Oh, Judas

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week.

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For some reason, I’ve spent more time thinking about Judas this Easter than ever before. He keeps cropping up everywhere.

I wonder about him. 

Did he know the religious leaders intended to kill Jesus when he agreed to hand him over to them? In Mark’s gospel account of the betrayal in the garden, we read that Judas told the multitude who came to seize Jesus, “Whomever I kiss, He is the One; seize Him and lead Him away safely” (Mark 14:43). 

Lead him away safely? That doesn’t sound like the directive of someone who knows he’s leading a band of marauders who have blood and death set in their hearts. 

I wonder about Jesus, too. 

When Judas approaches Jesus in that moment of betrayal and greets him with that traitorous kiss, Jesus calls him friend: 

“Friend, why have you come?” 

— Matthew 26:50

Friend? 

Jesus knows why Judas came. Just 30 verses earlier in the same chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him and identifies Judas explicitly as the one. “Rabbi, is it I?” he asks Jesus. “You have said it,” Jesus replies. 

And yet he calls his betrayer friend and asks him why he’s come. 

I can’t help but wonder if Jesus is inviting Judas to face the truth of himself — that perhaps he knew Judas was detached from the reality of his actions. Even though Judas went directly to the chief priests and agreed to betray Jesus for a fee of silver, he then asked Jesus if he was the one who would do it. Did he not know — really — what he had set himself to do? 

Did Judas not have the strength to see and own the truth of himself? 

I’m not sure he did. We know what happened after Jesus was condemned by the religious leaders to death. Judas feels remorseful, goes back to the religious leaders to try and make things right, is denied, and then goes and hangs himself. 

Oh, Judas. My heart breaks for you.

Last year in an Ash Wednesday service, I was led to consider for the first time what happened during those three days Jesus spent in Hades after he died. What did he say or do in his time down there? Did he preach the truth of his own good news to those already dead?

I hope so.

And then recently, my rector posed a new question: Did he encounter Judas there? 

If so, I wonder what their encounter was like. I can’t help but hope Judas bowed at the feet of Jesus and repented of what he’d done, then received the open, forgiving arms of Jesus welcoming him back into love.

Preparing the Disciples for What Comes Next

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week.

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After Jesus engaged in a truth-telling series of teaching with the religious leaders in Jerusalem, he spent time with his disciples. 

And what he did was prepare them for life after life on earth with Jesus. 

If you have a red-letter Bible and look at Matthew 24-25, you will see solid red letters all the way through. All of these red letters — the very words of Christ — are the words Jesus spoke to his disciples about what to expect about the end of time and how to live in the meantime, while waiting for it to come to pass. 

He’s teaching them how to live after he’s left them.

He begins by answering their question about the end of days, telling them how they will know those days are near. He prepares them for the inevitability of false prophets who will call themselves the savior in his stead. He tells them life will be hard. 

And he asks them, in all of this, to be faithful and trustworthy: 

“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.”

— Matthew 24:45-47

This teaching to be faithful continues through chapter 25.

He tells the parable of the ten virgins — five wise and five foolish — who awaited the coming of their groom. What made five of them wise? Being prepared with enough oil to light their lamps through the night, no matter how long they were made to wait for the groom’s arrival. 

He tells the parable of the talents — a master who goes away for a long spell but leaves his servants with some resources with which to be creative and useful and fruitful while he’s gone. Those who were blessed upon his return were those who did just that: used what the master had given them to some good and fruitful end.

He talks about a division of sheep and goats — those who enter into glory (sheep) and those who don’t (goats). What marks the difference? Those who choose to love and care for others on earth, no matter their circumstance.

In all this, Jesus is teaching his disciples — and all of us who follow him — how to live until the end of time. 

Be faithful. Be useful for good with what you have and who you are. Be full of love and care and kindness and mercy. Until he returns to set all things right.

Enter Jerusalem, Enter Conflict and Strife

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week that began yesterday. 

