Trust. It may be one of the hardest things in the world to come by. And it’s no wonder. We have to teach our children not to trust. You know the litany. Don’t trust a stranger who offers you candy. Don’t trust a stranger who asks you to help find a lost dog. Don’t trust a stranger who offers you a ride. Don’t trust a stranger who asks you for directions. We have to teach them not to trust their friends—which is what it means to resist peer pressure when drugs or alcohol or sex or other risky behavior is involved. We have to teach our children not to trust their priest or minister, their coach or teacher and even their parents when a line is crossed from affectionate touching to sexual exploitation. We have a moral responsibility to teach our children not to trust, so it’s no wonder that trust is becoming so hard to come by anymore.
Years of experience on college campuses has taught me to teach collegians not to trust a date. Date rape is now a regular feature of college social life. It happens every weekend and weeknights too. And for God’s sake, never trust an alum for drinks at a homecoming event. Colleges are careful not to advertise that homecoming on campuses all over the country is prime time for sexual predators. But there is another aspect of not trusting that is being taught in college. The practical, pragmatic, safety-conscious parental advice to our children not to trust is being transformed by their professors into an academic and intellectual worldview. In one form or another, it has crept across the curriculum, so that even where it has no place in the subject matter, it has infected the profession and the professor. It is still all the rage after decades of dominating the academic and intellectual landscape. It is a worldview driven by suspicion. In a nutshell it says, “Nothing can be trusted.” Nothing that is written, said or done can be trusted because the motives of the doer, speaker or writer are always suspect. It is a perspective on the world that you and I have come to breathe and eat and drink and sleep: a worldview of suspicion that leads to skepticism and cynicism.
The French philosopher Paul Ricouer, a favorite of mine, for what it’s worth, coined the term that has become all the rage. “The hermeneutics of suspicion,” Ricouer said, and the academic study of literature, philosophy, political theory, and religion have never been the same since. The practical, pragmatic parental advice not to trust that we give our children in our concern for their safety and well-being has become an intellectual fetish among academics and intellectuals the world over. Don’t blame Ricouer. What he actually said was this. Careful reading and responsible interpretation require what he called a “double motivation.” The “double motivation” was this. In careful reading and responsible interpretation, you must engage in a “willingness to suspect” on the one hand and a “willingness to listen” on the other. Hear the “double motivation”? Suspect and listen. You must take what he called the “vow of rigor” on the one hand and the “vow of obedience” on the other. Hear the “double motivation”? Be rigorous and be obedient. Scrutinize the text rigorously and subject yourself to it obediently. But a not-so-funny thing happened as Ricouer’s suggestion began to circulate among academics and intellectuals. In literature, philosophy, political theory, religion, and a number of other fields, scholars and their hangers-on raced to champion the “willingness to suspect” while rejecting the “willingness to listen.” They swore their allegiance to the “vow of rigor” while refusing to take the “vow of obedience.” By reducing Ricouer’s “double motivation” to the single-mindedness of suspicion alone, not trusting has been elevated to an overriding principle and an intellectual obsession that shapes one’s every interaction and every interpretation. So it should come as no surprise that trust is one of the hardest things in the world to come by any more.
All of which leaves diligent readers of the Bible in something of a predicament. Over and over again, the Bible and the Christian tradition call us to trust. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart,” says Proverbs 3:5. “Trust in the LORD forever,” says Isaiah 26:4.” And “Happy are those who make the LORD their trust,” says Psalm 40:4. I can already hear the suspicion floating around in the gray matter of some of us. It has become second nature for so many of us. “Happiness through trusting?” we ask. “What about the times I trusted and got burned for it? I trusted, and I got cheated. I trusted, and I got used. I trusted, and I got hurt. And now this Mary-sunshine psalmist and this naïve ninny preacher say, ‘Happy are those who make the Lord their trust.’ Yeah, well. It didn’t quite work out that way for me. Thanks, but no thanks.”
