Society remembers not only its heroes but its villains, people who have distinguished themselves through monstrous cruelty or evil. It is not in a history text or work of fiction but in the Bible that we find the arch type of all such reprobates—Judas Iscariot.
We think of Judas as an unholy trinity of betrayer, traitor, and thief, as unforgettable as he is unforgiveable. That is the traditional view of him. Yet Soren Kierkegaard shrewdly reminds us that “one will get a deep insight into the state of Christianity in each age by seeing how it interprets Judas.” Perhaps we have made Judas into an Iago figure, a tragic caricature of a solitary monster. Did he act freely, or was he predestined? Such quibbling has blurred his significance.
It is true that Judas Iscariot was a man apart. A native of Kerioth, he was the only one of the twelve apostles who was not a Galilean. The Gospels mark him as a thief and as the betrayer of Christ. Yet surely he was no more endowed with the frailties of the human condition than others who followed Jesus. Thomas was the skeptic; Matthew the fraudulent tax collector; Peter the impulsive; James and John the vengeful “sons of thunder”; and then there is that great host described anonymously as “publicans and sinners.” Perhaps Judas was not like them; for no man commits suicide casually. What kind of titanic struggle led this man to end his life in despair?
It would not be far wrong to suggest that by the time the Gospel narrative brings us to the last week in Jerusalem there are only two people who have any clear grasp of what is going on. Each one knows that the Kingdom is to be established; yet they perceive it differently. Each man faces a great anxiety. Both men are concerned for this world’s grief. For one man, Jesus, the Kingdom means the bearing of sin and suffering in order to transform it; for the other man, Judas, the Kingdom means the elimination of sin and suffering. Judas sees life as a problem requiring an immediate, permanent solution. Jesus views life as a condition that contains the potential for change and transformation. So Judas betrays Jesus to make him act rather than to suffer, to eliminate what is intolerable rather than to redeem and change it. Judas seeks to build the Kingdom of God without suffering and pain. He wants to eliminate those people who make life uncomfortable for himself and others. Then, when he is alone and realizes that he also is not perfect, he eliminates himself.
There are other characters in this great drama, but they play a dumb role. The disciples, bewildered and confused, are asleep in the garden. Sadly, that seems to be the most characteristic repose of the Church throughout history. Critical events take place without the participation of God’s people. Yet perhaps that is providential. On one side we are rightly pressured by people who want immediate solutions, the manifesto of Judas, and on the other we are confronted with the seemingly impossible call of Jesus Christ to minister to the sufferings of the world. The heartaches of the world are real, but there is a distinction between the elimination-of sin and suffering and its transformation in the Kingdom of Christ. The Christian hope is not to return to Eden, but to transform the city of man into the City of God. Mother Theresa captures this distinction superbly when she says that “Welfare is for a purpose—an admirable and necessary one—whereas Christian love is for a person.” Such a stance will do little to enhance the Church as a social and political power; it will bring the accusation that we are “fooling the beggar.” But it may bring the Kingdom just one step nearer and make the vital difference between betraying the Lord and seeking to do his will.
The tragedy of Judas was that rather than giving himself for others he worked for a kind of immediate upopia. Such a pursuit destroys those who struggle for it since it is basically selfish. Judas pursued a cause rather than suffer the grief of his neighbor. Above all, he was a man without faith; he failed to allow for that transforming action of God without which all the aspirations of man must end in death. He acts in the interests of humanity without comprehending his own humanity and innate weakness.
D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.
