Judas & Me

In considering Judas Iscariot, I find myself considering me. I would rather believe in divisions between us. I cry in my heart, I am not Judas! Not that one, not Iscariot!

In the end this is true. I am not he.

But only in the end.

Because in the beginning it is neither our characters nor our conditions that divide us. Instead, it is the forgiveness of Jesus, which I have, but which, for reasons I do not fully understand, he did not have. Mercy alone allows me a long look at my brother and so at myself, for otherwise I might not be able to tolerate the sight.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him. (Mark 14:10–11)

The contract that Judas makes here with men of murderous intent is so horrendous that we ask, “Why? How could he do such a thing?” The story feels incomplete without his motive.

“Greed,” we figure. Or the more sophisticated among us argue that Judas was moved by a misguided zealotry.

In fact, Mark’s account ignores the question of motive altogether. The writer implies that Judas went voluntarily and (seeing he accepted the rulers’ scheme so easily) with no plan of his own in mind. But that is all Mark cares to say of the mind of Judas.

Mark’s smart. There is a lesson for us in presenting the sin apart from its causes, as though motives were merely incidental and ultimately irrelevant.

Does the motive for a sin make it any less a sin? Isn’t betrayal of God’s sovereignty over our lives always a sin, regardless of the factors that drove us to it? Yes! Yet we habitually defend ourselves and diminish our fault by referring to reasons why we “had to” do what we did. Motives console us. That’s why we want so badly to have and to know them.

“Not my fault! He hit me first. I was just protecting myself!”

“Don’t blame me. Society was a bad influence. My parents neglected me, never disciplined me. Blame them.”

“Hey, man, it’s dog-eat-dog, all right? I’m only tryin’ to survive.”

“I can’t help the way I am. God made me. God gave me appetites. I’m doin’ what comes naturally.”

We sinners are so backward. We invert the true source of our justification. It is not some preliminary cause, some motive before the sin that justifies me, but rather the forgiveness of Jesus that meets my repentance after the sin. If I did it, I’m responsible, whatever the reasons might be. Motives are incidental to the sin as a sin and to its expiation. If by excuses I duck responsibility, I’ll never truly repent, and then the forgiveness of Christ will seem incidental to me. (Oh, what a wretched state that is!) But if I own up to the sin and so repent, then that forgiveness will justify before God even the most horrendous betrayer of Jesus. Even Judas. Even me.

And when it was evening he came with the twelve. And as they were at table eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” They began to be sorrowful, and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?” He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me. For the Son of mangoes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” (Mark 14:17–21)

“Stop it!” says my friend. “Stop it!” she pleads even before I’ve done the deed. She sees it coming. “Stop it! You’re hurting me.”

And then I feel resentful, embarrassed by the exposure.

But the plea, which makes me aware of myself, is no evil. It is a gift. Even if my friend is only protecting herself, it is no less than a gift from God intended to benefit both my friend and myself: her peace, my prudence, my obedience, and finally, my peace, too. Please! You’re hurting me. Oh, let me hear the warning not resentfully but gratefully—and stop.

Judas has no better friend than Jesus.

Loving him, not loathing him, Jesus here grants Judas a moment of terrible self-awareness: “One of you will betray me, that one dipping bread into the dish with me.”

The deed is not yet done. Jesus sees it coming. While there’s time, he gives Judas three distinct gifts:

1. Knowledge. Judas must now know the moral quality and the consequence of the deed. It is betrayal. Betrayal is wrong.

2. Free will. Knowledge frees Judas from ignorance and from the compulsive quality of the act. Now he can and must choose.

3. Sole responsibility. If he proceeds after all, he alone shall own the deed.

What more can a friend do than Jesus has done?

The Son of Man shall surely “go as it was written of him.” But now Judas needn’t be the betrayer. If the disciple continues blind to the sin, that’s a choice. Jesus has given him choice! Judas could choose the quicker but lesser pain: with the others to “be sorrowful” and, louder than the others, to confess: “Yes, it is I.” Judas could embrace the gifts that Jesus gives him—and stop.

Or not.

The cry of my friend feels harsh. Perhaps I’ll hear nothing but the accusation and harden my heart and, angry at my friend’s presumption, persist.

Or perhaps I’ll hear the love of God in her plea and suffer guilt and confess my sin and repent.

And stop.

And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away under guard.” And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Master!” And he kissed him. (Mark 14:43–45)

Look. Look. Here comes an orange snake eastward through the night. A snake of fire, a long snake of torches.

Perhaps the disciples, whom Jesus had just awoken, look down from the Mount of Olives and see the snake and do not comprehend it. Jesus comprehends it.

The snake winds the same path they have taken tonight. It winks through the trees in a smooth and silent approach. It is a fatal snake. It kills by kissing.

The binding strength of that snake is the armed guard of the temple and the police of the Sanhedrin. Behold how the servants of God can bite!

But the head of the snake is one of the twelve, a disciple of Jesus himself. Behold how an intimate may kiss for other reasons than affection and respect.

Suddenly Judas Iscariot appears beside his friends just outside the Garden of Gethsemane.

Smiling.

Judas is smiling.

And claiming his accustomed place.

And holding his torch aloft to shed light on the faces around him. Peering into these faces. Looking for … looking for … Ah! There he is!

The snake coils into a knot of bodies and flame in front of the disciples. It has scores of eyes all flashing red. Its scales are weapons. Its silence is a tense, dead menace in close proximity—and it stinks a human sweat.

The disciples grow nervous.

Jesus gazes and waits.

Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God made. From the beginning its movement was smooth, its manner mild, its promise to elevate whom it would eat. It was a murderer even from the beginning, a liar, the father of lies, and the father, so Jesus once declared, of …

The serpent strikes!

Smiling, Judas whispers, “Rabbi,” and kisses Jesus. A sign of devotion. A sign, for the temple guard, of the one to seize. A lie.

In a garden once the Lord God decreed enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, enmity to the death. In a garden again that enmity produces this pathetic assault: a kiss that can kill.

But the serpent, the father of lies, is also father of what other brood? Why, of a human brood!—of those who know the nature of God and still reject him. “You,” said Jesus, “you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires!” (But read all of John 8:34–47.)

Even so do children, tragically, exchange one Father for another. How long must it be before the second father is exposed as a fraud and a murderer?

And even so, with the meekest of gestures, has the war for the world been engaged. With a kiss. And the kiss has a tooth. And the snake that struck the Lord Jesus has a back of fire and a body of human opinion.

After this, Mark is utterly silent concerning Judas Iscariot. Not another word, whether of grief or of hope, brings the man again to our sight. He is gone. He sinks into the perfect gloom of the forgotten.

Ah, but I am here still, writing of his dark reflection. And I am here gracefully. And I shall be here eternally. Neither you nor I have been forgotten. For the Lord has won the war!

What happens hereafter in the Gospel of Mark distinguishes Judas from me. I rode the back of Christ through death and even to resurrection, because I confessed my sin. And I confessed my faith in him. The story that Mark concludes at the empty tomb is mine. My Lord’s, and therefore mine, forever.

Walter Wangerin Jr. is writer in residence at Valparaiso (Ind.) University and author of Reliving the Passion (Zondervan), from which this article was adapted.

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