Let me tell you about someone in the congregation I serve, a friend who a couple years ago or so came to me to tell me of his struggle with a potentially devastating diagnosis for which he was undergoing testing. “I have prayed long and hard,” he said, “that everything will be all right. But I’m scared. I’m really scared. This could kill me. This could be the end, right here,” he said. We talked for a while about the plans he was making for his family—the conversations he had already had with his wife and the conversations he was planning to have with his children, and we prayed together. A week or so later, he came back to see me. The test results weren’t in yet, and he still didn’t know what he was up against, but he said that the most remarkable thing had happened since we had talked. He had continued to pray, he said, and one night while he lay in bed awake unable to sleep because he was too scared, it came to him, he said. “I had this overwhelming sense that even if everything is not going to be all right, I will be all right,” he told me. “Even if the diagnosis turns out to be devastating, even if this kills me,” he said, “I’ll be all right.” He went on to say, “I said two years ago when I was baptized that I was giving my life to God. Now it’s time for me to believe my own words and live by them. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay, and I’m going to be okay, no matter how this turns out.” We hugged each other, and he left. Now, I’m grateful to tell you that the tests turned out “all right,” but that’s not the point. The point is that in a terrifying encounter with his own mortality, while staring the prospect of his own death straight in the eye, he gave his life over to God—he trusted God, so that even before he knew how it would turn out, for good or for ill, he could say with the psalmist, “I waited patiently for the LORD; [and God] inclined to me and heard my cry. [The LORD] drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock. . . . [God] put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God” (Psalm 40:1-2).
In the end, the trust of which the Psalms and the Proverbs, the gospels and the epistles and the apocalypse speak, is not the trust of a Mary-sunshine naïve ninny. It is the trust of someone who in the deepest, darkest hour of her existence and his encounter with the end of existence has found that even if no one else or nothing else in all creation can be trusted, God can. It’s not as though we don’t go through our times of suspicion, skepticism and cynicism, even where God is concerned. We do. But the testimony of our lives—and even the testimony of our deaths—is that God can be trusted, so that even when it is not all right, we discover that it will be all right. “I said when I was baptized that I was giving my life to God. It’s time to believe my own words and live by them.”
My friend’s terrifying encounter with his own mortality has resulted in a confession of his trust in God much like the confession of the psalmist in Psalm 40: “I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD. I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love, and your faithfulness from the great congregation” (vv 1-3,9-10). Now let me tell you what typically happens in me when I hear that kind of confession. Remember, I’m an offspring of Paul Ricouer; I’m a child of my time, a student of my teachers and teacher of my students on whom I have pressed the willingness to suspect and the vow of rigor. When I hear a confession like the one in Psalm 40, I say, “Well, I’m happy for you. But I happen to be aware of thousands of other people, millions even, tens of millions, for whom it did not turn out so well.” I am infected and affected like all the rest by suspicion and skepticism. But if I pause long enough to listen after I have been suspicious, if I linger long enough to take the vow of obedience as well as the vow of rigor, I hear the psalmist say that this confession of trust did not arise out of sunshine and light—it rose from a cry, it came up from “the desolate pit, out of the miry bog” of suffering, disappointment, pain, addiction, misery. It was there in the desolate pit, while still in the miry bog, lying awake at night too scared to sleep that the psalmist discovered the deliverance, the saving help, the faithfulness and salvation, the steadfast love of God so real and so present that that even if it didn’t turn out all right, it would be all right.
That’s the Good News that we are called to share with each other “in the great congregation” and with our world outside the walls of the church. Our testimony will inevitably fall on mostly suspicious minds, skeptical ears and cynical hearts. But the testimony of our words and of our lives will be genuine because it will have passed the test of the “double motivation”: the willingness to suspect and the willingness to listen, the vow of rigor and the vow of obedience. We will have learned who not to trust and who to trust. And we will have learned that even if it is not all right, it will be all right. Then we can sing with the great congregation the words of an Irish psalmist, “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me, save that thou art. . . . Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision, O Ruler of all.” That’s trust.
This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Mark 12:28-34--"The Stewardship of Love"
Not so long ago, when I was a still professor of religion instead of a mere practitioner of it, I would tell my students at Furman University that the two great frontiers for theology in our time are astrophysics and neuroscience. No other field of study in our time gets any closer to reading the mind of God, in Stephen Hawking’s wonderful turn of phrase, than astrophysics does. But in addition to reading the mind of God, theology must plumb the depths of the human psyche as well, so the other frontier for theology in our time is the study of the structures that underlie the human mind. Brain science takes us closer to the roots of theology than any other field of study in our time. Exploring the mind of God in astrophysics and the underlying structures of the human mind in neuroscience are the great frontiers for theology. In the meantime, however, what most of us feel that we need most in our lives is something we can carry away from this place that will help us recover from the week that we just had and get through the week that lies ahead. So come with me for a few minutes to the grocery store. That’s where we usually go to get the things we ran out of last week and need for next week, isn’t it?
