Read Matth.26:14-35.27:69-75.

Judas, after Peter, stands out as one of the most compelling figures among the disciples. Part of the mystery stems from lack of information there is little we know about him other than his betrayal. What we do know makes his betrayal seem even more startling. After all he was one of the twelve. When Jesus preached, healed and exorcised demons he was a direct witness. When Jesus sent the twelve out to preach and empowered them to heal and cast out demons, Judas was one of those he sent. Judas was a man who knew and experienced the power of Jesus first hand.

How could a person who knew Jesus so well, who had experienced Jesus’s power betray him in the end? Could such a person really betray Jesus just for money? If it is really all about money and greed, then why did he take his own life? Some would say that Peter’s denial, which is unfaithfulness and disloyalty, is also a betrayal of Jesus. So how could Peter, who had walked so closely with Jesus, let his fears get the better of him.

There are parallels between Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial. For example, both men had their master name the betrayal in them before it came to pass. Both men actually betrayed their Lord and Master. They both fulfil Zechariah’s prophesy which Jesus quotes from Zech. 13:7 “’I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” Here Jesus has envisioned himself as the shepherd and the disciples as the sheep; he was about to be struck and they were about to be scattered. For both Jesus in Matthew and Israel in Zechariah, it is a striking of judgement – Christ in other words is about to take the judgement of God on our behalf upon himself. In Zech. 12:10 we read: ‘And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one who grieves for a first born son.’

The shepherd Jesus is about to be struck or pierced and the people of God will look upon the one who had been pierced and mourn as a response. This reveals another parallel between Judas and Peter, because both of them look on the one they have pierced and mourn. In Matth. 26: 75 we read that immediately after Peter had denied Jesus he went outside and wept bitterly. And right after this passage in 27:3 we read that Judas was seized with remorse. Both Peter and Judas mourn bitterly for what they have done to their master. They at this point are both in the same dismal boat.

But it here that the parallels end. For while Peter lives on to be restored by his master, Judas takes his own life. At this point within the darkness of betrayal/denial neither man has a real advantage. What is it then that sets Judas and Peter apart? Both men betrayed their master, why does one live and one die. After all It was not merely Peter and Judas who betrayed Jesus that night; all of the of other disciples abandoned him to his fate. The answer to this question becomes more imperative when we remember that we also, like Peter and Judas, sometimes deny and betray Jesus: [ Spend a minute or two considering how you might have denied Christ since last Easter] What, then, in the end, is the real difference between Judas and Peter?

The difference between the two is the difference their response to what happened. Judas’s first response was that of despair. And to despair is to fixate on the present hopelessness to such a degree that you remove God from the influence on your life. Emotionally you close off the world, close out the future, and judge all of eternity in the light of the present moment. As Judas fixates in this way he sections off outside influences. Nobody can reach him. Nobody can get through. There are no words that can reach a heart that has given itself to despair because that heart is becoming increasingly self-referential. Even subconsciously the heart thinks “I am the only one. There is no-one who can help me. There is no-one who can save me. I am alone, and alone I have no hope.” Judas had experienced the Lord; Judas had betrayed the Lord. And if Judas knew [as we presume he did] that the Lord was his only hope, then Judas believed he had betrayed his hope. His logic in a twisted way was sound. It is the logic of the world without God. It is flawed because it doesn’t account for God. It doesn’t consider God’s loving desire to forgive. Which he must have seen in action as he walked with Jesus. To put this another way Judas’s first mistake was to take Good Friday without Easter Sunday. Judas got stuck in a moment in time, and never looked at the larger picture. To this we might reply: “How could Judas consider Easter Sunday, he takes his life before the resurrection happens.” But that is precisely the point. Judas stops, he fixates on Good Friday. His remorse for what he has done is the right response, but he holds on to his remorse, lets it control him, and gives in, in the end, to despair. In it Judas is so busy looking at himself and how he feels, that he closes himself off to the world around him. And ultimately that is precisely what his suicide is: a closing of off the world, a denial of everything but the experience of his own self. Judas took Good Friday as the final word and didn’t wait for Easter Sunday.

That this is a lesson for us should be obvious. We cannot allow our momentary despair to overshadow the work of God. We must always maintain perspective, and remember that God is good and has a plan for us. We must always remember that for every Good Friday, when things seem darkest, there is always Easter Sunday around the corner, where God’s light will shine on us again – if we but have the patience to wait! Therefore the ‘sin of Judas’ is to fixate on our circumstances, to close off the voice of God and the voice of history and our own church in favour of our own thoughts. It is to become self-referential when we ought to be seeking forgiveness. It is to judge our present circumstances as absolute, as if there is no future possible for us. It is to take the world as all that is and to deny the possibility of God’s goodness and providence towards us.

Let us spend a moment or two confessing before Jesus the times when we have denied, nay betrayed, him through fear or self-referential thinking and let us repent and seek his forgiveness.

The second sin of Judas is the sin of power, in particular of the taking of matters into his own hands. Judas doesn’t wait on God’s power instead he acts in his own power. Potentially there are hints of this in his betrayal. He and all the disciples were mistakenly looking for Jesus to bring in an earthly kingdom. It could be that Judas’s betrayal was his way of forcing Jesus to exert his divine power against the Romans. Nevertheless, Judas did take matters into his own hands when he committed suicide. There, rather than waiting for God to dispense his divine justice, or wait for God to reveal his ultimate plan, Judas took justice into his own hands, literally. Judas determined to mete out his own punishment. He made himself, judge, jury and executioner.

The sin of power, of taking matters into our own hands is one of mankind’s oldest sins. After all if only Adam and Eve had waited a short time longer they could have asked God what he thought about the fruit and the snake. It is the sin of refusing to admit God’s power, to wait on his will and to allow God’s sovereign reign. We commit it when we grow impatient with God, when we try to work our own deals. God says to us clearly “Wait for Sarah.” And then we go and find ourselves a Hagar and mess it all up. Peter denies Jesus and is redeemed. Judas betrays Jesus and is condemned. Alike in their betrayal, they are unlike in their outcomes. Maybe if Judas had stayed his hand for two more days he would have been forgiven and restored by the risen Jesus. He, like Paul, might have been the corrupt Apostle made glorious by the redemption of the Master. Instead Judas is eternally separated from God. Not because God chose him to be that way before time began, but rather because he was self-referential, he allowed no inbreaking of God’s greater plan, and he from that dismal vantage, impatiently took his own life in his own hands. In other words, he created his own hell. In fact it is by such thoughts as “The world is all there is. My power is all I have,” that hell is maintained. May God forgive us all for thinking such thoughts.

The lesson given by Judas and Peter at this point in the Gospel story is that even though we may deny, betray or fall away from Jesus, we must not despair closing God off from our lives. And no matter what happens, under whatever circumstances, we must always trust in the power of God. Rejecting the temptation to take matters into our own hands. We must reject self-reference and patiently embrace God’s power. Like Peter, and unlike Judas, we must patiently wait on God.

As we meditate at the foot of the cross on Good Friday let us bring to him all those things in our lives that cause us to despair and all those things where we are tempted to take control rather than seeking God’s solution and let us seek his forgiveness for our impatience. And let us wait for the embrace of his loving power in our lives which will surely come if we earnestly, patiently and faithfully seek it.