The Judas Files 1: The Trouble with Judas

Matthew 26:47-56
This sermon was delivered in 2006, soon after the release of "The Gospel of Judas" by the National Geographic Society.

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. John 12:6 says that he was the treasurer of the disciples—“he kept the common purse,” 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 together in Jerusalem 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 in the world one from Jesus’ own hand-picked inner circle could have turned on his teacher and 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 appeals to the devil also, 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.

But 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 in 2006, the National Geographic Society announced the release of a long-lost early Christian document referred to as “The Gospel of Judas.” The society brought this long-lost 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. 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. The copy in the news, the 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 tells us nothing 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 them, of course. Like Judas in this second-century gospel, they got it, 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 contrast to the gospel of John in which Jesus says, “one of you is a devil,” in the gospel of Matthew, when Jesus speaks to Judas, even as he is being handed over to the authorities, Jesus says, “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. The Jesus I need is the one in 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. The one who says in the gospel of John, “one of you is a devil”; and then when that very one behaved his most devilishly, Jesus looked him right in the eye and called him his friend. A friend of tax collectors and sinners—and devils.

As far as I’m concerned, you can have the Gnostic Jesus who befriends those who get it right. Perhaps you are good enough and wise enough and blessed enough that you get it and that Jesus has pulled you aside from all the rest of us and revealed to you the mysteries of the kingdom, the secrets that no person has ever seen. But as for me—who is not that good and not that wise and not that blessed—I have no choice but to 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 saddest 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 Matthew 26:53-54, 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.” “The time has come,” Jesus says. “This is no longer in my hands or your hands, Judas, but in the hands of God.”

What Judas did was in the hands of God. Did you know that the very same verb that our Bibles in English translate as “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 his own Son,” now would you? But God "handed him over," "gave him up," as Judas did. The very same verb that our English translations so often 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 part that in the end Judas didn’t get. 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. The last sentence of this morning’s gospel lesson makes that very clear. Matthew 26:56 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.”

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 “friend” and “brother” after they both had done what they both must do. There would have been twelve, not eleven, if Judas would have but trusted Jesus at his word: “Friend.”

Brian Wren is professor of worship at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. In one of his most frequently sung hymns he wrote, “In ev’ry insult, rift, and war, where color, scorn or wealth divide, Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, and lives, where even hope has died.” That’s the gift that Jesus gives to everyone who will receive it, the gift that, sadly, Judas could not accept. Even in our every desertion and betrayal, even when we are sinners at our devilish worst, “Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, and lives, where even hope has died.” That’s the Jesus you can trust with your life both now and forever.


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.