I did a double take as I walked down the aisle. I was passing the magazines when one particular cover caught my eye. It was a dark-haired couple in a romantic embrace, eyes closed, face to face, very nearly—but not quite—lips to lips. The photo was slightly grainy, sultry, steamy looking. In the bottom right corner superimposed in red letters on a field of black was the word “Love.” Maybe Time would run this cover or The National Enquirer. But there was no mistaking the fact that this blissfully sensuous and romantic moment was framed by a bold yellow border that communicated as clearly and as incongruously as the white capital letters across the top: National Geographic. National Geographic? What kind of geography is this? Sign me up! I’ll become a geography major first thing tomorrow. I did a double take and walked on by. After all, it wasn’t love that brought me out to the grocery store at 10:00 on a weeknight after having been up since 4 a.m. It was children’s Tylenol, a gallon of milk, and 0.7 mm lead for a middle-schooler’s mechanical pencil. Only to have my attention distracted by a grainy photograph in a yellow border. “What is it I’m here for?” I had to ask myself. “Keep moving,” I said. “You’re not here for ‘Love’—or National Geographic either.” So I waited until the next time I was in the grocery store—about three days later. A gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and National Geographic, the February issue just in time for Valentine’s Day.
“Love: The Chemical Reaction” was the cover story. This is National Geographic for a new generation of reader. Lauren Slater’s article was a blend of Cosmopolitan, Anthropology Today, and Scientific American. And Jodi Cobb’s photographs from Argentina, Cancun, Italy, Las Vegas, Pennsylvania and Ohio were vintage Geographic with a Generation Next edge. The article introduced the reader to anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University who studies “the biochemical pathways of love in all its manifestations: lust, romance, attachment, the way they wax and wane” (p. 35). It turns out that the chemical pathways in the brain that light up when you are “madly in love” are those that are associated with a chemical neurotransmitter called dopamine. “Dopamine [is a chemical in the brain that] creates intense energy, exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. [Dopamine] is why,” writes Slater, “when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slope ordinarily too steep for your skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks, which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don’t” (ibid.).
Donatella Marazziti is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pisa, in Italy. She studies another chemical pathway of love. Her studies of people who could be identified as “passionately in love” have shown that their blood levels of the chemical serotonin are 40% lower than normal, which corresponds to level of serotonin exhibited by people who have been diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. In the best one-liner in the article Slater writes, “Love and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart” (p. 38). “More seriously,” she writes, “if the chemically altered state induced by romantic love is akin to a mental illness or a drug-induced euphoria, exposing yourself for too long could result in psychological damage” (p. 44). In fact, “Studies around the world confirm that indeed passion usually ends. Its conclusion is as common as its initial flare. No wonder some cultures think selecting a lifelong mate based on something so fleeting is folly” (pp. 43-44).
I still remember the day last year that our pastoral staff sat looking at each other in shock when we heard the news that a well-respected young colleague of ours at another church was separated from his wife of five years because they just didn’t have “the same chemistry” any more. Duh. The chemistry of courtship is an unsustainable imbalance in the brain more akin to mental illness than to any other human condition. The “chemistry” of a couple is literally different after four or five years of intimacy. Sustainable loving relationships inevitably move “from the dopamine-drenched state of romantic love to the relative quiet of an oxytocin-induced attachment,” writes Slater. “Oxytocin is a hormone that promotes a feeling of connectedness, bonding. It is released when we hug our long-term spouses, or our children. It is released when a mother nurses her infant” (p. 45). We tend to speak of the “chemistry” of love in a metaphorical sense, but it turns out that the literal chemistry of a long-term relationship is different from the heady brew of a romantic chase. There is less dopamine in play. There is more serotonin and oxytocin in use. It’s no wonder that our concept of love is sometimes so confused. The chemistry of our love changes over time.
Now lest you think that it was my intent this morning to do a dull imitation of Bill Nye the science guy, let’s take a look at the love that Jesus of Nazareth commends in Mark 12:28-34 as “not far from the kingdom of God.” Love for God—with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength—sounds almost serotonin-starved obsessive-compulsive, doesn’t it?—and love for neighbor as yourself—sounds oxytocin rich, producing attachment, connectedness, bonding with others, doesn’t it? The gospels offer us powerful images, mental pictures, of this bi-focal love—love for God and love for neighbor—as it is defined in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength was defined and modeled by Jesus in the gospel of John when our Lord prayed,
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. . . . so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:20-23).
Loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength was defined and modeled by Jesus in Gethsemane when our Lord prayed, “Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not my will but yours be done” (Matthew 26:39). Loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength was defined and modeled by Jesus on Golgotha when from the cross he cried, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Loving one’s neighbor as oneself was defined and modeled by Jesus in Galilee when he provided for the poor and for the poor in spirit. Whether they were penniless lepers or wealthy tax collectors, a promiscuous Samaritan woman or a commanding Roman centurion, rich or poor, powerless or powerful they were neighbors one and all, as Jesus modeled and defined love.
The Jewish scribe in this morning’s gospel lesson got the point. “You are right, Teacher. . . . ‘to love [God] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” As defined and modeled by Jesus of Nazareth, it is the stewardship of love that is “much more important than all” other offerings. If all that you and I offer God is money, then we have missed the mark and missed it badly, because what God wants from each of us much more than money is heart and soul and mind and strength and neighborliness before selfishness. Chemically speaking, this means we must be even more careful with our dopamine than we are with our dollars. We must be even more sensible with our serotonin than we are with our cents. And above all, we must be overflowing with our oxytocin.
You see, it turns out that love is exactly what I went to the grocery store at 10:00 that night after having been up since 4 a.m. It wasn’t the dopamine-drenched, serotonin-suppressed love of the first four years or so of Bev’s and my romance. Instead, it was the love of 28 years of marriage and three children and all the joy and anguish, all the anger and tenderness, all the heartache and happiness, that comes with the chemistry and the commitment that we call love. So the next time you ask yourself, “What is it I’m here for?” let me suggest that you consider answering this way: I’m here for love in all its manifestations, and above all love for God with heart and soul and mind and strength and love for my neighbor as myself.
(An excerpt from this sermon appeared in "Letters," National Geographic 209:6 [June 2006], p. 7)
This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
I did a double take as I walked down the aisle. I was passing the magazines when one particular cover caught my eye. It was a dark-haired couple in a romantic embrace, eyes closed, face to face, very nearly—but not quite—lips to lips. The photo was slightly grainy, sultry, steamy looking. In the bottom right corner superimposed in red letters on a field of black was the word “Love.” Maybe Time would run this cover or The National Enquirer. But there was no mistaking the fact that this blissfully sensuous and romantic moment was framed by a bold yellow border that communicated as clearly and as incongruously as the white capital letters across the top: National Geographic. National Geographic? What kind of geography is this? Sign me up! I’ll become a geography major first thing tomorrow. I did a double take and walked on by. After all, it wasn’t love that brought me out to the grocery store at 10:00 on a weeknight after having been up since 4 a.m. It was children’s Tylenol, a gallon of milk, and 0.7 mm lead for a middle-schooler’s mechanical pencil. Only to have my attention distracted by a grainy photograph in a yellow border. “What is it I’m here for?” I had to ask myself. “Keep moving,” I said. “You’re not here for ‘Love’—or National Geographic either.” So I waited until the next time I was in the grocery store—about three days later. A gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and National Geographic, the February issue just in time for Valentine’s Day.
“Love: The Chemical Reaction” was the cover story. This is National Geographic for a new generation of reader. Lauren Slater’s article was a blend of Cosmopolitan, Anthropology Today, and Scientific American. And Jodi Cobb’s photographs from Argentina, Cancun, Italy, Las Vegas, Pennsylvania and Ohio were vintage Geographic with a Generation Next edge. The article introduced the reader to anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University who studies “the biochemical pathways of love in all its manifestations: lust, romance, attachment, the way they wax and wane” (p. 35). It turns out that the chemical pathways in the brain that light up when you are “madly in love” are those that are associated with a chemical neurotransmitter called dopamine. “Dopamine [is a chemical in the brain that] creates intense energy, exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. [Dopamine] is why,” writes Slater, “when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slope ordinarily too steep for your skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks, which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don’t” (ibid.).
