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.