Judas

Judas's words in the Gospel always strike me.... "What will you give me......?" His betrayal of Jesus wasn't filled with a powerful hatred or anger. His betrayal came because of a shiny bauble that caught his eye........thirty pieces of silver.

Grubby, petty worldliness that has seeped into a soul can make that soul live for baubles and betray for them. I find that scarier than hatred.

Stuff. Money. Position. Passing praise. Richard Rich's Wales. That's what betrayed Jesus. Judas never seemed to get beyond the shallows even though he followed Jesus for THREE years. He saw the same miracles, he heard the teachings, he watched Christ forgive others over and over. It is a great lesson for each of us. Do we betray Him or one another …. For baubles? We who confess that we know Him and say we love Him?

And yet, and yet, there IS a moment when Judas feels the depth of his betrayal. A real sense of sin. A sudden, deeper understanding of what he has done. When love might trump petty greed. He is so RIPE for conversion. But, alas, he goes to the wrong place to find it.

Judas returns to the Pharisees with the silver and desperately confesses his guilt out loud before them. "I have betrayed innocent blood!!!" And they coldly reply: "What is that to us? Look to it yourself". At this moment, the word Jesus uses for them fits so perfectly: Viper.

They had taken full advantage of Judas's weaknesses with greed and doubt and used them for their own ends. He was a mere tool that had been used and now was only this loud nuisance exposing their own plotting souls by admission of his guilt. They, as Jesus said, enter not the gate to heaven and they bar the door so that others cannot go in either.

These elders of the law swept him away from themselves with those awful words, "Look to it yourself". Judas’s sin was great....but theirs was greater. They left a man in the death of his despair. They made him "look to it himself"....and there was no help there. Blind guides.

What if one of them had responded to his remorse with prayer or pity? What if one of them had repented his own part in the plan after hearing Judas's loud and earnest confession of guilt? They could have helped him and themselves back to the light. But they left him to himself.

How terrifyingly cold and hard and dark must have been the envy in their souls. To dispose of a poor, wretched man so easily to get what they wanted - the death of Jesus.

It made me realize we must "look to it together". Not alone. We must not break a bruised reed, but protect it. Recognize true sorrow and help it to grow. We must always have someone to tell us in our darkest hours "Look to Christ. No matter what, look to Christ". Not to self.

That is the meaning of being living stones.