10. The Secret: Betrayed

Before reading the evening lesson, I should probably say a brief word about something we’ve all been hearing about recently and that is the recent publication of an ancient manuscript of the “Gospel of Judas.” The best article I’ve read about this was in the New York Times on April 6th. You can probably download that if you’re interested and I actually have a few copies of that article that I would be happy to share with you if you like.

Here are a few things you should know. Bible scholars have known about the “Gospel of Judas” for a long time because bits and pieces of it were quoted by other ancient authors.[1] So this is not really new news. What is new is that we now have a nearly complete and authentic manuscript of this so-called gospel. That is very exciting from an archeological and historical viewpoint. The most important thing to know, however, is that this gospel was definitely not written by the Judas of the New Testament and no reputable scholar suggests that it was. So it doesn’t shed any useful light on the teachings of the New Testament.

The “Gospel of Judas” originated near the end of the second century or the beginning of the third from within a school of thinking called gnosticism. That is a huge and complicated subject and if you want to read more about it I can loan you some books. But generally speaking, gnostic belief went something like this.[2]

These are generalizations, of course, but they give you a sense of gnostic teaching.

We can see several of these themes in the “Gospel of Judas.” Jesus is supposed to have said to Judas, “You will exceed all of them [the disciples]. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” That means that by betraying Jesus so that he would be crucified, Judas was helping Jesus get rid of his physical flesh. That will liberate the true spiritual self or divine being within Jesus.[3]

Well, this is interesting and it does show that in the early centuries there were widely divergent views of Christian belief. But the “Gospel of Judas” tells us nothing about how the New Testament understood Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. That is what we need to focus on now.

Immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.” So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him. Then they laid hands on him and arrested him. But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to them, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.” All of them deserted him and fled.

A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.

I mentioned last night that we don’t know who wrote Mark’s Gospel and even if it was written by a man named Mark, we don’t know exactly who he was. But tonight’s text ends with a most curious verse. A young man, apparently a follower of Jesus, was caught up by the angry crowd. He was just wearing a linen outer garment of some kind and when they grabbed it he was able to tear loose and run away naked. Why would such a minor detail, not mentioned anywhere else, end up in the Gospel? Many have speculated that this verse was Mark’s signature, a cryptic way of saying that he was there.[4] We cannot know that with certainty but it is an interesting detail.

It also emphasizes that the disciples were in grave danger. The mob was there for Jesus but clearly they were going to grab anyone associated with him. The disciples deserted Jesus in fear but there were reasons to be afraid and it adds a biting irony about the disciples’ fear. They were the ones who had left everything to follow Jesus.[5] Now they must leave everything to escape arrest.[6]

Betrayal is ugly. Any kind of betrayal knocks the wind out of us but to be betrayed by friends strikes even deeper: it numbs the soul and makes life unbearably dark. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give to anyone — and certainly the gift God gives to us in Jesus Christ — is loyalty, the opposite of betrayal. But we are all tempted to betray.

Even children know the importance of loyalty and the ugliness of betrayal. Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest and teaches religion at Piedmont College in rural Georgia. She also is adjunct professors of spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Rev. Taylor tells a story of how, when she was eight years old, she and her best friend Mary Perkins decided to become blood sisters. It reminded me of what I did with my best friend Donny. Many of you probably did something similar when you were young.

Barbara doesn’t remember how they got the idea but she and Mary just knew that it was important. They each had biological sisters but their love for them paled next to their love for each other. So one day Mary borrowed a needle from her mother’s sewing basket. Barbara snuck a matchbook from her father’s dresser. They met in the woods behind the post office at high noon on a Saturday. First, they sterilized the needle with the flame of a match and then held out their forefingers and swore to be loyal to each other forever. If one of them hollered for help, the other would come running. They would rescue each other, defend each other, and love each other above all other loves.

So having solemnly promised these things, they each stuck the needle in their fingers, squeezed out a little drop of blood, and pressed their fingers hard together, grinning as they imagined feeling the tingle of each other’s blood in their veins.[7]

A couple of hours before the crowd with swords and clubs, led by Judas, came to find Jesus, the Lord had promised his disciples that his blood would be given for them. Mark describes the last supper like this: “[Jesus] took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14.23-24) Jesus pledged loyalty with his very blood. But all who drank it that night deserted him, chief among them the betrayer — Judas.

How could Judas do it? And how could the rest of them, claiming they would always remain loyal, scatter like we know they did? It boggles the imagination and reveals the utter ugliness of betrayal.

Of course, most of the blame falls on Judas, a name synonymous now with betrayal. Both in the New Testament and down through history, Judas has become the ultimate bad guy. No where is this more explicit than in Dante’s Inferno, that great classic of medieval theology. Dante pictures Hell as a horrible pit around the edge of which are nine descending circles. At the very bottom is Satan, frozen from the waist down in a lake of ice. The head of this hideous chief demon has three faces and in each mouth … well, here’s how Dante describes it:

That is Dante’s gruesome way of describing how reprehensible Judas’ betrayal was.[9]

But we need to be careful here. For when we make Judas so evil, it’s too easy to excuse Peter’s thrice-spoken denial, or the desertion of the other disciples, or our own disloyalty to God. It’s easy to blame Judas but sometimes that keeps us from looking at ourselves. We are all betrayers.

