Faces of Our Faith: Judas Iscariot | Mark 14:1-2, 10-50 | 8.2.26

Amen.

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a gift to be with you all today as we continue our summertime series, Faces of Our Faith, where we're revisiting and reintroducing ourselves to important characters from Scripture and reflecting on how they inform what it means for us to be faithful.

And we're giving thanks for folks from our lives, from our communities and families, from church history, who lived out their vocation as disciples in ways that continue to inspire and shape us.

And so if you're looking at these little circles we've got up here, over the summer we've been writing names down of people who have inspired our faith, people either we know from our families or communities or from history who have inspired us and how we want to be faithful.

So you're free today to also write another name.

If someone comes to mind today for whom you're grateful, write their name down and be sure to put it in the plate as it's passed later in our service.

Last week we remembered the prophet Anna, who waited 84 years for a moment.

And in that moment, she seized it for good and to tell the truth about who Jesus is.

Today, however, we return to someone who is remembered for the opposite.

A moment he's never allowed to live down.

A moment that made his name synonymous with betrayal.

Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' inner circle of disciples.

But before we dig into the Gospel of Mark's presentation of Judas, I want us to pray and ask God to speak to us through the scriptures freshly this morning.

Will you pray with me?

Prepare our hearts and minds, O God, to receive your word, silence in us, any voice but your own, that in hearing we might live out your will through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

So we're going to be reading through most of the 14th chapter of Mark today.

If you want to be looking along, we're in the 14th chapter.

I'm going to read the first two verses, then I'm going to summarize a bit, then I'm going to read some more verses.

But I'll make sure as we go through it to let you know where we're at in the story.

We're going to be focusing on verses 10 through 50.

So, as we look at those together, let's listen now for God's word to us this morning, starting in verse 1.

It was two days before the Passover and the festival of unleavened bread.

The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and to kill him.

For they said, Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.

And Jesus defends her, saying she has anointed him for burial in advance, and that her act will be remembered wherever the gospel is preached.

And then in verse 10 we read.

So he began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

Then Jesus sends his disciples ahead to find a place to eat the Passover meal, and when they go, they find it as he described.

And then in verse 17 we read, When it was evening, Jesus came with the twelve, and when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.

One who is eating with me.

And they began to be distressed and say to him, one after another, Surely not I.

He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.

For the Son of Man goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed, it would be better for that one not to have been born.

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it and gave it to them, saying, Take, this is my body.

Then he took a cup, and after giving after giving thanks, he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.

He said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

Truly I tell you, I will never drink again the fruit of the vine, until that day would I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

And when they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus said to them, You will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.

But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

Peter said to him, Even though all fall away, I will not.

Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you this day, this very night before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.

But he said vehemently, Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.

All of them said the same.

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here while I pray.

And then we have the scene in Gethsemane, where Jesus prays, asking his disciples to stay awake with him.

Jesus prays that the cup would pass from him, but yet that God's will would be done.

And twice he finds the disciples sleeping.

Then in verse 41 we read, He came a third time and said to them, Are you sleeping and still taking your rest enough?

The hour has come.

The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Get up, let us be going.

Look, my betrayer is at hand.

Immediately while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived, and with him there were a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders.

Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I will kiss is the man.

Arrest him and lead him away under guard.

So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi, and kissed him.

Then they laid hands on him and arrested him.

But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

Then Jesus said to them, Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a rebel?

Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.

But let the scriptures be fulfilled.

All of them deserted and fled.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

I remember the first time I saw The Empire Strikes Back.

I was probably twelve at the time.

I think I was in middle school.

It was iconic.

It has all the best scenes.

When you think of Star Wars, you're actually probably thinking of The Empire Strikes Back.

That's how good it is.

The Millennium Falcon is able to escape the AT80s.

The Empire is trying to hunt down the Rebel Alliance that had just blown up the Death Star.

And so as the Millennium Falcon escapes, with some of the crew, they're able to hide out in an asteroid belt and they make their way to Cloud City.

And when they get to Cloud City, they're going to visit one of Han Solo's best friends.

Say it with me.

Lando Calrizian.

Okay, I can just I can tell who's in and who's not.

So they they go to visit Lando and they have dinner together, and just as your heart rate as a viewer finally starts to settle back down, they turn a corner and Darth Vader is just standing there.

