Materials

Gospel of John, #8


The Gospel According To Judas
John 18:1-11
by R. Todd Bouldin



Today on Palm Sunday we begin the final journey towards Jerusalem where we will come to the darkness of Good Friday and to the light of Easter morning. The worst things in life seem to happen at night come to the darkness of Good Friday and to the light of Easter morning. The worst things in life seem to happen at night. It is the time when our fears overwhelm us, and when our loneliness can become unbearable. We then awake to feel exhausted, depleted, and wonder if we have somehow lost our way. I don’t know why, but it seems that most crisis occurs in the dark as well. Even when we remember those crises that took place in the day, we remember them as a time of darkness where there was no light. A crisis makes it hard to see the light.

Prayer

The 18th chapter of John tells us that it was dark when Jesus was betrayed by Judas in the garden. For John, the darkness is never just blackness. It is so much more. It is to be in a state of confusion, without truth, without life. The tragic irony of all of this is that the 17th chapter of John shows Jesus praying that the disciples would be unified. But no sooner is the “amen” said than Judas appears with a detachment of soldiers as well as police from the chief priests and the Pharisees. It’s this same mob that we have seen so many times in the news and in history who are men driven crazy with fear who have turned to hatred, violence, kidnapping and lynching. The mob is led by Judas, one of Jesus’ own disciples. The other Gospels, not John, tell us that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, which is a sign of intimacy that has now turned dark.

This past week, we saw news reports that archaeologists have discovered an ancient manuscript which reporters and scholars are calling “The Gospel According to Judas”. Supposedly, this “gospel” presents a different view of Judas than the one perpetuated by the four Gospels in the New Testament. This gospel depicts Judas as helping Jesus to carry out God’s plan for Him by following a command of Jesus to Judas to betray Him so that He could be tried and executed. The National Geographic channel will air a documentary about this document tonight at 5 p.m. Some scholars say they believe that this “gospel” means that Judas has gotten a bad “rap” in the church, and that the suppression of this document by the church led the church to blame Judas for the death of Jesus. I don’t have time to explore this in detail today, but we should point out that the account given by the Gospel writers of the New Testament do not present Judas in this light.

We reserve our greatest judgment for those who commit some acts of betrayal or treason because betrayal is a sin against trust. Trust is earned, and betrayal shatters loyalty and faith, and it breaks apart the unity Jesus prays for us to know. Somebody we trusted, somebody that we let close enough to kiss us, has turned against us. We can handle our enemies, but it is difficult to defend ourselves against those that we have trusted and who have let us down.

We often have been hard on Judas, and perhaps rightly so, but I wonder if we have not judged Judas, and all of his imitators, with so little compassion because we are afraid that there is a Judas chromosome in all of us as well. We normally judge things in people most harshly that we fear also lies within us as well. Perhaps betrayal is a dark possibility in us that we too may betray the things that we too believe. We don’t know how this happens, anymore than we can understand why Judas betrayed Jesus, but we fear the possibility that we could do something to undermine the things most important to us. We all confront those moments of decision, and we fear that we could take the path that would betray those who feel that they know us the best. We know who Jesus is, we know His way of life, and we know that we embrace His convictions as part of our own values and beliefs. But in certain moments, often moments of darkness, we become something totally different than Jesus. Doubt, fear, anger or selfishness takes over us and our hearts go somewhere we never thought we would go.

When Peter realized what Judas was going to do, he rushed into the crowd of soldiers with his sword waving, determined to stop the betrayal and violence. But all he succeeded in doing was cutting off the ear of the innocent servant of the high priest. You have to remember that it was Peter earlier that had vowed to Jesus that he would never allow him to go to a cross. So, making good on his promise, Peter throws himself into the mob with a sword, determined to stop the arrest. But Peter didn’t realize that violence is never the way you protect Jesus. Violence and force in defense of Christ is just another way of betraying the Prince of Peace.

According to Luke, Jesus stepped into the middle of this and said, “No more of this!” We can hear Him in the midst of our most violent moments as well saying, “No more of this! No more hurting people because you think you are right. No more killing people in My Name or in defense of My ways. No more suicide bombers. No more worshipers blown apart as they worship. No more ignoring and fearing those you don’t trust. No more using the tongue to slice and dice the reputation of others that you fear or dislike. No more of this! No more violence.” Loving is more important than being right.

Perhaps there are moments in a fallen world when nations and we ourselves must defend ourselves. But in doing so, we should be clear that it is ourselves that we are defending and not Jesus. Jesus does not need defending. He only triumphs through the way of peace, and the moment we pick up a sword to defend him, we’ve already lost.

Jesus came to die for the sins of all of us, even our enemies, even for those with whom we disagree. It is the way of the world, and not of Jesus, to do violence and to alienate those with whom they disagree. But Christians betray Christ whenever we insist in war or in great moral battles that Jesus is on our side, and that he insists on triumphing no matter the cost. Jesus died for Iraqis and Americans, for illegal immigrants and for US citizens, for homosexuals and for heterosexuals, for pro-lifers and for pro-choicer's. Jesus died for you, for your ex-spouse, for the boss who fired you, and for every Judas who has turned on you. He even died for radical Islamic fundamentalists. So don’t dare try to defend Him. He’s the Prince of Peace who even died for the Judas that is lurking in the dark regions of your soul.

According to John, after telling Peter to put his sword away, Jesus said, “Am I not to drink of the cup that The Father has given Me?” In order to understand this phrase, we must remember that the Hebrew prophets used the “cup of The Lord” as a metaphor for the judgment of God. These prophets depicted the disgust and anger of God against those who would betray Him or others. According to Jeremiah, God thinks we would have to be drunk to be so self-destructive. So God loves us in the only way that is left to Him, which is to abandon us to this crazy violent life we have chosen until we get to the bottom of it where we discover that there is only darkness and death in violence and revenge. It was the lesson Stephen Spielberg depicted so powerfully this past year in his movie Munich about the futility of revenge. Jesus says that if you want to be intoxicated, then drink from His cup and not from the cup of violence.

When Jesus says that He will drink from the cup The Father has given, He is saying that He will take on the judgment of God for us. In John, the cross is something Jesus chooses as a way of giving up His life in love for the world. This means that you do not have to keep trying to atone for your own sins, or for the sins of others. Jesus already has accepted all of their violence and terror and destruction upon Himself so that you do not have to take on that burden of defending Jesus from the world as loving the world for Jesus. We are not abandoned to judgment or to fear. In Christ, the judgment of us all has been placed on Him.

The Cup of The Lord is no longer a cup of judgment because of Jesus Christ. It is now the cup of the salvation, the cup of mercy and forgiveness where we can learn forgiveness for ourselves and for others. This kind of forgiveness that lets go of judgment can truly love and truly forgive, and can be a force of peace in our families, our workplaces, and even among nations.

It does not matter how dark the night, or how violent the world becomes, what others do to you, or even what Judas does to you. If you believe that God is doing something in your life, that He is redeeming you and the whole world that He loves, violence will never be your first defense. You don’t have to protect yourself from the Judas in your life. The way out of the darkness, even the darkness of your own fear and betrayal the way into the Light, begins in the quiet moment of surrender when we turn to God and begin the walk towards the cross. It’s in that moment of surrender that we the “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.”


April 9, 2006

» Back to top