect of the other disciples. He is chosen as treasurer. He must have impressed the others as a man of absolute reliability. But as the record continues, we see Judas deteriorating. He is pictured as the one who becomes angry when Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with costly oils. He wants Mary to sell it instead and give him the money so he can give it to the poor. But John comments with the knowledge of a Monday morning quarterback that he really wanted it for himself.

       There was a worm eating away inside Judas and apparently the worm was greed -- greed for money, greed for recognition...greed for safety. Perhaps Judas saw betraying Jesus as a way to save himself from the wreck of an obviously doomed enterprise while making a good bit of money at the same time.

       When Jesus first met Judas He must have seen him as a man who could be used for the Kingdom of God – a man with the same potential as Peter, James, John or any of the others.  But Judas, who might have become the hero, became the villain.

       Judas was not predestined to be the betrayer of Jesus. He was free and he was responsible. Jesus said that the betrayal had to come but "woe to him by whom it comes." It didn't have to be Judas.  He wasn't a puppet in the hands of God. Jesus tries again and again even here in the Upper Room to reach out to him. He’s not at all blasé about Judas choice or destiny. 

       Judas went on the way he himself had chosen.  In the Book of Acts Peter says of Judas, "He went to his own place." He doesn't say that Judas has gone to hell. He simply says that Judas is now living in the house for eternity that he built for himself on earth. Finally, Judas didn't sell Jesus.  He sold himself.

        Judas hung himself.  But he must have died some time before.   

       George Orwell once wrote: "Reading Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge's brilliant and depressing book, The Thirties, I thought of a rather cruel trick I once played on a wasp. He was sucking jam on my plate, and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed esophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him.  It is the same with modern man. The thing that has been cut away is his soul...and he did not notice it."

       That describes Judas.  Jesus tried everything to keep Judas’ soul intact.  I hope you have seen that in this sermon.  The only thing He did not do is take away his freedom.   Judas chose his course and God gave him over in freedom to walk the course he had chosen to the very end.   For we will either say to God, “Your will be done” or God will finally say to us, “Your will be done – even if it destroys you.”  That’s the meaning of freedom.

       I would like to find a conclusion for this story that would be less somber. I would much prefer to close on a happier and brighter note, but this is the story of Judas.  The life of Judas lacked a happy ending. Perhaps it is well, once in a while, to remind ourselves that sin is serious business.

       We don’t know at what point the soul of Judas was cut away -- leaving him so immune to all of Jesus' appeals of love.  When Judas led the soldiers to the garden Jesus still called him "friend." We do not know when Judas lost his heart.   But John, in a stark economy of words, closes the scene. He writes: "Judas went out and it was night.'

       The full Passover moon was shining brightly but it was darkest night for Judas -- for he had shut himself off from "the Light of the World.”