Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

So again friends, welcome to Holy Week! This is perhaps our most sacred week of the liturgical calendar. Palm Sunday begins our journey with Jesus entering into Jerusalem to the cries of celebration and adoration. He will go on to the Temple where he will demonstrate some righteous anger, but he will also teach and heal many there. And perhaps most dangerously he will draw both crowds and attention. And that will put him right in the crosshairs of both the temple authorities who are attempting to prevent any sort of uprising or rebellion and the Roman authorities.

The story of Holy Week then takes us right up to the account of Jesus’ betrayal by a trusted confidant. After that betrayal, Jesus will be arrested, tried, beaten and put to death. But we all know that is not the end of his story. But before we go there, we will have that last meal and Jesus’ betrayal by Judas.

My guess is that even if we haven’t previously studied the scripture accounts of Judas, we all have an impression that comes to mind when we hear that name. It’s fair to say that you never hear the name Judas on the list of the top baby names of the year. That’s probably because the name Judas has become synonymous with betrayal or backstabbing.

The disciple Judas has been demonized throughout Christian history, serving as a favorite scapegoat of Christians, and frequently referred to as the devil. In Christian art through the centuries, Judas has been portrayed in dark and sinister tones. And in the scriptures, Judas not only fails to understand and get Jesus, but he also betrays Jesus. It is Judas’ actions that lead to Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

So, what do we really know about Judas? We know that the story of Judas is in all of the four New Testament Gospels, it’s one of a relatively small number of stories about Jesus that occur in all four Gospels. We can surmise from the Gospel stories about Judas, that as far as Jesus and the other disciples knew, Judas was one of them. He shared their common life, and he was a trusted and valued friend and disciple. He had witnessed Jesus’ ministry, his healings and his miracles. He had come with them into Jerusalem and had most likely seen Jesus at the temple teaching, turning tables, healing and drawing unwanted attention from the authorities.

In the earliest story of Judas found in the Gospel of Mark, it’s not clear why Judas does what he does. There is money involved but Mark doesn’t say that Judas asked for that money, just that it was offered to him for betraying Jesus. By the time that the Gospel of Matthew is written some twenty years later, money has been added to Judas’ story as a motive for the betrayal. Tradition will run with that story and create a narrative that included stories about how Judas died, where Judas died and what happened with the money that Judas supposedly returned after he became filled with remorse for betraying Jesus.

We also know from the Gospel stories of that final week, that Judas is not the only one to betray Jesus. His most trusted disciple, Peter, the ideal disciple, the one upon whom the church will be built, will also betray and abandon Jesus, several times! As will all of his disciples, all of those trusted friends who are with Jesus at that final meal, they will also abandon him. In Jesus’ hour of need, they will all be gone. It will only be the women who will stay. And those women will give witness not only to Jesus’ death but also to his resurrection.

As Reverend Michael showed us when she brought Judas to life just now, Judas like all of the other earliest followers of Jesus, struggled mightily with Jesus’ teaching regarding love and service. Reverend Michael’s Judas says, ‘he started talking about serving rather than being served’ and ‘he asked us to love our neighbors’. Judas struggled to understand and to accept what Jesus’ call into service and love meant. Jesus asked them to serve rather than be served. Jesus asked them to love their neighbor as he had loved them. Those were not the messages that Judas had been expecting. Those were not the messages that Judas wanted to hear.

And to be fair to Judas, they probably aren’t the messages and teachings that any of us want to hear. Choosing to serve instead of desiring to be served, is about as countercultural as you can get in our society that celebrates fame and wealth. That hard work of loving our neighbor, our neighbor who doesn’t look like us, act like us, pray like us, live like us or love like us, is not the easy path.

When I hear the stories of Jesus’ last week, I know that I am far more likely to connect and resonate with the women who stay, the women who witness, than I am with Judas or for that matter Peter or any of the disciples who abandoned Jesus, who rejected his message of service and love.

I would like to think that I would have stayed. I would like to think that I would stand by and for a beloved friend in their darkest hour. I would like to think that I could live to serve instead of dreaming of being served. I would like to think that I could love my neighbor like Jesus taught. I would love to think that I’m not like Judas. But if I’m honest with myself, I’m way more like Judas that I’d like to think.
Now any of you who went through the recent Gospel of Matthew class with me may recall a saying that I often share during Holy Week. It goes like this…’when you learn to sit at the table with your Judas, you’ll understand the love of Jesus Christ’.

For a long time, when I heard that saying, I would imagine sitting at a table alongside those in my own life who have betrayed me, or who have wounded me with their actions or their words. I thought that ’when you learn to sit at the table with your Judas, you’ll understand the love of Jesus Christ’ was about forgiveness of others, those who had caused my wounds. Forgiveness of others is a central message of Jesus’ teaching, so that made sense to me.

And I do think there is that call into forgiveness of others found in those words…. but recently, I’ve started to look at that statement of ’when you learn to sit at the table with your Judas, you’ll understand the love of Jesus Christ’ a bit differently. Now, when I hear those words, instead of thinking of someone who has wounded me, I hear the call to sit at the table with MY Judas, the part of ME that is way more like Judas and Peter or any of the disciples who hit the road when things got tough, who rejected Jesus’ message of service and love.

At Jesus’ last meal, tradition has it that he knew that he was going to be betrayed by one of his closest friends. And still, Jesus sat with them. He knew that he was going to be betrayed by one of his closest friends and still, Jesus broke bread with them. He knew that he was going to be betrayed by one of his closest friends and still, Jesus offered them wine and he blessed them. Knowing the wounds that were most likely to come, Jesus sat at the table with Judas.

One of Jesus’ very last acts of ministry, in fact, one of Jesus’ final acts of his life, was to live out that commandment of love and sit at the table with Judas. So, if you wonder, does that commandment to love extend even to Judas? The answer lies in that simple act of Jesus sitting at a table with him, breaking bread with him, offering him wine and blessing him. And if you wonder, does that love extend to all of the Judases of the world, including the one within each of us? The answer is yes. ’When you learn to sit at the table with your Judas, you’ll understand the love of Jesus Christ’.

Central to Christianity’s understanding of Jesus Christ is that the love that Jesus demonstrated in his life, in his ministry, in his death and in his resurrection, that love revealed God’s love for all of creation, including each of us. When we learn to sit at the table with OUR Judas, we understand the love of Jesus Christ. We understand that we are constantly called into love, for others and for ourselves. We understand that we are constantly called into the love that Jesus taught and modeled in his ministry, revealing God’s vast and unknowably huge love.

The beauty of Judas’ story is that it is our story, every one of us. Faced with that really challenging call into love and service, we all struggle, and we all often fail. And yet, we are called back to sit at the table with OUR Judas and ALL of the Judas’ of the world. We are called to break bread, to offer wine and to bless. And when we do that, for ourselves and for others, just like Jesus did, we also reveal God’s vast and unknowably huge love to our wounded world.

And most importantly, we realize that we don’t have to journey home to God, we have always been at the table with and home with God.
Thanks be to the God who welcomes us all to the table. Thanks be to the God who breaks bread with us all. Thanks be to the God who blesses us all. And thanks be to the God who is the home for us all.

Amen