And then you realize, you look at Lando's face and you realize that Lando Calrizian has betrayed them.

40-year-old, spoiler alert, I guess.

But wow, I just remember sitting there as a 12-year-old, that feeling in my gut.

How could you do that?

Why, Lando?

Why?

Betrayal is such a deep human feeling.

I'm sure all of us, whether in small ways or in big, know that feeling.

Maybe it was a big life-altering thing, or maybe it was a small thing to you, but you know what it's like to have your trust betrayed, to have someone close to you, to let them in and then have that used against you.

And sadly, I bet many of us, whether we know it or not, have also left other people we love with that same feeling by things we've done.

Things we've done that were outside of our character or that came from some part of our shadow self, where they looked at us with that same question in their eyes, how could you?

And here's the problem.

So many times we don't even know how we could.

Why did I do that thing I did?

For many people, their motivations aren't even clear to themselves, much less clear to others around them.

One of the many gifts for myself, at least, of like personal insight tools like the Enneagram or time and personal therapy, uh, is the gift that it gives me to help uncover my own whys.

Why am I the way that I am?

Often there's a story my subconscious is telling me, either from uh the the culture or from my childhood or just from the way my brain works.

My subconscious is convincing me of a story that's not true.

And it's not what I would profess with my mouth, but here it comes out sideways in my actions.

Maybe the story is a story of scarcity instead of abundance, or maybe it's a story of helplessness instead of self-actualization, or maybe it's a story of apathy, you know, just nothing really matters, instead of a story of deep meaning.

For centuries, people of faith have explored what must have motivated Judas to betray Jesus in the way that he did.

And there are many potential and very valid answers to that question.

It could have been fear, it could have been jealousy, it could have been anger.

But whatever it was, it was a lie from the enemy, for sure.

The Gospel of Mark is brief and terse, and it doesn't really leave us much room for a detailed characterization of Judas.

In fact, when he's first mentioned in the Gospel, chapter 3, verse 17, uh, he is named as the one who handed him over.

So Mark kind of buries the lead right at the very beginning, right?

We get this picture of here's the eleven, John, James, and Judas, the bad guy, like from the get-go, right?

And his being one of the twelve, I think the reason Mark does this, is to implant in us, the reader, uh, that being proximate to Jesus, being one of the twelve, does not guarantee anything.

What matters is loyalty and self-giving love, not self-interest or self-preservation or taking power over others.

Jesus refuses to take power over others by force.

Throughout the Gospels, we see this.

Jesus builds his power and authority by acting with and for the wholeness and healing of others, not by coercion, not by demands, not by sword, not by threats.

And so if we walk through this 14th chapter carefully, I think we see this.

The story of the anointing woman shows us what scholar Walter Wink calls power with.

She has no status, no claim on Jesus, nothing to gain, and yet she gives everything she has extravagantly with no strings attached.

And that's what power looks like when we're not trying to control an outcome or protect ourselves.

It's poured out, it's not cashed in.

And Judas does the opposite in some way.

He goes to the chief priests and he turns Jesus into a transaction.

But here's what's easy to miss if we read Judas just as a cartoon villain.

If we take this version of Judas that's just he's the bad guy from the beginning, I think what we miss is how much Judas believed in Jesus.

And in such a particular way that he ran out of patience for Jesus to do the thing Jesus needed to do.

For Jesus to be the Messiah Judas thought he was going to be.

Imagine with me, you are living under Roman occupation, and you've been with this man every day.

You have seen him heal the sick, feed thousands, silence his critics with a question and with his wisdom, draw crowds large enough that the authorities are clearly worried.

And you might start to wonder, reasonably, with all this power, when was he gonna actually make the world a better place?

When was he gonna do the thing that needed doing?

When is he gonna get the evil Romans out of the picture?

When is he gonna take control of these levers of power and start passing laws that'll fix things?

Why are we slow rolling the kingdom, one might think?

Why does the kingdom have to be like yeast or a mustard seed?

Can't it be enforced with wealth and with power, swept in by divine statecraft?

What if we just overthrow their leader and put in one who will do what Jesus thinks?

Won't that fix it?

Here's what I see when I read this text.

