Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1, I Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
It is night, the feast of Passover. As all good, practicing Jews, Jesus and his friends sit down at a table to celebrate together. There are certain rituals practiced throughout the meal and particular words spoken to tell the story that has been told again and again, every year throughout the generations. A retelling of the story of salvation and freedom and promise. It is the story of Moses and the Exodus, the story of Elijah, the story of the Hebrew people. This is what Jesus and his friends do this night—they tell the story of their people.
Sounds familiar. We do the same thing. Instead of telling the story of our Jewish heritage, we tell the story of salvation and freedom and promise through the Christian perspective. We are still telling the same story, now we just have different characters for the various roles. Pharoah has become Judas and Moses has become Jesus. This new story doesn’t really have any surprises if we have been paying attention. The actions of Judas mimic the disgust and betrayal placed in Pharoah’s heart, though granted, in this new story it is the devil who is given the responsibility for Judas’ hardening of heart and not God, himself—though, to be fair, Jesus knows who is about to betray him and allows him to do just that. So maybe God is complicit in the events and actions that will lead to the cross.
Judas and Pharoah have often been the characters in these stories of Exodus and the Last Supper that have puzzled and disturbed me. They seem counter to my understanding of God. They trouble me because I know that too often my life and actions reflect their choices that lead toward resistance instead of acceptance and trust in God. I don’t want to admit that and am offended whenever anyone else points it out to me—but it is true. I know that too often, I can live like Jesus in the holy places of life—at church, in my devotional time and prayers, teaching class, or serving the community in some capacity—and then I go home and act like Judas or Pharoah to my family, resisting their desires and favoring my own needs or wants over theirs. I don’t want to think that is true, but I know that it is.
Several years ago, someone came up with the slogan, WWJD? What Would Jesus Do? I think the better slogan might be What Would Judas Do? I am not alone in acting like Judas, we all suffer from our own Jesus/Judas condition. Maybe by simply identifying and naming our actions and beliefs that lead us away from God and cause us to resist God and one another, we might do a better job of following Jesus.
John’s Gospel tells us that the devil put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus. Other Gospels give a little more detail telling us that Judas had become disenchanted by the non-violent approach Jesus was taking. Judas wanted a war-king who would take down the oppressor, the enemy, Rome. He liked the message of Jesus but did not think he was going far enough with it. Judas was the keeper of the purse and the other disciples believed him to be stealing from it, planting a seed of greed in our minds when it comes to understanding the nature of Judas. He even sells out Jesus for a price. Judas may have resonated with Jesus’ teachings and challenge to the system, but he becomes distracted by his desire for money, power, and self-promotion. He loses touch with the transformational opportunity Jesus offers and returns to trusting in the transactional processes of this world—money, power, control. It is his story that resonates more with our story, not Jesus’s.
If we are to ask ourselves, “what would Judas do?” First, he would be offended by even being compared to someone like him. He would cringe when called out for acting like a hypocrite—all good and nice at church and then being a jerk at home or work. He would hear the stewardship sermon and comment on how great it was but never work toward increasing his pledge. He would give lip service to the challenges of living out the Good News and then create stumbling blocks intended to get his way even if he destroyed the church in the process. He would preach a Jewish Nationalism that was disguised to look like good religious Judaism but, in reality, professed the ideas of the state—ideas of control and power and trust in mankind as agents of salvation and prosperity instead of a reliance on God. Before we can ever even begin to consider “What Would Jesus Do?”, we need to take a good look at ourselves and understand what we as Judas are doing now. The betrayal by Judas is not the truly offensive thing that he does—it is the natural consequence of one who has never fully trusted in God and instead wanted to control and manipulate God’s activity in the world. That lack of trust and desire to control is what is truly offensive.
We participate in that same lack of trust and desire to control, betraying Jesus and one another whenever we allow our fears to get the better of us; to overcome our faith in God. To live our lives in response to our fears is an act of betrayal. The fearmongering and anxiety-provoking that constitutes our society right now is an act of betrayal. When we allow ourselves to get drawn into that on whatever level, we are contributing to the act of Judas some 2000+ years ago. We might not be selling Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver, but we are selling Jesus out at the cost of our own souls. To allow ourselves to get caught up in the divisiveness of our world today through regular media or social media or fights at the dinner table or to end friendships and fall out of relationship with family members because we disagree are acts of betrayal. When we are attempting to impose our will or thoughts or beliefs onto another—we are being Judas. And when we come with blood-curdling cries of vengeance or retribution, we are no better than Pharoah.
Jesus knows all this about us, about Judas. And he loves him and us anyway. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Instead of striking Judas down, he washes his feet—an act of humility and servitude. He allows him to carry out his actions without judgment, instead offering bread—sustenance—to the one who would betray him.
We tell the story of salvation and freedom and promise, and just as the story of the Passover begins with bitter herbs, our story of the Passion begins in that same bitter place. The ugliness of captivity is not simply the story of the oppressor and the oppressed, it is the story that lays claim upon our own hearts when we are imprisoned by fear and anger and suffering. It is the story of what Judas would do.
Amen.