Maybe you don’t think that’s true but to me it’s pretty obvious. Barbara Taylor says it is the custom in some churches to read out loud the whole Passion story during Holy Week. Someone reads the part of Peter and Pontius Pilate and Jesus. The congregation, of course, reads the lines of the crowd, the parts marked “ALL.” The crowd has such lines as “He deserves death,” “Let him be crucified,” and, with dripping sarcasm, “Hail, King of the Jews!”

One time when Rev. Taylor read with the crowd, she almost choked on the words. “Crucify him!” she whispered, meaning to shout but the words all but gagged her. She didn’t want to believe that she would have said such a thing about the real Jesus but she had to face the ugly truth that odds are she would have done as all the rest did.[10]

The remarkable thing about the last days and hours of Jesus is a paradox in faith and life. The chosen few, the ones who made the commitment to drop all and follow Christ, are the very ones who paved the way to his death. Judas betrays Jesus and the others flee from him. The inner circle of disciples fails to keep watch with him in Gethsemane and Peter denies Jesus three times. These are sober reminders that the enemy is within.

Is it not revealing that a few hours before Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, all the disciples were gathered at table? Jesus said that one of them would betray him. Remember what they all said? “Surely, not I?” (Mark 14.19b) They all knew they were betrayers, even if they denied it. Friends, our chief problem is not the unbelief of those who have rejected Jesus, but the unbelief in our own hearts. We claim to be Christian but our biggest struggle is not opposing the forces of unbelief in our society and culture, but in resisting the unbelief in our own lives.

If you are not convinced, forget about what you may or may not have done 2,000 years ago and think honestly about what you did yesterday or the day before or last week. In all your moments last week did you love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength? (Mark 12.30-31) Jesus said that is the greatest commandment and the second greatest is to love your neighbor as yourself. Did you do that in every moment last week? I didn’t and I suspect you didn’t either. If we’ve failed in love of God or love of neighbor, we have betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the purposes of this intense week is to focus on where we compromise our faith. The point is not to make us feel bad. The point is to ask serious questions. Where have we given up on Christ? Where have we gotten lazy and self-content? We’re not evil. But disloyalty happens amongst Jesus’ friends too. We are his friends. But where are we disloyal?

Asking that question honestly helps us see why it is important that Judas was at the table along with the other disciples. Before he led the mob to Jesus, Judas was at table. Knowing what Judas would do, Jesus did not exclude him from the table. As one person said, “[Jesus] set a place for [Judas], he ordered food for him, he ate out of the same dish with him. Judas was included until he excluded himself.”[11] In other words, when Jesus raised up the cup and said its fluid was the blood of the covenant for the forgiveness of sins, he wasn’t talking to people with a short list of minor sins. He was talking to people who deny and ignore and betray. People who gave him over with a kiss, people who scattered into the night when trouble came. Jesus was talking to people who knew enough to be loyal but betrayed him anyway.

He was also talking to people like you and me and saying, in effect, “Look, I know who you are and what you do and I love you and forgive you anyway. Here’s my blood to prove it.”

[1] Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha: Gospel and Related Writings, rev. ed., trans. R. McL. Wilson (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991) 386-387.

[2] Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 255-256.

[3] John Noble Wilford and Laurie Goodstein, “Gospel of Judas’ Surfaces After 1,700 Years.” www.nytimes.com/ 2006/04/06/science/06cnd-judas, Internet, 6 Apr. 2006.

[4] C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966) 438-439.

[5] Mark 10.28: “Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’”

[6] Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. VIII (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) 710.

[7] Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995) 57-58.

[8] Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Mentor, 1954) 284-285. Ciardi remarks that various interpretations of Satan’s three faces have been proposed. What is common to all explanations is that they are perversions of the qualities of the Trinity. The final round of Hell’s ninth circle is named Judecca after Judas Iscariot. Sinners here are permanently frozen in ice because they were treacherous to their masters, the ultimate sin of malice — the betrayal of love (God). They are forever encased in their sin of coldness. The ultimate sinners of this kind of malice spend eternity being chewed and flayed by Satan’s teeth. The greatest sinner of the world is Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. In Satan’s other mouths are Brutus and Cassius, both of whom betrayed Julius Caesar, founder of Dante’s beloved Roman Empire. (Dante’s guide through Hell was Virgil, author of the Aeneid, the epic poem of the Roman Empire).

[9] Dante included Brutus and Cassius because, in his understanding of Hell being retribution for the wrong done on Earth, betrayal is the ultimate sin and, therefore, deserves the worst punishment. To betray one’s master or one to whom loyalty is owed is to betray love which ultimately betrays God. Cassius and Brutus were the damned exemplars of betrayal in the classic world, Judas in the Christian world.

[10] Barbara Brown Taylor, Mixed Blessings (Boston: Cowley Publications, 199) 65.

[11] Taylor, Gospel Medicine, 63.