Betrayal
Service for Wednesday in Holy Week (
St. Mark the Evangelist Anglican Church
(Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 70, Hebrews 12:1-3, John
13:21-32)
One figure
dominates the readings during Holy Week: Jesus.
This is no surprise. Holy Week is
first of all about Jesus. If Lent has
been for the most part about us and our relation to Jesus, Holy Week is first
of all about him, and his relation to us.
But, there
are other figures in the background.
There are the crowds, the high priests, Mary who anoints Jesus’ feet,
and Peter.
And there
is one figure who moves in the shadows, whose place is as much the night as
Jesus’ place is the day. That figure is
Judas.
Judas is
everything that Jesus is not. His is the night; Jesus’ time is the day. Judas
is a thief; Jesus is generous with whatever he has, including his life.
But, what
most sets Judas aside in the readings for tonight is that Judas is ready to
betray Jesus, where Jesus is always ready to remain loyal, no matter what the
cost.
Now, some
of you may be thinking: “you’re being too hard on Judas. Sometimes Judas gets a bad deal in all of
this. Why, sometimes I wonder if I might
have done the same thing?”
Really? Well, let’s think about what Judas did. Let’s think about what betrayal means.
Betrayal as
the Gospels talk about it in relation to Jesus is not
Informing on someone
There are people who have done bad
things. Sometimes the police ask help in
finding them.
Let’s assume that you know the
person who has done something bad, someone that the police are looking for for
a hit-and-run accident and you know that he did it, and you call the police to
tell the police where that person can be found.
That’s not betrayal. That’s justice.
Letting someone down.
Judas did not fail the team,
like the goalie who at the last
minute misses the decisive and winning goal,
like the pitcher who walked the last
and winning run to home plate.
Betrayal does not mean failing when
everyone is counting on you.
What about denying someone? Is that
betrayal?
There are times when we are accused
of something that we have done, big or small, and we don’t want to get caught
for it, so we deny that we did it, or deny that we were there.
Denying Jesus is what Peter will do,
but that’s not betrayal.
Judas did not deny Jesus, like Peter
The most common use of “betrayal”
today is when someone cheats on someone else
Many people when they hear the word
today, think of what a man does when he runs off with another woman, or a woman
sleeps with someone who is not her husband: “she betrayed him”, “he betrayed
her”
But, Judas did not “cheat” on Jesus
by flirting with Judaism, thinking maybe Jesus’ message was not all that it was
made out to be.
As far as we know, Jesus had many
disciples who found his words and life too hard for them and left him, but they
didn’t betray him
No, the
betrayal we are speaking of here is not
letting someone down,
denying something or someone, or
cheating on someone.
Betrayal
here is not even
turning someone in who has committed
a crime and is running from the law.
Betrayal is finding an innocent person and handing that person
over to people who will abuse that person and hurt that person, even though
that person has done nothing to deserve it.
Let me give
you a contemporary example of the kind of betrayal that Jesus experienced.
Let’s
assume that you have a young daughter, beautiful, the pride and joy of your
life. Let’s assume that that daughter is
out walking late at night. A predator
sees her and wants her, in order to do with her whatever he may please.
But, let’s
assume that that predator cannot get at your daughter, because she’s been
warned against speaking with strange men.
So, the predator gets a young woman to help him: she’s friendly, about
your daughter’s age. She goes and starts
talking to your daughter, to get her to help her and a friend find
directions.
Once she’s
got your daughter’s trust, she hands your daughter over to the predator so that
he can do whatever he wants with your daughter. Whatever.
That’s
betrayal of the kind spoken about in our Gospel. Finding a way to hand over the innocent one
to someone who will abuse and hurt your daughter, even though she has done
nothing that could possibly merit what is done to her. The betrayer doesn’t do the evil to the
innocent person; just enable others to do whatever they want.
My friends,
that’s what Judas did to Jesus. Knowing
full well what was going to happen, Judas handed the innocent Jesus over to
those who would mock, and strip, and beat, and kill him.. and who knows what
else happened that the Gospel texts have spared us. Judas probably knew all
this and more.
I believe
in all my heart that there are very, very few people in the world like Judas. I
believe that it would be very difficult to find such people in our midst. Therefore, I believe it is very hard for us
to say about ourselves, “I wonder if I would have been like Judas?” I sincerely doubt it.
But,
because of the horror of what Judas did, and what people like him continue to
do today, it makes it even harder for us to know what Jesus went through. For what did those young daughters who were
handed over into the hands of predators by betrayers go through? Do you know?
Was it worse than what Jesus went through?
The one
thing that still astounds me in all of this is that Jesus knew what was going
to happen. Most people who are betrayed
in the way that I have described it have no idea of what is coming. If they did, they’d flee. But, Jesus did not flee; he got up to meet
his betrayer in the garden. He knew full well what was coming.
So, why did
Jesus not flee, knowing what was coming? As John reminded us last night: he had
come for this; was he now going to flee?
And as Roger reminded us on Monday: he knew that this was the price of
love.
And, so, he
loved his own to the end. To show us how far he was willing to go for us. To
show us how much God loves the world. To
show us what he was willing to do so that we could live abundantly, freed from
the curse of death, freed to new and unending life in him.
Tomorrow
night, Thursday night, a car waits. From
the car steps a betrayer who will hand Jesus over to a group of predators who
will have their way with him. He will
meet them, knowing that in doing so he will keep them from continuing to prey
on you. You may flee when this
happens. But know this: he did it all
for you, to keep you from harm.
So survey
the wondrous, nay, incredible, cross. So
feed on this one in your hearts and be thankful.