Judas was a disappointed follower of Jesus. Jesus did not do what he had pinned his hopes on him doing. He wasn't a casual disciple, but a zealot for the restoration of his oppressed nation; to some he would have been a hero. He no doubt was one of Jesus' tight gang, doing crazy miracles, getting his mind blown by his proximity to Someone with massive stage presence. But I think Judas ultimately required the exchanges of power that show tangible advancement; perhaps this is why he took money from the poor box, and why in his frustration he sold Jesus for gold. It was too much for him to wait for a kingdom that seems to work ploddingly and frustratingly through inglorious moments of mercy among the least remarkable in the crowd. Not how he wanted to spend his valuable life. What cuts close to home is the narrow place between passionate hope and passionate bitterness. The more deeply I care and invest, the more vindictive I can become. Only one of the Twelve could betray with a kiss. This is all the more reason to practice examining if I am following Jesus for who he is or Jesus for who I want him to be.
That's harder to discern than one might think. And I take some comfort from the fact that it wasn't obvious to the group as a whole who the Betrayer would be. When Jesus tipped them off that betrayal was imminent, why else would it say that there was deep distress all around and each one at the table was moved to ask in turn, "Is it me, Lord?" As if they all knew, it could very well be. Ha! In most board rooms, I imagine it more likely to hear, "Is it him, Lord? Must be her, surely!" But if we've walked with God's kindness for any length of time, we may have that terribly uncomfortable courage to start walking also with our very own self. The one that knows how tempted we are by self-solace, how tested we are in our affections. In the end, each of the 12 went through the ringer. Judas may have sold Jesus, but Peter denied knowing him multiple times, and all but one tucked his tail and fled while Jesus hung dying.
Here's my glimmer of hope. The only one of that bunch who didn't dissolve when all the lights went out, who found a place to defend love against disappointment, was the youngest guy, John. He made it to the cross, standing with the women, weeping, aghast before Jesus, now ripped open to the dust and the flies. Jesus once nicknamed him and his bro James, "Sons of Thunder", implying their bigger than life passion and style. No milk toast here. But John is SELF-described in his gospel as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." What does that tell me? That maybe there's a correlation between knowing Jesus' love as the crux of my identity and my ability to hold out for Real Goodness through the hellstorm. I wonder if the teenage John, closer to child than man, had fewer personal promises to keep or adult agendas to meet than his compatriots, and so was able to hold anchor in the suffering. He did, surely, suffer loss, confusion and fear; I assume that, like the rest, he asked in self-doubt, "Is it me, Lord?" But somehow he managed to never walk away. John, according to Christian legend, was also the only apostle who wasn't martyred; when they tried to boil him in oil, he couldn't be killed. Instead he finally died as an old man on the island of Patmos after receiving and writing down fantastic apocalyptic visions of Jesus in glory. His letters to the church are the ones almost nauseating in their repetition of love, love, love.
Many years ago, when I first read John's description of himself, I was a little ticked, interpreting it as a bit of arrogance and self-satisfaction. Oh, I had a bunch of living and dying to do before I understood there's no pride in real love. There's only gratitude tinged with the wonder that you absolutely got picked for the team. Like John, even our own name could become a little incidental in the love story, because how God feels about us is the bigger part of who we are, the punchline worth retelling. I want to be able to, from my heart, one day know and tell myself like that.
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