Donatella Marazziti is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pisa, in Italy. She studies another chemical pathway of love. Her studies of people who could be identified as “passionately in love” have shown that their blood levels of the chemical serotonin are 40% lower than normal, which corresponds to level of serotonin exhibited by people who have been diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. In the best one-liner in the article Slater writes, “Love and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart” (p. 38). “More seriously,” she writes, “if the chemically altered state induced by romantic love is akin to a mental illness or a drug-induced euphoria, exposing yourself for too long could result in psychological damage” (p. 44). In fact, “Studies around the world confirm that indeed passion usually ends. Its conclusion is as common as its initial flare. No wonder some cultures think selecting a lifelong mate based on something so fleeting is folly” (pp. 43-44).
I still remember the day last year that our pastoral staff sat looking at each other in shock when we heard the news that a well-respected young colleague of ours at another church was separated from his wife of five years because they just didn’t have “the same chemistry” any more. Duh. The chemistry of courtship is an unsustainable imbalance in the brain more akin to mental illness than to any other human condition. The “chemistry” of a couple is literally different after four or five years of intimacy. Sustainable loving relationships inevitably move “from the dopamine-drenched state of romantic love to the relative quiet of an oxytocin-induced attachment,” writes Slater. “Oxytocin is a hormone that promotes a feeling of connectedness, bonding. It is released when we hug our long-term spouses, or our children. It is released when a mother nurses her infant” (p. 45). We tend to speak of the “chemistry” of love in a metaphorical sense, but it turns out that the literal chemistry of a long-term relationship is different from the heady brew of a romantic chase. There is less dopamine in play. There is more serotonin and oxytocin in use. It’s no wonder that our concept of love is sometimes so confused. The chemistry of our love changes over time.
Now lest you think that it was my intent this morning to do a dull imitation of Bill Nye the science guy, let’s take a look at the love that Jesus of Nazareth commends in Mark 12:28-34 as “not far from the kingdom of God.” Love for God—with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength—sounds almost serotonin-starved obsessive-compulsive, doesn’t it?—and love for neighbor as yourself—sounds oxytocin rich, producing attachment, connectedness, bonding with others, doesn’t it? The gospels offer us powerful images, mental pictures, of this bi-focal love—love for God and love for neighbor—as it is defined in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength was defined and modeled by Jesus in the gospel of John when our Lord prayed,
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. . . . so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:20-23).
Loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength was defined and modeled by Jesus in Gethsemane when our Lord prayed, “Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not my will but yours be done” (Matthew 26:39). Loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength was defined and modeled by Jesus on Golgotha when from the cross he cried, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Loving one’s neighbor as oneself was defined and modeled by Jesus in Galilee when he provided for the poor and for the poor in spirit. Whether they were penniless lepers or wealthy tax collectors, a promiscuous Samaritan woman or a commanding Roman centurion, rich or poor, powerless or powerful they were neighbors one and all, as Jesus modeled and defined love.
The Jewish scribe in this morning’s gospel lesson got the point. “You are right, Teacher. . . . ‘to love [God] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” As defined and modeled by Jesus of Nazareth, it is the stewardship of love that is “much more important than all” other offerings. If all that you and I offer God is money, then we have missed the mark and missed it badly, because what God wants from each of us much more than money is heart and soul and mind and strength and neighborliness before selfishness. Chemically speaking, this means we must be even more careful with our dopamine than we are with our dollars. We must be even more sensible with our serotonin than we are with our cents. And above all, we must be overflowing with our oxytocin.
You see, it turns out that love is exactly what I went to the grocery store at 10:00 that night after having been up since 4 a.m. It wasn’t the dopamine-drenched, serotonin-suppressed love of the first four years or so of Bev’s and my romance. Instead, it was the love of 28 years of marriage and three children and all the joy and anguish, all the anger and tenderness, all the heartache and happiness, that comes with the chemistry and the commitment that we call love. So the next time you ask yourself, “What is it I’m here for?” let me suggest that you consider answering this way: I’m here for love in all its manifestations, and above all love for God with heart and soul and mind and strength and love for my neighbor as myself.
