Today’s Scripture
Reading (November 25, 2017): Matthew 27
Fredrick Buechner writes that “Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves.
Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for
another day's chalking.” I learned many
years ago to not make any significant
decisions during the evening or night. As much as I admit that I am a night
owl, I need to hit the reset button and come at a major problem in the light of the day. Someone once said that most
pastors resign every Monday morning, they just never hand in their letters of
resignation. I understand the emotion, but for me,
it is Sunday night. On Sunday night I am always pretty sure that I have nothing
left to say, that I have given everything that I have to give and that I have absorbed all of the
criticism that one person should be expected to bear. But after a good night’s
sleep, all of that seems to fade. Maybe I have enough strength for one more
week, enough to say for one more sermon, and enough resilience to absorb just a little more criticism.
I have to admit that the story
of Judas confuses me more than just a little. I mean, all of God’s plan for
redemption depended on Jesus’s betrayal. When did Jesus know that Judas would
be the one who would betray him? How did Jesus react to betrayal? Part of the
problem in the story is that there is no reset button, the forgiveness that
sleep offers is never obtained by either
the Rabbi or his disciple. The story arch for both Judas and Jesus run
concurrently, Jesus is tried and crucified just as Judas runs into his depression
and commits suicide, and for both men,
death comes before the men get an opportunity for sleep and the forgiveness that it brings. I have never been convinced that Judas was evil to the core,
or that this was just about the money. And Judas’s suicide seems to indicate
that something else was at play in the mind of Jesus’s betrayer. Judas’s
intended outcome in turning Jesus over to the religious authorities does not
seem to be the death of Jesus. If anything, I think Judas wanted to spur Jesus
on toward the purpose of the Messiah’s coming as Judas understood it. Judas
wanted to unleash the Superman that he believed Jesus to be.
But that is not what happened.
The situation, from Judas’s viewpoint, spiraled out of control. The Messiah
dies instead of achieving the Messianic victory that Judas and many Jews had
expected. And in dismay, Judas dies – and he probably dies in a very clumsy
manner. There is actually biblical
conflict in the description of Judas’s death, While Matthew says that Judas
hanged himself, Luke argues that “Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out” (Acts
1:18). Maybe the logical solution to the contrasting
descriptions of Judas’s death is that he attempted to hang himself, but in his
haste was not successful and died as a result from an awkward fall that
followed his attempted suicide.
Maybe the bigger
question is whether or not there was grace enough even for Judas. If somehow
Judas had survived to Easter Sunday, was grace available to him in spite of
what he had done. And I think the answer would have been yes. If Judas had
lived, there is little doubt that he would have
been immediately rejected by the other Apostles, but I have a suspicion
that Jesus would have appeared to them bringing forgiveness, grace, and reconciliation. Peter and Judas could
have had some great conversations considering their failures, and maybe the
Christian Church would have been made even stronger – Judas could have been our
real-life Ebenezer Scrooge.
But that is not what
happened. Judas did not find the grace inherent in life nor the forgiveness of
sleep. He did not wake up on Saturday morning mourning his loss, but with a
slate ready to be chalked up once more. And Judas did not give Jesus the chance
to come and offer him a second chance to get it right, and that might be the
most tragic event in the life and death of Judas Iscariot.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Mark 15
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