Psalm 55:12-18
Matthew 26:14‑25

The Gospel writers, writing many years after the ministry of Jesus, so clearly identified Judas as a betrayer that the name and betrayal became synonymous.  Those writers hung the words, "the one who betrayed Jesus," around Judas' name like a sign board.  As a result a reader of the Gospels has a negative response and attitude toward Judas the very moment that he is introduced.
           
However, Jesus chose Judas like he chose his other disciples.  He invited each of them to be with him and to be sent out by him to preach and to be given the authority to minister to people (Mark 3:14‑15).  Jesus saw potential and possibilities in Judas like he saw them in every person he invited to follow him.   
           
Apparently Judas found acceptance among the apostles.  Serving as treasurer of the group indicated a certain amount of trust in him by his colleagues.   
    
Jesus' popularity had been increasing continually.  Opinion polls ran heavily in favor of Jesus.  They were higher than ever after his cleansing of the Temple because those who had been gouged by the buyers and sellers felt some justice finally had been done. The religious leaders galvanized their opposition to Jesus and looked for a time and way to arrest him. They found their way in Judas.  
           
Judas led the leaders to Jesus.  Matthew and Mark indicated that Judas had arranged a sign with those who came to take Jesus.   The one Judas kissed would be Jesus.  Luke made much out of the kiss of betrayal.  John, on the other hand, indicated that when they came for Jesus that Jesus was so in control that all Judas could do was stand by and watch.  How Judas pointed out Jesus to those who wanted to arrest him is not as significant as the fact that Judas helped hasten the end for Jesus by revealing to his enemies where they could take him with the most ease and the least resistance.
           
There are a number of possible motives for Judas' betrayal.  A few people have suggested that Judas turned Jesus over to the authorities for the money.   
           
Others suggest that Judas was somewhat of a loner or at least felt lonely being the only Judean in this group of Galileans.  And it seems quite plausible that Judas suffered from the concerns about the pecking order of the disciples as did some of the others, namely James and John.   
           
I offer another explanation of Judas' action which is more plausible for me.  The Jews had been maltreated for several hundred years by the occupied troops of Rome under a variety of leaders.  They wanted their nation freed from this foreign police force which, depending upon the officer in charge, vacillated from maintaining order to extreme harassment, persecution, and making a mockery of what the Jews considered sacred.  I doubt that many of us have any way of imagining what that would be like.
           
All of Israel tied their hopes to a Messiah, a Deliverer who would come, conquer Rome, and reestablish God's reign in the land.  They built these hopes on a military model.  Some things never seem to change.  They believed that this Messiah would be very much like King David.  They believed this so much that they expected the Messiah to come from David’s family. 
           
The theology of zeal that motivated the Zealot originated in the exclusivistic worship of the One True God of Israel.  This zeal was transferred to the Law of God.  The Zealot was the strict interpreter of the Law who was willing to follow the way of zeal for the Law of the God of Israel unto death.  The Zealot was willing not only to kill a Gentile or lay down his life rather than transgress the Law, but also he was quite prepared to take the life of a fellow Israelite if necessary out of his zeal for the Law of God.  A Zealot tended to see his cause as a holy one.   Once he justified his cause as holy, then any means became permissible to achieve the objective.  Does this sound contemporary?   
           
There are zealots in all faiths today.  One rule of thumb that religious zealots across all faiths seem to follow is, “The end justifies the means.” 
           
From what can be pieced together about Judas, apparently he was very zealous about his people, their worship of God, and the removal of Roman forces, domination, and influence.   There is no clear evidence that he was a member of the Zealot party as was his fellow apostle Simon the Zealot.  Nevertheless, Judas was a man consumed with zeal.  He pinned his hopes for the deliverance of his people on Jesus. 
           
In a sense Judas heard Jesus say what he wanted to hear.   Often that is true of each of us.  Some of Jesus' phrases and actions fitted exactly with Judas' beliefs and desires.  Other than the Gospel writers’ negative labeling, all evidence is that Judas was an enthusiastic follower of Jesus.  He could hardly wait until the day when the great event would take place, but wait he did.   A year passed.  No army was being formed but Jesus was gaining support.  His popularity was increasing.  At times Jesus spoke to and about issues that were on target from Judas' perspective.        
           