(An excerpt from this sermon appeared in "Letters," National Geographic 209:6 [June 2006], p. 7)
This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
Matthew 26:47-56--"The Trouble with Judas"
Few characters in the Bible have been subjected to any more scathing criticism than the disciple of Jesus whose name was “Judas, the one called Judas Iscariot” (Matt 26:14). “He was a thief,” says the gospel of John. He was the treasurer of the disciples—“he kept the common purse,” says John 12:6, and he would “steal what was put into it.” But most of us don’t remember Judas as a simple thief, an embezzler, a perpetrator of white-collar crime. Instead, we remember him for being “the betrayer” as Matthew 26:48 is translated, the disciple who handed Jesus over to the authorities who arrested him in the garden of Gethsemane.
The gospel of Luke says that while Jesus and the disciples were in Jerusalem together just before the Passover, “Satan entered into Judas” who then “went away” from Jesus to confer with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them.”(22:3-4). To explain how a member of Jesus’ own hand-picked inner circle could have turned him over to those who “were looking for a way to put him to death” (v 2), the gospel of Luke gives us the old “the-devil-made-him-do-it” explanation. The gospel of John also invokes the devil, but with a very different take. “Did I not choose you, the twelve?” Jesus asks in John 6:70, “Yet one of you is a devil.” From accusation—“he was a thief”—to demonization—“one of you is a devil,” few characters in the Bible come off any worse than Judas in Scripture and in tradition alike.
One of the fascinating things about Scripture and tradition alike is that this prevailing opinion of Judas is not unanimous. Carefully timed and orchestrated to coincide with Holy Week and Easter, the National Geographic Society announced the release last April of a long-lost early Christian document referred to as “The Gospel of Judas.” The society has brought this ancient but non-canonical gospel to light with a television special on the National Geographic channel, with a feature article in the May 2006 issue of the National Geographic magazine, two books about it, and a website on which you can view photographs of it as well as a Coptic transcription and English translation (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/index.html). This “Gospel of Judas” is a third-century copy of a document that has been known about since the second century when Irenaus, the bishop of Lyon, mentioned it and described some of its content in about the year 180. This only known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas, was discovered in the 1970s in Egypt and finally came into scholars’ hands through the black market in antiquities five years ago.
In this gospel, Judas, instead of being vilified as a thief and demonized as a betrayer, is the only one of the twelve apostles who gets it. “I know who you are and where you have come from,” says Judas to Jesus, in response to which Jesus draws Judas aside with the invitation, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom.” Jesus says to Judas, “[Come], that I may teach you about [secrets] that no person [has] ever seen.” And so Jesus instructs his intrepid follower concerning a great invisible spirit—the angelic Self-generated, about the divine luminaries—first 72 of them and then 360, about the cosmos, chaos, and the underworld and about the creation and destiny of humanity. Judas’ destiny is this, according to the Jesus of the gospel of Judas: “You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” And with that commission from Jesus, Judas went out and “handed him over.” And so ends the gospel of Judas.
Now, let’s be very clear about the value of this copy of the Gospel of Judas. It’s priceless. It once was lost, but now it’s found. But this gospel offers no new information about the historical Judas or the historical Jesus either one. What it transmits is the way of thinking and believing of a stream of the Christian tradition that thrived in the second and third centuries that is commonly known as Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, "knowledge," because of the gnostics’ emphasis on the secret knowledge, “the mysteries of the kingdom,” “the secrets that no person has ever seen”—except the Gnostics, of course. Like Judas in this second-century gospel, they got it right, and everyone else has missed it. That doesn’t tell us a thing about Judas or Jesus either one, but it reinforces what we already know about second- and third-century Christian Gnosticism. And it also reminds us that in Scripture and tradition alike, not everyone has vilified or demonized Judas.
In the gospel of Matthew, even as Jesus is being handed over to the authorities, he says to Judas, “Friend, do what you are here to do” (26:50). Do you hear that? “Friend.” “Do what you are here to do.” Let me very candid with you. This Jesus in Matthew 26:50 is the Jesus to whom I have given my life over. This Jesus who said to Judas, “Friend,” is the Jesus I have chosen to trust with my very life both now and forever. “Friend,” he said. Matthew 26:50 is the best illustration in Scripture that no truer words have ever been spoken of Jesus than those in Matthew 11:19, where he is disparagingly described as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” I don’t need the Jesus of the Gospel of Judas, who will be my friend when I get it right. It’s the Jesus of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who stands by even those who fail to stand by him. That’s a Jesus worth following; that’s a Jesus you can trust with your life—and with your death as well. A friend of tax collectors and sinners—and devils. I trust in a Jesus who stands by those who fail to stand by him, a Jesus whom I can count on to say “friend” to me even when I am at my most devilish worst.
