Judas

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Abba, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Abba, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  Luke 22:47–53 (NIV) While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.” CONSIDER THIS Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, had been preparing for this night for quite some time. Upon Satan entering him, as the Gospel of Luke informs us elsewhere, “Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus” (Luke 22:4). Not long afterward the night of betrayal had finally arrived. The moment was just right. Judas would carry out what he had designed to do, whatever his motivation was for doing so. At the head of a crowd, made up of both religious leaders and common folk carrying clubs and swords (the Gospel of John adds Roman soldiers as well), Judas interrupted the third and last conversation that Jesus was having with his drowsy disciples at Gethsemane. As a way of identifying the man to be arrested, Judas approached Jesus to kiss him, but in Luke’s account the scene immediately shifts to the question of Jesus: “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” That’s exactly what he was doing. All of the other disciples were evidently afraid to be associated with Christ, for after his upcoming arrest they would immediately flee (Mark 14:50). Beyond this, one disciple in particular would outright deny any association with Jesus as we will see shortly. However, the evil entailed in outright betrayal—well, that’s an evil that places betrayal in a category all its own. There are a number of elements in this particular wickedness (that’s not too strong a word here) that can prove to be painful even to examine. First of all, what is needed for betrayal is the sheer goodness of a solid and loving relationship, one that will eventually be perverted and defiled. Evil is always the corruption of a prior good; Augustine got that right. Judging from the gospel accounts, we can surmise that with his call by Jesus to be a disciple, Judas had likely started out well and with good intentions—but they simply did not last. In the meantime, he was known as a thief, that is, as one who helped himself to the money bag for the group (John 12:6). Second, evil must somehow emerge in the heart of Judas in the form of disloyalty, faithlessness, and treachery. Even at this early stage, the relationship has already been tarnished. Indeed, the duplicity and bad faith that has arisen in Judas’s heart must be kept secret though they may break out in complaints—“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” (v. 5)—or in backstabbing or in going behind Jesus’s back (evil speaking) in arranging with the religious leaders the very scene of our current text. At this third stage, notice that the betrayer pretended that all was well though, of course, it wasn’t. He kept the charade of being a good disciple going so much so that all the other disciples were clueless in this regard. Judas had to work hard to accomplish this; he had to engage in ongoing deception and deceit, forms of lying so that the contents of his heart would not be exposed. He had fooled everyone, even his own fellow disciples. He was a master of deception. But he did not fool Jesus. Finally, the secret is revealed; the betrayal is manifested. Once again pretending to be other than he actually was, Judas approached Jesus to kiss him. In this Middle Eastern culture, a kiss signified “friendship and esteem, even love,”1 and so the irony of such an action is very great, full of significance. In other words, in this setting what was intended and what was being offered were two very different things. In short, a symbol of friendship had now become a sign of betrayal. Now that’s evil! Having slept on and off through much of the night, the disciples finally saw Judas at the head of the crowd. They then assessed the situation as best they could and asked Jesus if they should strike with their swords. One of them, Peter (according to John 18:10), moved quickly and cut off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest. The question posed by the disciples as well as the immediate resort to violence by Peter together demonstrate that, despite all the careful teaching by Jesus of his upcoming suffering and death, the disciples once again, even at this late stage, failed to understand the ministry of Jesus aright and in what sense he was the Messiah. “No more of this!” Jesus commanded. In Matthew’s account of this same incident, Jesus ordered the disciple to “Put your sword back in its place . . . for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matt. 26:52). Demonstrating once again that his kingdom was “not of this world” (John 18:36), Jesus then reasoned with Peter: “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matt. 26:53–54). So then, what did Jesus do in the midst of a treacherous situation in which he was about to be arrested by the leaders of a crowd that had come with swords and clubs, when he was being betrayed by his erstwhile disciple, and when bloody violence had already occurred? He healed someone! Yes, he healed someone! Indeed, one of the reasons this account from Luke has been chosen as our text is that his is the only one that relates this restoration miracle. Jesus remained, even in this dark hour, what he had always been from the very start of his ministry—a healer, one who announced through both word and action the transformative, restorative power of the kingdom of God. The evil of others did not undermine the goodness and power of Christ in the least. For their part, however, the disciples had another kind of power in mind, one that would only make things worse. Jesus then turned his attention specifically to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders who were a part of the crowd, and he asked them a question: “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?” The sense of the original Greek behind this verse appears to be rendered better than the NIV does in the following translations: the NRSV, “bandit”; the NASB 1995, “robber”; and the CEB “thief.”2 Jesus was obviously none of these things, and so he reminded these religious leaders that he had been with them in the temple courts, for all to see, and “you did not lay a hand on me.” To be sure, in the light of day and in the midst of many worshipers in the temple area, these religious leaders had much to fear if they sought to arrest Jesus then and there. For what they had in mind they would need a far less public place as well as the cover of night. They had been plotting to take the life of Jesus for a long time (John 11:53). They now had their opportunity, for Judas had set the stage. At long last, they would carry out the desire of their hearts. Jesus pulled the cover away and declared to them: “This is your hour—when darkness reigns.” Yes, this was their hour, but it would not last. Darkness cannot overcome the light. THE PRAYER Heavenly Father, in this troubled world, it would be easy to lose sight of your purpose, your kingdom, and my part in healing and restoring everything to you. The evil around me can never diminish the light of your Son, Jesus—the light that I bear. Remind me, Lord, that I am salt and light in the world.