Then one of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over . . . When it was evening, Jesus reclined at table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” Deeply distressed at this, they began to say to him one after another, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” He said in reply, “He who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me.” . . . Then Judas, his betrayer, said in reply, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi? He answered, “You have said so.” (Matthew 26.14-16, 20-23, 25)
Three of the most famous betrayals in history, each one well-known, was that of Jesus by Judas; Julius Caesar by Marcus Brutus, and the Continental Army by Benedict Arnold. While these betrayals were personally painful for those betrayed, it has to be said that betrayals are a dime a dozen. Judas, Brutus and Benedict Arnold may be the most infamous examples, but they should never be thought of as lone wolves. The truth is there is a pack of betrayers, too many to count.
On this day of betrayal, a better name even than Good Friday, all things considered, we come face to face with Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, meaning he was in the inner circle of Jesus of Nazareth, having traveled with him for months and, more likely, for some years. He knew Jesus well and Jesus knew him well. Of course, that is always at the heart of betrayal. It doesn’t come at the hands of a stranger. It comes in the familiar face of a friend, someone who, as Jesus said, had dipped his hand into the dish with him.
The short passage that I have selected as an anchor for this reflection is remarkable for several reasons. First, Jesus is not blindsided by Judas’s betrayal. Greatly hurt, yes. But blind to it, no. As the small group sat together for what has become known as the Last Supper, Jesus announces that one of them will betray him. They respond as we might expect, each one apparently distressed at the very idea, all asking Jesus, “Surely it is not I, Lord?”
Yes, even Judas has the gall to ask the same question. But we don’t want to overlook the one difference in his question to Jesus. Whereas the others have addressed Jesus as Lord when asking him the question, Judas addresses him as Rabbi, that is, teacher. Lord is an honorific title reserved for someone very special. It also was the most common word used when speaking of Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures.
However, Rabbi, while being a title of respect, was not exceptional and did not express as exalted a rank as did the title Lord. Already here, then, Judas has separated himself from the other disciples. His choice of titles for Jesus has moved him from the inner circle to the outer circle. He is on his way out, distancing himself from Jesus, the jingle of coins already heard in his pocket.
Of course, his real reasons are forever lost to us. The most obvious is that he did it for money. That seems to be the suggestion in the scriptures. For the Jews, the thirty pieces easily recalled the price that was owed to the owner of a slave who was gored by the ox of another man. So, in effect, in the eyes of the chief priests, Jesus’ life had the same value as that of a slave.
Already when Matthew was writing his gospel, he found the explanation not wholly adequate to explain Judas’s betrayal, although money–then as now–is a powerful incentive for any number of ugly things. He seems to couch it in terms of fulfilling the Hebrew scriptures, selections from those scriptures weaved throughout his text for the same purpose of showing the connection between the ancient texts and Jesus.
For this reason, when one of the disciples tried to protect Jesus from being hauled away in the Garden after Judas had given the signal so that the guards could apprehend him, Jesus stopped him, saying, “How would the scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must come to pass in this way?” A moment later, he repeats himself, saying, “All this has come to pass that the writings of the prophets may be fulfilled.” For some reason, Matthew does not cite a particular passage that is being fulfilled in these actions. We are left to search on our own.
While that explanation fits well with Matthew’s overall intent in his gospel, I don’t think it necessarily precludes or excludes other reasons for Judas’s betrayal. For my part, I am willing to say only Judas knew his real reasons. That most often is the case with every betrayal. Motives lie hidden in the miasma of deceit. Looking from the outside, we may have to be content with simply saying that there was something crooked in Judas’s heart.
However, here we also have to be fair. While history has pointed the finger at Judas, his betrayal in the end was not the only one that fateful night. It may have differed in degree, but not in kind. The scene in the Garden ends with the chill-down-the-spine statement, “Then all the disciples left him and fled.” We are left to wonder how many of them remembered saying a few hours earlier to Jesus, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” Now, in the darkness of the night, they have their answer. Every last one of them fled, leaving Jesus alone to face the firing squad.