The sad thing about Judas is not that he handed Jesus over to the authorities. The Jesus of Matthew’s gospel suggests that it could not have happened any other way. In vv 56-57 Jesus says, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen this way?” That’s why Jesus says to Judas, “Do what you must do.” It is as though Jesus says to Judas, “The time has come. This is no longer in my hands or your hands, Judas, but in the hands of God.” How much it is in the hands of God rather than Judas becomes clear when you consider that the very same verb that our English translations usually render “betray” when it is used of Judas is used of God in Romans 8:32, when Paul writes, God “who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us”? You wouldn’t say, “God betrayed him,” now would you? But God handed him over, gave him up, as Judas did. The verb that English translations usually render as “betray” when it is used of Judas is used of Jesus himself in Galatians 2:20, when Paul writes, “I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” You wouldn’t say, “Jesus betrayed himself,” now would you? But Jesus gave himself over, gave himself up, as Judas did. That’s why Jesus said to Judas, “Friend, do what you must do, and I will do what I must do.”
Jesus did not play the blame game with Judas or with anyone else. Later layers of Scripture and tradition alike will blame, vilify and demonize Judas. If blame is your game, then have at Judas with all the self-righteous indignation you can muster. Because the funny thing is, the worse that you and all the others for centuries before you make Judas out to be, all the more amazing is the love of God in Jesus Christ who in the middle of it all looked Judas in the eye and called him “friend.” And that’s the saddest thing about Judas. Overcome by remorse, eaten up by guilt, undone by his inability to trust Jesus at his word, “Friend,” Judas went out and hanged himself, the gospel of Matthew tells us. But it didn’t have to end that way. It never does. Judas was not alone in his failure. Matthew 26:56 makes that very clear when it says, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.” They all failed to stand by Jesus that night, not just Judas. And yet, on resurrection morning, according Matthew 28:10, the Risen Lord said to the two Mary’s “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” The Risen Christ calls those who had deserted him in his agony “his brothers.” Had Judas but trusted Jesus at his word, “Friend,” it would not have been eleven but a band of twelve brothers who “went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” The trouble with Judas is not that he betrayed Jesus. The trouble with Judas is that he just could not bring himself to trust Jesus enough to believe that Jesus would still call him a “friend” and a “brother” after they both had done what they both must do.
This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
The gospel of Luke says that while Jesus and the disciples were in Jerusalem together just before the Passover, “Satan entered into Judas” who then “went away” from Jesus to confer with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them.”(22:3-4). To explain how a member of Jesus’ own hand-picked inner circle could have turned him over to those who “were looking for a way to put him to death” (v 2), the gospel of Luke gives us the old “the-devil-made-him-do-it” explanation. The gospel of John also invokes the devil, but with a very different take. “Did I not choose you, the twelve?” Jesus asks in John 6:70, “Yet one of you is a devil.” From accusation—“he was a thief”—to demonization—“one of you is a devil,” few characters in the Bible come off any worse than Judas in Scripture and in tradition alike.
One of the fascinating things about Scripture and tradition alike is that this prevailing opinion of Judas is not unanimous. Carefully timed and orchestrated to coincide with Holy Week and Easter, the National Geographic Society announced the release last April of a long-lost early Christian document referred to as “The Gospel of Judas.” The society has brought this ancient but non-canonical gospel to light with a television special on the National Geographic channel, with a feature article in the May 2006 issue of the National Geographic magazine, two books about it, and a website on which you can view photographs of it as well as a Coptic transcription and English translation (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/index.html). This “Gospel of Judas” is a third-century copy of a document that has been known about since the second century when Irenaus, the bishop of Lyon, mentioned it and described some of its content in about the year 180. This only known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas, was discovered in the 1970s in Egypt and finally came into scholars’ hands through the black market in antiquities five years ago.
In this gospel, Judas, instead of being vilified as a thief and demonized as a betrayer, is the only one of the twelve apostles who gets it. “I know who you are and where you have come from,” says Judas to Jesus, in response to which Jesus draws Judas aside with the invitation, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom.” Jesus says to Judas, “[Come], that I may teach you about [secrets] that no person [has] ever seen.” And so Jesus instructs his intrepid follower concerning a great invisible spirit—the angelic Self-generated, about the divine luminaries—first 72 of them and then 360, about the cosmos, chaos, and the underworld and about the creation and destiny of humanity. Judas’ destiny is this, according to the Jesus of the gospel of Judas: “You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” And with that commission from Jesus, Judas went out and “handed him over.” And so ends the gospel of Judas.