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It struck me this time more than any other time I’ve read through the gospel of Matthew that confrontation and strife first greeted Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. 

The first thing he did was cleanse the temple. Yes. I’d noticed that before. 

But this was the first time I’d thought about this being the temple. As in, the huge, monolithic structure that the people of Israel took years and years to build in the time of Solomon. As in, the place of intent and holy pilgrimage for all the Jews every year when they observed the Passover. As in, regarded with way more reverence than any local synagogue that stood in for the temple on behalf of the people throughout the rest of the year’s duration. 

Jesus came and cleansed that temple. 

I’m pretty sure that made no little mark on the city that week. 

He then proceeded to have it out with the religious leaders — the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even the Herodians. Every single one of them wanted a piece of Jesus once he got to Jerusalem.

And here’s what I noticed.

Even though Jesus had been confronted by the religious leaders throughout his three years of ministry elsewhere, this time it came on him like an onslaught. He’d no sooner finish answering one question than another group of leaders would approach him with another. 

I share in the Look at Jesus course that the gospel of Matthew is known as a teaching gospel. This is a gospel where we find long sections of scripture where Jesus teaches and teaches and teaches in long, continuous strands. Sometimes the people listening to that teaching are his disciples. Sometimes it is the multitude of people following him around everywhere

In this case, Jesus launches into a teaching discourse with his enemies. 

For three straight chapters, we see him very pointedly telling stories that liken those religious leaders to people who completely mess up — a son who tells his father that he’ll work the family vineyard but then doesn’t; vinedressers who are hired to work a landowner’s vineyard but beat, stone, and murder everyone in authority who comes on the owner’s behalf to check on the land, even up to the landowner’s son; the original guest list for a king’s lavish wedding feast who decide their own affairs are more important than the wedding feast and even go so far as to kill those who come to invite them to attend.

Matthew makes very clear that the religious leaders know what Jesus is doing in these stories — that he’s talking about them. They can read between the lines of the stories, and they’re furious. 

The conflict doesn’t stop there, though. 

Jesus then begins his long and famous diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees. Not only does he first warn the people against them in no uncertain terms, but he then starts in on them directly with numerous “Woe to you!” vindictives. 

The confrontations Jesus has with the religious leaders earlier in his ministry are tame compared to those he engaged in Jerusalem the very last week of his life.

It’s as though the fire has been turned up — way up. And it’s about to boil over.

Palm Sunday, and Entering Holy Week

Hello, loves. 

When I shared the 2012 dates for the Look at Jesus course earlier this year, someone asked if I intended the first offering of the course to start with Holy Week. Truthfully, no. It hadn’t crossed into my awareness at all that the first week of the course would coincide with the week leading up to Easter. 

I consider it a serendipitous oversight now.

And that’s because this weekend, as I’ve been reading the Gospel of Matthew in preparation for the start of the course this week, I have found it very special to be reading the details of the last week of Jesus’ life at the same exact time the worldwide church is observing that same event.

It was rather surreal, for example, to be reading along in the pages of Scripture earlier today and to suddenly find myself in Matthew 21, which depicts the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem — otherwise known as Palm Sunday.

Which is today. 

I’ve decided, in observance of Holy Week, to post consecutively here from today through Easter, using the posts this week to share things that have struck me about the passion week of Jesus as I’ve read through the pages of Matthew, in particular, this weekend. 

Like, for instance, that it wasn’t until Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ — the anointed one all Israel had been waiting to arrive — that Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and his impending death.

Matthew records these words just after Peter confesses the truth of Jesus’ identity: 

“From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” 

— Matthew 16:21

In this, we see that Jesus knew his fate. He knew what awaited him in Jerusalem. He knew what had to happen. He knew what lay ahead.

But his disciples didn’t. Not until they’d professed him as the Christ, that is. Only then were they ready to learn what lay ahead. Even if they still didn’t fully understand it. Even if they weren’t really ready for it. Even if they would leave him once the persecution began.