Notes on Judas

On any given day, you prob­a­bly could not tell Judas from the rest of the Apos­tles — at least when it came to the gen­eral activ­i­ties. He was the group’s trea­surer (with pil­fer­ing sticky fin­gers). No doubt he was the most prac­ti­cal of all of them. If this lit­tle cause went down the drain, at least he would have a lit­tle money for his efforts. His social con­nec­tions were few but very select. He could go right to the inner cir­cles of power when­ever he wanted. Over­all, he was pretty dull. There is never a hint that he was in any way the life of the party. (Jesus had exactly the oppo­site rep­u­ta­tion.) Judas whined about the way Jesus allowed money to be tossed around for celebrations.

His frus­tra­tion level was con­tin­ual. It built from early on, until he finally sold Jesus out in a last des­per­ate attempt to get him (Jesus) on track. Appar­ently Judas never got past the polit­i­cal power con­cept. He is the only one that never could seem to call Jesus “Lord” but stuck with the safer “Rabbi” term. Judas was a bit non-committal. Most of all, he was a behind-the-scenes manip­u­la­tor. Jesus was his tool. He would come out a win­ner by using a pow­er­ful pawn. For­get the cos­mic impli­ca­tions of the God-Man. This was about winning.

To Judas it was always about Judas. Even his sui­cide was about him alone. He had been busted. He was caught in his manip­u­la­tions. What he did, in an attempt to force Jesus to tip his hand, only led to the demise of his one best shot at some real power. He was miffed at him­self and at the whole fallen house of cards. He had gone from insider to accom­plice of a mur­der, and had noth­ing more than thirty pieces of sil­ver to show for it.

Despite his dra­matic end, he is still around — well — his men­tal­ity is any­way. He is in the daily news. You will see his name in head­lines as the key per­son in white col­lar crim­i­nal paper schemes, and as the head of reli­gious empires that use Jesus’ name as the ticket to the good life. He makes movies and writes books that ridicule good — espe­cially Chris­tian­ity. Evil is par­a­sitic. It rides the sys­tem for its own pur­poses. (Shep­herds that feed only them­selves but not the sheep…) To them, peo­ple are but pawns. At heart, their one true belief has to do with the money. Judas is as likely to be in some of the poor­est as any­one higher on the eco­nomic scale. Jesus sel­dom used the term evil or wicked, but when he did it was in ref­er­ence to the lazy.

Lent begins this week. It is the sea­son when we real­ize that the party is over. The Judas in us all is being busted. The spir­i­tu­ally hon­est are open­ing their hands to reveal all that has been hid­den. There are forty days to come clean. It is time to hear the spirit of Joshua, Jonah and Jesus…not Judas.