Just as Judas would begin to get excited Jesus would start talking about and relating to a blind man or a Samaritan woman or permit a woman to waste an entire bottle of expensive perfume on his feet.  Judas would become frustrated when Jesus seemed more concerned about individuals than about issues that affected many individuals.  Judas was much more concerned about the blindness in government than he was about some man who had been blind from birth.  Judas wanted something done about the way Rome was raping Israel, but Jesus seemed more interested in a woman caught in adultery.  All of Israel was being crippled by occupation forces and Jesus spent time asking a crippled man if he wanted to get well. 
          
Into the second year of his ministry more people were coming to listen to Jesus.  In some places huge crowds gathered.  Any moment Jesus could have given the signal to rush the guards, but he never did.  Still there was no army, just a few more disciples than at the beginning. 
           
Jesus entered the third year of his mission.  He talked more about his Kingdom.  His language seemed to have a sterner, more intense, more forthright tone to it.  Conflicts were on the increase as people questioned and disagreed with Jesus.  There were numerous little confrontations that seemed to be leading to a major one.  The timing for things seemed to be right on Palm Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem to streets lined with pilgrims shouting, "Hosanna."  They laid palm branches in front of him as if he were a king, a deliverer, the Messiah.  But Jesus didn’t do anything to try to organize or unite the people together into a revolutionary force.  He did go to the Temple and cleaned out the place.  Was the tension ever thick?  Then Jesus had acted like a Zealot when he drove out the money changers and said, "Zeal for your house will consume me" (John 12:17).  Judas must have thought that it could not be long now before Jesus led the revolution.  Of course Jesus already was leading a revolution, but it was so different from what Judas expected and understood needed to be that he was dissatisfied with its prospects and possibilities.  Things were not happening as Judas expected nor as rapidly as he thought they should. 
           
Judas decided to help the cause along.  He would force Jesus to play his hand.  He would put Jesus in an uncompromising position where Jesus would be forced to act.  Judas made a deal.   The Jewish leaders wanted to do away with Jesus.  Taylor Caldwell stated this well in the book, I, Judas:
         "We must keep our eyes on this Jesus.  He is more
          dangerous than the other" (a reference to John the
          Baptist).  Gamaliel asked, "Why do you say that?"
          "Fanatics we can deal with.  They thrive on
          emotion and that soon spends itself.  But this
          one deals in reason and is mild and moderate.
          He wears better."2
           
To help the cause along Judas agreed to turn in Jesus.  He left the supper before the party was over, although according to Luke not until they had shared the bread and wine.  Judas led the way to the garden and told them to lay low until he gave the signal.   He showed the soldiers the one to arrest by kissing him.  The most common way for a disciple to greet his teacher was with a kiss.  At least since the time that Judas kissed Jesus the meaning of a kiss has been ambiguous.  Is the kiss one receives a sign of affection or is it the kiss of death?  When they went to take Jesus, he did not resist.  How shocked Judas must have been!  All Judas could do was stand, first on one foot and then on the other, and watch.  In his mind Judas must have worked out how Jesus would react.  He was convinced that if Jesus were forced to decide between being arrested and resisting that Jesus would resist.  Judas had failed to learn that in other traps that had been laid for Jesus, Jesus invariably responded with alternatives people had never considered.  When they seized Jesus, he went with them, not so much reluctantly as much as though he was more in charge than they.  Although they put the cuffs on Jesus there was something about his attitude that seemed to disclose that he was the free one and those taking him were the bound ones. 
           
Judas was dumbfounded.  He began to realize that if Jesus didn’t do something, he was a goner.  Judas took the money back.   You'd think that since Judas had done what he was paid to do that he would have taken the money and found some place to spend it.   For some reason Judas just wasn't in the mood.  Before Judas could clear the cobwebs of confusion from his mind about what was happening and what he was going to do now, Jesus was on the cross.
           