Judas was just trying to force Jesus' hand, hand him over to the authorities, back him into a corner, trusting that when push came to shove, Jesus would finally do what a Messiah is supposed to do.

The only problem is Judas thought that was fight.

Judas thought that was be, that would be one of the next Maccabean rebellions, but this one would actually stick because it's Jesus.

Make the world right by might.

But that's not what Jesus does.

Jesus doesn't call down the angels, he doesn't lead the revolt, he doesn't take power, the kind of power Walter Wink calls power over.

He doesn't take power over others to force them into living the way they should have been living all along.

He doesn't make the world right by might.

And if that's what Judas was after, then his betrayal isn't really a rejection of Jesus, so much as it is an attempt to use Jesus as a tool.

To make Jesus useful for the kind of power Judas really believed in.

Power over Rome, power over the chief priests, power over whoever stands in the way of what God is trying to do in the world.

Read what Judas is trying to do in the world.

He may have been trying to hurry it up on his own terms by force, and that's exactly what makes this story so uncomfortable to sit with, because Jesus doesn't take the bait.

Even with a sword drawn in his defense, in verse 47, Jesus refuses that kind of power.

Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a rebel?

No riot, no revolt, just a man who continues all the way to the cross to wield power the way he always has.

Power with, not power over and against.

Judas is only quoted as saying one word in the book of Mark, in Mark's gospel.

He says, Rabbi, which names Jesus as teacher, which names Jesus as his master as a disciple.

And with the kind and with the kiss that follows, he initiates the tragedy to end all tragedies.

But did Judas believe in Jesus?

Sadly, I think so many of us are willing to name Jesus as our teacher and Lord, but knowingly or not, we can use Jesus as a tool to get what we want, to make things the way we think they ought to be.

For some, it is to get out of accountability for our actions.

You know, have you ever noticed when someone really powerful gets in trouble, they may often find Jesus real quick shortly thereafter, right?

And I'm finding Jesus as a way of avoiding accountability for what I did.

And sometimes it's to get closer to people in power.

Sometimes it's to gain political or military power.

And I believe it breaks God's heart when we use Jesus to prop up ourselves over other people instead of following Jesus into proximity with and for other people.

But perhaps the biggest tragedy for me in Judas's story is this one.

Once he realized his plans had backfired, once his deep remorse set in and he realized he had gotten Jesus wrong, he didn't trust that he could be redeemed.

And as Jesus' disciples scattered and abandoned him, Judas was alone.

And his story ends in self-loathing and self-harm.

And I have to believe that if he had been able, with the support of community, to name, to name that, and to take his remorse to the real Jesus instead of the military messiah he made up in his mind, he would have found the peace and forgiveness he didn't think he deserved.

And I think that's the good news for this story for us.

Judas isn't the only one in this story who fails Jesus.

Peter denies him three times.

All of them, all twelve, scatter and flee in verse 50.

Nobody in this story gets it right.

Nobody stays, and yet the story doesn't end with Jesus writing any of them off.

That's the difference.

Between the Messiah Judas was chasing and the one who actually showed up.

A disciple grabs a sword to protect the God he thinks he needs, but that's not the God we meet in Jesus.

We meet the one who let not the cup pass from him, who refuses the sword in the garden, who heals his enemies and disarms his friends.

He doesn't arm his friends and disarm his enemies.

And who went to the cross instead of calling down angels from heaven, that's not a God who caches people in.

That's a God who pours himself out.

With us, not over us, even when we've missed it completely.

So hear this, friends.

If you have ever named Jesus Lord with your mouth while quietly bargaining with him for something else: power, safety, control, being right.

You're in good company this morning, so have I.

And so has every person who comes to this table, and everyone who sat at that table with Jesus that day.

And if you've ever looked back at something you've done with that same horror Judas must have felt, how could I have done that?

I want you to hear this too.

You do not have to carry that alone.

You don't have to sit with it.

You can bring it, remorse and all, to the real Jesus.

Not the Messiah we build in our own image, and not the God we need to justify our fear or our need for control, but the one who is actually here with us and for us.

Who never once in this whole chapter stopped being exactly who he already was.

That's who meets you even now.

Headed to a cross, even then, to prove one thing that love outlasts any power money can buy, and that grace will go further than any of our worst betrayals ever could.

Thanks be to God for that.

Amen.