Now, let’s be very clear about the value of this copy of the Gospel of Judas. It’s priceless. It once was lost, but now it’s found. But this gospel offers no new information about the historical Judas or the historical Jesus either one. What it transmits is the way of thinking and believing of a stream of the Christian tradition that thrived in the second and third centuries that is commonly known as Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, "knowledge," because of the gnostics’ emphasis on the secret knowledge, “the mysteries of the kingdom,” “the secrets that no person has ever seen”—except the Gnostics, of course. Like Judas in this second-century gospel, they got it right, and everyone else has missed it. That doesn’t tell us a thing about Judas or Jesus either one, but it reinforces what we already know about second- and third-century Christian Gnosticism. And it also reminds us that in Scripture and tradition alike, not everyone has vilified or demonized Judas.
In the gospel of Matthew, even as Jesus is being handed over to the authorities, he says to Judas, “Friend, do what you are here to do” (26:50). Do you hear that? “Friend.” “Do what you are here to do.” Let me very candid with you. This Jesus in Matthew 26:50 is the Jesus to whom I have given my life over. This Jesus who said to Judas, “Friend,” is the Jesus I have chosen to trust with my very life both now and forever. “Friend,” he said. Matthew 26:50 is the best illustration in Scripture that no truer words have ever been spoken of Jesus than those in Matthew 11:19, where he is disparagingly described as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” I don’t need the Jesus of the Gospel of Judas, who will be my friend when I get it right. It’s the Jesus of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who stands by even those who fail to stand by him. That’s a Jesus worth following; that’s a Jesus you can trust with your life—and with your death as well. A friend of tax collectors and sinners—and devils. I trust in a Jesus who stands by those who fail to stand by him, a Jesus whom I can count on to say “friend” to me even when I am at my most devilish worst.
The sad thing about Judas is not that he handed Jesus over to the authorities. The Jesus of Matthew’s gospel suggests that it could not have happened any other way. In vv 56-57 Jesus says, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen this way?” That’s why Jesus says to Judas, “Do what you must do.” It is as though Jesus says to Judas, “The time has come. This is no longer in my hands or your hands, Judas, but in the hands of God.” How much it is in the hands of God rather than Judas becomes clear when you consider that the very same verb that our English translations usually render “betray” when it is used of Judas is used of God in Romans 8:32, when Paul writes, God “who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us”? You wouldn’t say, “God betrayed him,” now would you? But God handed him over, gave him up, as Judas did. The verb that English translations usually render as “betray” when it is used of Judas is used of Jesus himself in Galatians 2:20, when Paul writes, “I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” You wouldn’t say, “Jesus betrayed himself,” now would you? But Jesus gave himself over, gave himself up, as Judas did. That’s why Jesus said to Judas, “Friend, do what you must do, and I will do what I must do.”
Jesus did not play the blame game with Judas or with anyone else. Later layers of Scripture and tradition alike will blame, vilify and demonize Judas. If blame is your game, then have at Judas with all the self-righteous indignation you can muster. Because the funny thing is, the worse that you and all the others for centuries before you make Judas out to be, all the more amazing is the love of God in Jesus Christ who in the middle of it all looked Judas in the eye and called him “friend.” And that’s the saddest thing about Judas. Overcome by remorse, eaten up by guilt, undone by his inability to trust Jesus at his word, “Friend,” Judas went out and hanged himself, the gospel of Matthew tells us. But it didn’t have to end that way. It never does. Judas was not alone in his failure. Matthew 26:56 makes that very clear when it says, “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.” They all failed to stand by Jesus that night, not just Judas. And yet, on resurrection morning, according Matthew 28:10, the Risen Lord said to the two Mary’s “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” The Risen Christ calls those who had deserted him in his agony “his brothers.” Had Judas but trusted Jesus at his word, “Friend,” it would not have been eleven but a band of twelve brothers who “went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” The trouble with Judas is not that he betrayed Jesus. The trouble with Judas is that he just could not bring himself to trust Jesus enough to believe that Jesus would still call him a “friend” and a “brother” after they both had done what they both must do.
This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
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