That singular question should be a wake-up call for all of us. We, like the disciples around the table at the Last Supper, are just as quick to deny any possibility of our betraying Jesus, saying as they did, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” And yet, yet we would only be showing the same overconfidence as Peter had when he had boasted a bit earlier on the way to the Mount of Olives, “Though all may have their faith in you shaken, mine will never be.”
Jesus, always able to read the human heart better than anyone else, sadly answered Peter, “I say to you, this very night before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter, blind to his own weaknesses, would hear nothing of it, stating, “Even though I should have to die with you, I will not deny you.” We’re then told that “all the disciples spoke likewise.”
At least Judas, for his part, didn’t protest his innocence but the one time. I suspect he knew full well what he was capable of doing, the weight of the silver pieces weighing down his pocket, but not his conscience. By this point, he probably had already slipped away into the darkness to meet up with his co-conspirators, the chief priests and elders in Jerusalem.
I’ve always believed that today is the one day in the year when all of us need to be honest with ourselves. Rather than pretending to be unlike the disciples in every way, sure that we would stand tall in the moment, perhaps we can admit for this short moment in time that we would be little different from them. Given the same circumstances, there is every reason to believe we’d run for the hills just as they did.
Before all of us rush to join Peter in presenting ourselves as would-be heroes in this story, saying with him, “Even though I should have to die with you, I will not deny you,” we may want to stop the words from coming out of our mouths, and instead take a long, hard look at our past history. As they say, the past is prologue.
In other words, the best predictor of our future actions are our past actions. And until we can look backwards and find in the past any number of instances when we have stood with Jesus whatever the personal cost to us, we may want to temper our certainty with a dose of reality. The truth is few of us can say with complete honesty that we have found the courage in every moment to stay true to our call as one of Jesus’ disciples.
Even a casual look into the past reveals any number of occasions when we fled into the dark just as the disciples did, choosing our own well-being, wealth, or way rather than choosing to stay behind with Jesus as those with power, position, or privilege hauled him away to persecute, punish, and imprison. Too few are willing to pay the high price of aligning ourselves with Jesus and his message in a world that is content to pay lip service to his ways but unwilling to put its money where its mouth is.
Something with us, call it a crooked heart the same as Judas or Peter or any one of the Twelve, turns us into cowards in those times when Jesus needs us the most, his face found in the groveling of the poor who are berated for begging, in the growls of empty stomachs who are rebuffed when they ask for a handout, in the groans of the marginalized who are beat up because they come from a different country, speak a different language, or have a different lifestyle.
We want to ask ourselves if we have found Jesus in any of these and if we have stayed faithful to Jesus in their fights for justice. If we have, then we have shown the faithfulness that is necessary before we can call ourselves his disciples. If we have not, then we have only proven once again that true disciples of Jesus are few and far between.
As Jesus awaited death on the cross, each agonizing moment worse than the last, he showed his faithfulness to the Father, having said in the Garden the night before, “Not my will, but your will be done.” Here, on the cross, he accepted the harsh reality that God’s will was that he should die. Matthew ends the agony of Jesus on the cross with one final cry, telling us that Jesus then “gave up his spirit.” Or, as John put it, “He handed over his spirit.”
Today, we see again the ugly steps in this sad story that have brought Jesus to his last seconds. First, Judas had handed him over to the chief priests and elders who, in turn, handed him over to Pilate, who, after having him beaten and bloodied, then handed him over to be crucified because of his own cowardice before the angry crowd out for blood.
On the cross, his body weakened and worn by a world with a clear willfulness towards evil, Jesus handed over his life to his Father in heaven, his spirit leaving his broken body, left to be buried in a borrowed tomb. He alone could not be accused of betrayal, proving his faithfulness to the will of the Father to the end, even if it should cost him his own life.
Difficult as it may be, we should not run away too quickly from this horrific scene. Instead, we may want to spend some time looking at that crucifixion scene put before us today. As we stare at it, one thing should stand out to us more than anything else. As Jesus turned to his left and to his right, he saw hanging on crosses beside him two revolutionaries who had run afoul of the state, criminals who didn’t even know who he was, never having laid eyes on him before.
What he did not find was the face of any one of his disciples. Not Peter, not another of the Twelve. And, that, my friends, was the harshest betrayal, leaving him to die alone.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 