In her novel, Less than Angels, the novelist, Barbara Pym says that:

Understanding somebody else’s filing system is just about as easy as really getting to know another human being. Just when you think you know everything about them, there’s the impossible happening, the ‘M’ for Miscellaneous when you naturally assumed it would be under something else.

Never is this more true than when we try to understand Judas Iscariot.

The text that comes to mind about him is from Psalm 41 verse 9:  

Even my bosom friend , whom I trusted, Who ate of my bread, Has lifted up his heel against me.

Tonight’s Gospel shows us the enigma of  Judas who plays a central role in  the  Passion of Jesus.

John has prepared us for this moment with his account of the Anointing at Bethany when he described Judas as the one who was about to betray him and who was also a thief.

The facts of that betrayal can be pieced together from the differing accounts in the 4 Gospels: 

From Mark we learn that Judas went to the chief priests in order to betray Jesus to them and they were so pleased that they promised to give him money.  A hint of greed as the motive but we  is there but we are not actually told why Judas betrayed Jesus.  Matthew, however, develops this theme. He says that the first question of Judas to the chief priests was  What will you give me if I betray him to you  and we are then told that they paid him 30 pieces of silver. Luke takes an entirely different tack and says that Satan entered into Judas and though money changed hands.  What motivated him was demonic possession  - something John agrees with when he says, in Chapter 6 of his Gospel that Jesus spoke of him as being a devil (John 6:70) John develops this later on and adds greed as a secondary motive - he was a thief. This, of course, is the judgement of hindsight.

All four Gospels tell us that Judas came to the Garden of Gethsemane. Mark and Matthew say that he betrayed Jesus with a kiss but Luke says that Jesus stopped him from actually delivering it. John says he was just there amongst the soldiers,   

Only Matthew and John tell us of the subsequent fate of Judas. Matthew tells us that later Judas repented, tried to give back the 30 pieces of silver and hanged himself. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, tells us that   Judas bought a field with the money and promptly fell headlong and his bowels gushed out.

The Church, from its early days has cast him in the role of the betrayer and, as such he takes a large part of the blame for the death of Jesus.  However, there are many who are involved in the Crucifixion plot and whilst Judas has a particular place it may not be quite the  one that we naturally  presume. Whether Judas was essential for the web of intrigue which led to the condemnation of our Lord is a matter of conjecture but we might be helped a little if we try and look at the ‘M’ for Miscellaneous which can give us some further insight into why he plays the part he does.

First of all, I want to think about how Judas was seen by Jesus:  obviously Judas was called by Jesus to be a disciple and we know that our Lord chose his followers after careful thought and prayer. Judas quickly occupied a trusted place in the band of the disciples. He had charge of the common purse so, despite John’s comment, he was trusted. Also,  he seems to occupy a special place. At the Last Supper he was on our Lord’s left – that is the place of honour.  This seems at odds with our Lord’s knowledge from an early stage that he knew who it was who would betray him from early in his ministry.  It may be that, though Jesus saw into his heart, he hoped and prayed that he was capable of change.

There is a certain truth that God often calls us to be with Him so that he can save us. He draws us to his side in the hope that we can absorb something of his goodness, holiness and love. There are many examples amongst the saints of those who have had their lives transformed by an encounter with the living God. St. Paul, for example, changed from being a persecutor of Christians to being the builder of church communities.

Grace has a wonderful way of changing lives and often it is through the example of  saintliness that we begin to aspire to becoming changed people – Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses  says the writer of the letter to the Hebrews  let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely and look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.  No one can live close to Jesus and be unchanged.

Or it may be that Judas was initially good but later went to the bad – Satan entered him­ says St.Luke.  None of us are totally immune from the wiles of the devil whose constant ambition is to turn our hearts away from God. Indeed Satan does not waste time on those who have no faith or whose faith is lukewarm. It is only those who try to live Christ-like lives who are worth bothering about for where there is potential for good, there is potential for evil.

One of our problems about debunking the devil and no longer believing in his capabilities is that we have become blasé and fail to see that we are under attack. It is not usually very obvious. Demonic activity is rarely of the kind which we find in the cinema horror films. It is much more subtle. Whenever we feel a kind of ‘can’t be bothered-ness’ about our prayers, bible study or churchgoing, for example, that’s the devil. Sometimes too when spiritually we feel all dried up and there is an absence of God. That’s the devil too.  Being aware of this and asking for God’s help is an essential weapon against the one who wants our soul wrestled from God. Otherwise we are lost and maybe that happened to Judas.

And, of course, there is a sense that Judas was necessary for our salvation. That may seem a strange thing to say but in God’s plan (and it was God’s plan) for the salvation of the world, centred on the self-offering of Christ on the Cross, it needed certain catalysts. Obviously the Jewish leaders were part of that but so too was Judas. As part  our Lord’s intimate circle it was his closeness to Jesus that made his action so devastating.  And, of course, there is a warning in this – that we must always be attentive to our own discipleship. Without the safeguards of always seeking to do God’s will with the help of His grace we could easily slip from loyalty to disloyalty;  from friend to foe.

The action of Judas made it possible for our Lord to save us. Because of Judas, Jesus was able to hand himself over into the hands of sinful men. And so began the way which led to the Victory of the Cross.

