Keeping Secrets With Judas
What was Jesus thinking?
Last week the attention of the Christian world returned to that searing scene at Golgatha: the Son of Man, bloodied, impaled, hanging in agony between two convicted criminals in a wholesale rejection of the Truth and Love He embodied. It’s truly a monstrous tableau, the literal crucifixion of absolute innocence. It got me pondering the personal betrayal that precipitated it since, I’ll confess, I’ve always been fascinated by Judas and his mystifying villainy. What caught my imagination this year is the oddly intimate interaction between Jesus and Judas during that last supper. From the Gospel of John 13:21-30:
Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”
His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”
Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”
Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.
So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.
Night indeed. One of the darkest hours in human history.
Just imagine though: Judas alone understood what Jesus meant when He spoke of being betrayed. He suddenly discovered his Teacher somehow knew of his mercenary scheme! What went through his mind? Fear? Anger? Embarrassment? Anxiety? When he took the dipped bread from Jesus, was his hand steady? Did their eyes meet? When Satan entered Judas in that moment, was the Redeemer looking straight into the eyes of Evil?
Rather than reveal Judas’ treachery to the other disciples, though, Jesus simply, cryptically told him to hurry up and get it over with. What did Judas make of that? Did he wonder why he was being permitted to leave? And how at odds is that with our own sense of justice? One of our most decent moral instincts is to prevent harm to innocents. Reading that story, our gut cries out: Expose the greedy traitor! So how should we understand these words of apparent permission to Judas?
In context of the Gospels, we see at a glance that the betrayal of Jesus was the betrayal of Goodness to the narcissism of human ego. To its selfish craving for worldly gain, as seen in Judas. To its self-conceits and lust for power, as seen in the chief priests and elders. To its craven self-interest, as seen in Pilate. We see it was the betrayal of pure Light to the utter darkness of the human mind, the betrayal of pure Love to the frigid emptiness of the human heart. Yet Jesus let it happen, even kept secret His knowledge and signaled permission.
We know it had to be so.
The Lord came into this world to personify His Divine Truth and, by living a human existence that perfectly overcame all evil, manifest Its Divine Love. We are told in the Gospel of John 1:1&14:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
As Truth Incarnate, the Word made flesh, the only way God could save the human race from eternal separation from Him—total damnation—was to allow the events to unfold according to the prophecies provided in the Sacred Scriptures that He literally embodied.
As excruciating and grotesque as His death was, then, it was through those final hours of suffering unfathomable pain, grief, and despair that the Lord finished the work for which He came into this world: He achieved the total subjugation of Hell by defeating its every last attack on the fallible humanity He had acquired from His mortal mother. He walked the path of human salvation ahead of us perfectly, clearing the way for every human soul who wants to, to follow.
And then, in the culminating miracle of His earthly body being resurrected from the tomb, having been made wholly spiritual by His perfect walk through this world even into death, He achieved the total fulfillment of all of the Scriptures, and humankind finally was able to see the living God as He actually is: the Divine Love in human form. He became manifest as the Perfect Human into Whose image and likeness we all are created.
No one wants to identify themselves with Judas in the story—who would like to imagine themselves capable of that depth of avaricious faithlessness? Yet each of us is born into that same permission to betray God. We are allowed to spurn His example to love beyond ourselves. We can choose, as Judas literally did, to sacrifice living truth for dead rewards—”treasure on earth.” We are permitted to cling, as the chief priests and elders did, to the hubris of our own intelligence, to our thirst for power over the things of this world, to our attachment to control. As with Judas and the rest, God knows our hearts. He sees our personal weaknesses and permits our personal rejection because without that freedom to turn our backs on Him, none of us could freely turn our faces towards Him. Our connection to Him must each be chosen by us if it is to be real and lasting. If it is to spiritually transform us.
Christ’s silence in the face of Judas’s betrayal is a message to us that His love is so perfect that He willingly died in humiliation and agony to secure forever our ability to receive it. So infinite that He permits us each to refuse it anyway. He lets us opt for the path of spiritual darkness—exploiting, mocking, even crucifying the truth in our hustle to protect or satisfy our egos. He lets us cleave to the natural coldness of our hearts, shunning the invitation to connect with His.
But because of His willing silence and the events that it allowed, the warmth and light of His Divine Humanity—His perfect Love and Truth—will shine eternally into the universe, a lamp to the feet of every soul who sincerely seeks Goodness in their lives, who is willing to love as He has loved us. Which is to say: who is willing to die to themselves so they might love others more than themselves.
Do justly. Love mercy. And walk humbly with your God.
Loved this essay. I can feel the thought process all the way through. It reminds me of reading things during totalitarian regime and trying to figure out using empathy what was going on with the bad guys.
I also thought about, for some reason, how God hardened the pharaoh’s heart in Exodus. Both pharaoh and Judas seem to have an out, but God, and Jesus here, almost encourage them to follow their ideas and conceit to its end.
Great piece, Leah. Lots to unpack here.