Judas' response to what had taken place was to plunge into despair. Judas did not wait around to see what God could and would do with human defection.  This was the greatest failure of Judas, greater than his betrayal, great as that was.  This is the significant difference between Peter and Judas.  Peter's denial was a betrayal.  When Peter realized what he had done, he wept bitterly and he repented to God because it was against God that he had sinned.  Peter received forgiveness from God and acceptance by the disciples.  Judas felt remorse over what he had done and he went to his co‑conspirators to return the money.  But they rejected the money and the remorse.  They did not want the blood money or the blood guiltiness.  They used the money to buy a field.  They had used Judas for what they wanted and then they did not need him anymore.  When they turned him away, Judas shut out all other alternatives.  He never went to God to repent.  He never sought out the disciples for help.  The only alternative he sought was despair.  He pursued it and killed himself.  Suicide is despair in its ultimate form. What a difference between Peter and Judas, the alternatives they sought and the results they experienced!  Later when the early church was writing all of this down they listed Peter first in the order of the apostles and Judas last.
             
Judas sought to deal with his despair all by himself.  That was a deadly decision then and it is a deadly decision now. We are more like Judas than we are like Jesus. Each of us has a shadow side, a seamy side, a part to ourselves that we do not know or if we know it we do not like what we see.  We tend to project our shadow sides on to someone like Judas.  One of the reasons that Judas has been portrayed as being all bad is because we project on to him all that is evil in us and never confront our own evilness.  Traitors have been treated with the greatest contempt because deep within people there is that possibility and potential to be traitors.  We believe that if we destroy traitors and betrayers we somehow destroy that part of ourselves that would betray.  But we learned from Governor Spitzer this week that betrayal is still alive and destructive.  There is nothing in Judas and what he did that is not common to each of us.
           
Just as individuals have shadow sides, so do groups, organizations, and nations.  What about the religious war that went on for years in Ireland between the Protestants and the Catholics?  Did they not represent each other's shadow side?  This is also true between nations.     Did not President Bush verbalize that when he referred to three nations as an Axis of Evil?  Some Islamists take a similar approach when they refer to the United States as Satan or the servant of Satan. The shadow sides of these nations receive so much emphasis that reality is distorted.  Enemies become so frightened of their own shadows that they see no alternative actions other than what they are presently doing which is escalating fear and escalating the development of more sophisticated weapons.   Such action breeds despair and the despair leads to suicide, the suicide of the entire human species as well as the entire earth that God has created. 
           
We, like Judas, betray Christ.  We claim that we cannot sell information about Jesus, but we often use Jesus to sell ourselves or the products we want others to buy.  Often it is expedient for us to use religion to our advantage.  If we drop the name of Jesus here and there people may respond more positively to us.   
           
Sometimes we betray Christ because we have become disillusioned with God.  We develop our expectations of God and we are determined that God will fit into our mold.  We expect life to move in a specific direction.  When it does not, we begin to wonder why.  We often see ourselves as the exemptions to the problems, struggles, and difficulties of life.  We assume that we deserve some special exemption because of our fervent zeal and devotion to God.  We function on the premise that we ought to be paid for doing whatever good we are doing.  When the results of our efforts lead to struggle and pain, we become disillusioned with God.  When our ways fail to become God’s ways we become angry and embittered. 
           
Often Christ does not turn out to be the Christ we expected or wanted.  We want Christ to confirm what we already believe and to baptize our present actions as right.  We do not want Christ challenging us to alter or change.  If Christ will not be the kind of Messiah we want him to be we will sell him for whatever price we can get.
           
Who of us has not attempted to bargain with God?  We want God to function on our schedules and we seek to manipulate God to do our bidding.  We make conditional promises thinking that we can maneuver God into doing things for us because of our promise of devotion to God.  Who of us has not said at least once, "Lord, if you will get me out of this situation, I will change my ways and live more like you want me to live."
           
Betrayal is a harsh word.  It describes Judas.  It describes some other people we know.  Whether we like it or not, betrayal also describes us.  We are more like Judas than we are like Jesus.  The tragedy of betrayal is that betrayal convinces us that we know better than God how to deal with ourselves.  Let us learn from Judas and not give ourselves over to despair.  Let us give ourselves over to God and discover what God can and will do with human defection.  The greatest failure of Judas was that he shut the door on the alternative of what God could and would do with him.  Despair, he felt, was his only option, and it led to suicide which is despair in its ultimate form.  Let us not be like Judas.  Let us strive to be like Jesus and turn our lives over to God.
Notes

     1F. W. Gingrich, "Judas," The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1962), vol. 2, p. 1007.
     2Taylor Caldwell and Jess Stearn.  I, Judas, (New York:  Atheneum Press, 1977), p. 91.