But what of Judas himself. How did he view his part?  We presume that because he took his own life, he was filled with the kind of black remorse which knows no way out but self-destruction. Matthew tells us that Judas repented but not in the sense that Peter did over his own denial. That was true repentance which turned him back towards God and therefore towards forgiveness. The repentance of Judas was more in the shape of regret or a ruing of his action and that turned him away from God towards despair. It was the blackness of his soul which led him to destroy himself.  That he wished he hadn’t done what he did suggests that the action of betrayal had gone badly wrong , and to understand that, we need to examine his motive.

Matthew insists it was greed and John follows suit though he adds to it Luke’s demonic possession.  Whilst I see the attraction of ‘greed’ as a motive it is not, to my mind, a sufficient one.  I have long followed William Barclay who in his books Crucified & Crowned  and The Masters men points to another motive.

It is found in the descriptive name Iscariot which suggest that he had a connection with a fanatical group of people known as the Sicarri – that is, dagger bearers. They were a terrorist organisation of the kind we know only too well today. Their aim was to overthrow the Roman occupation of  Israel and restore political power to the Jews.  They held to a corrupt form of the Messianic hope of Israel that a deliverer would come who would lead the people to freedom from the yoke of slavery and oppression and would do this by force.  Jesus was therefore cast in the role  of a ‘Warrior-King’ and  when he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday  hopes would have been kindled. The crowd were eating out of his hand and he could easily have seized power, assisted, no doubt, by the Sicarri. His refusal to act as they hoped led to a dashing of ambitions. Judas may well have been bitterly disappointed. This may be why, in Bethany, the following day, he was so angry with Mary – an anger that was diffused from his anger with Jesus himself. But he didn’t give up hope and when he engineered his betrayal to the chief priests, he may well have had another motive. That is to place Jesus into a corner from which the only way was to fight his way out and so begin the battle the Sicarri longed for. We have no way of knowing who else might have been hiding in the Gethsemane bushes that night.

In the event, our Lord’s passive handing over of himself to the authorities destroyed that hope and Judas was suddenly aware of the dreadful thing he had done.  He was not to be the last to try and manipulate God into acting as we would wish him to act.

If this is a plausible reading of the situation, it would, of course take on board the motives of greed and demonic possession. Judas was greedy, not for money, but for power. He was possessed because those who eschew such a cause will stop at nothing to get what they want and so become demonic in their actions. We can think immediately of those who deliberately crashed their planes into New York’s twin towers  and of the many acts of terrorism which have occurred and go on occurring in our world. 

The message is, however, crystal clear – You cannot manipulate God – not in the pursuit of a cause nor in a personal wish to mould Him in your own image. As Judas found to his cost. There is a lesson for us all.

Finally, there is our own view of Judas:  the Christian Church, from St. John onwards, has laid the blame for what happened to Jesus squarely in the betrayal of Judas. His very name has become an expletive for any who have acted disloyally and as betrayers of others.  Maybe it is important to have a scapegoat – though ironically, that is the role Jesus chose for himself in taking our sin and darkness (and that of Judas) to himself and nailing it to the Cross. 

Today we live in a blame culture so we can see how useful it is to have Judas to blame. But it isn’t just at the level of the Crucifixion that this happens.  Too often, in our personal lives, we seek to blame others for anything that goes wrong. It’s always somebody else’s fault. It’s our parents, the way we were brought up, the people who have stopped us developing as we would wish; the circumstances of our lives which has dealt us a dud hand; the fault always lies somewhere other than within ourselves.  And that’s not just true of our personal lives. It’s what lies behind much of the criticism we level at society; the government;  the Church leadership; and within our communities – church and otherwise.  There is so much negativity around these days and in a way a lot of it stems from the Christian culture which has spent centuries of energy blaming someone else – The Jews; Pontius Pilate; Judas; and today, of course, Muslims and within the Church, those who don’t share our pet views and opinions.  But how destructive all that is. It destroys our community life; it destroys our church life and, of course, it destroys us.

It is also deeply sinful because it refuses to allow us to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions. It denies God because it refuses redemption. It really says that whatever Jesus achieved in his victory on the Cross it does not apply to me. I can never be changed. I am as I am and no amount of grace is going to change it.

Now there are very few of us who have escaped some damage to our personalities along life’s journey and there has to be healing – for all of us. But healing does not come through blaming others. It begins to come when we turn ourselves back to Christ and humbly accept that he can – and indeed does – change our lives. That is the process of redemption which began on the Cross and which goes on  in the Church but especially in our own hearts.  Judas stands as a sign of what happens when we refuse to turn to Christ, whereas Peter stands for what happens when we do.

The chilling sentence in tonight’s Gospel comes when Judas received the blessed bread and immediately went out. And it was night.  For Judas – from that moment, it was perpetual and eternal night. He had tried to manipulate God; he had blamed Jesus for his failure to fit in with his plans; he had been greedy for self- aggrandisement; and he had refused the way of Christ.  The irony is that whilst for Judas, Gethsemane was the dark place where his life was destroyed, for us it became the place where the Light of God’s love began to transform the world with a love which, in the words of George Matheson’s hymn, will not let me go.

Poor Judas – and I do mean that. The very salvation he needed escaped him by seconds at the appointed place. The Cross that became our way to God’s Light became for him, the way to final darkness. There are so many mixed motives in this story but the one which we should hold on to, with or without Judas’s help, is that Jesus had only one motive. To reveal to us God’s Glory which we discover best when, like Him, we spend ourselves in love, knowing that come what may – we are Loved.