March 30, 2025

On the Road to Calvary: Judas, The Betrayer

As we continue with our Lenten Pulpit Series I find that one question has always nagged me about Judas: Why did he do it? Was he simply a bad apple from the outset, bent on doing evil? Was he an undercover operative of the Sanhedrin, planted among the disciples to bring down this rising star who might pose a threat? Was he really so in need of, or so enchanted by, the thirty pieces of silver that he would turn on his best friend and teacher for some easy cash?

An interesting theory has been posed by several commentators. It’s the notion that Judas was convinced that Jesus was destined to drive out the Romans and rule the people of Israel. According to this theory he believed that turning Jesus over to the authorities would bring on a final showdown in which Jesus would be forced to utilize his messianic powers, calling on a host of angel warriors to wipe out the Romans. When this didn’t happen he was crushed and threw the money at the feet of the chief priests and the elders and went out and hanged himself (as we read in today’s gospel reading).

I think there’s some value in this interpretation (whether it’s true or not); it offers us some real meat to chew on. Judas must have been increasingly disappointed in Jesus, perhaps starting with the time he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, instead of leading a procession of armed and riotous insurrectionists ready to do battle with the authorities. And when Mary anointed Jesus’s feet with expensive perfume Judas hit the ceiling. Maybe he secretly wanted to sell it to buy weapons for the coming battle with the alien oppressors. At any rate, this Judas we are considering painted Jesus with his own brush and invested himself in seeing his hero bring about the sweeping victory that he envisioned. When that didn’t happen, the bottom fell out of his world.

Does any of this sound familiar? We do it every four years with Presidential elections. When Barack Obama was running for the office, people all over the country got caught up in seeing him as the one who would remake America in the image they held. When it turned out that he wasn’t able to make it all happen the way they dreamed of, great numbers of people who had voted for him lost total confidence in him. The same thing happened with President Biden. Biden entered the White House with high approval ratings of 57 percent, enjoying a honeymoon period from his decisive victory in the 2020 election. Then, his average approval rating across his four years of power dropped to 42.2 percent, a historically low figure. The only recent president to score lower was Biden’s predecessor and now successor Donald Trump, who had an average approval rating of 41.1 percent over the course of his first term. And it’s been little different so far with President Trump in his second term. He was elected by people who were fed up with things the way they were and saw him as the one who would go to Washington and shake things up – set things right. But it hasn’t taken long for the bubble to burst. His approval ratings have already fallen into the basement.

I have seen the same dynamic in churches. A new pastor is brought in and everyone sees this person as the answer to all their needs and someone who will steer the church into the course that they imagine. That pastor is seen in ideal terms and gets put up on a pedestal until someone’s feelings get hurt, or things go a bit wrong, and now that same savior becomes an easy target. I’ve seen churches ripped apart by that sort of ugliness. By the way, let this be a cautionary tale for all of us as we consider future pastoral leadership.

You and I tend to look for heroes and saviors. If we don’t do it overtly we do it subconsciously. It seems to be built in to our DNA. And the problem with saviors is that they quickly and almost dependably turn into punching bags. That’s because they’re all human and flawed just like the rest of us.

At the root of this malady is, I believe, our tendency to have our values and interests turned upside down. We tend to hold images in our heads of how things could be better in our lives and world, but we seem to be short on investing ourselves in making those images into reality. So, it’s easier to believe that someone else could make it happen for us. That’s the bread and butter of politicians; they promise that they can do this for you, and most of the time they can’t. If we could all live the things that Jesus taught we would find ourselves taking responsibility for making the world a better place in our own corner, and not investing all our hope in some leader to do it for us. That idea is the genius of our democracy. It’s the notion that the people are the ones to lead – at least by being well educated, well informed, and civically active. Unfortunately, that ideal seems to be constantly battling against human nature.

Another effect of all this is that we tend to find ourselves chasing after idols – worshiping the wrong things. It’s easy to believe that wealth, or cleverness, or good looks are the things that can make life rich and meaningful; and it’s inevitable to discover in the end that they are not. Those aspects of life that truly matter are subtler, quieter, less tangible. Dadgie’s daughter gave us a little plaque that we keep on the wall near our entry. It reads: “The best things in life aren’t things.”

Eugene Peterson illustrates this point commenting on the difference between Peter and Judas. “Among the apostles,” he writes, “the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: He was successful both financially and politically. . . . And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: He was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus, he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things. . . .

“Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men,” Peterson continues. “Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honored names in the church and in the world. Judas is a villain; Peter is a saint. Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.”

That seems spot on to me. We’ve got our values all upside down. We are currently anticipating a funeral for our dear Wilma. I suspect the room will be filled to capacity. It strikes me that all these people who mourn this woman, shedding tears at her passing, acknowledging what a hole she was leaving in their lives and in the church aren’t considering what financial holdings she might have had, possessions she had accumulated, or some degree of political power she had come to wield. It was all about the lives of people she had influenced, the love she had shared with so many people, the smiles, the warmth, the sensitivity. These are the things that mattered and that moved so many people to tears of loss and will bring also tears of joy celebrating her wonderful life. Wilma had her values right side up. I realize I’m preaching to the choir a little bit here; but even choirs need to practice once in a while.

So why did Judas do it? The poor guy got caught up in something. Through the fog of history, we don’t really know what it was. It might have been, as we have speculated this morning, the passion for a leader who would destroy those he saw as enemies and restore him and his people to a place of power. But whatever it was, it was an upside down set of values. He led the crowd of hired thugs to Jesus and identified him to them with a kiss. His kiss of betrayal was the ultimate seal of his lostness. That kiss held power. Like the Mafia’s kiss of death it set in motion things that could not be undone. But there are other kinds of kisses: like a mother’s gentle kiss of a baby, the familiar kiss of a couple married for forty years, or even the warm kiss of friends demonstrating their mutual affection. These kisses hold power as well. It is the power of compassion, tenderness, love. And that power will, in the end, defeat all the armies of empire that swords could not.

Judas could not bear to live with what he had become, and he hangs from a tree for all time as a warning not to reject the values and timeless message of the one who hangs on the cross.