WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK, Year C: March 31 2010

Preacher: Fr Peter Waddell
Judas Iscariot: Jn.12:21–32

Why did he do it? Why did Judas betray Jesus? Various answers have been offered over the centuries. According to the Synoptic Gospels, it was a straightforward cash transaction — Judas wanted thirty pieces of silver more than he wanted Jesus. Another venerable tradition holds that Judas was in fact the High Priest Caiaphas' nephew, that he had always been a plant within Jesus' followers, tasked with bringing the pretender down. Or there is the theory beloved of modern scholars that 'Iscariot' is connected with a group known as the sicari — dagger men — violent revolutionaries longing for the final showdown with Rome. Judas either gave up on Jesus, selling Him in disgust at His peacable intentions, or perhaps was simply trying to force Jesus' hand by setting up a confrontation with the authorities.

Who knows what the truth is? What I find interesting this evening is that if you only had John's Gospel to go on, you would know next to nothing about what is surely a rather important question: why did Judas do it? John does not even have the tradition about the thirty pieces of silver, although he does allege that Judas was a thief eager to dip his hand into the common purse. He also, interestingly, doesn't have the tradition that the Synoptics and Acts record about the grisly fate of Judas — the remorse and the suicide that followed Jesus' arrest. In John, Judas' betrayal comes from nowhere and goes nowhere: he commits his inexplicable, awful crime and he vanishes.

Well, perhaps not quite inexplicable. John has a definite answer as to where the betrayal comes from: it comes from Satan. In our Gospel tonight, we read of Satan entering Judas on that fateful night, and that is the third explicit statement in John of who is really active here. Way back in Chapter 6, Jesus had already said: 'Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil' — and John records solemnly that this was said of Judas. The human motivation of the betrayer, so interesting to us, is beside the point for John: for the real motive and the real mover, is not human. What is at work is something, someone, deeper, stronger, more terrible and destructive than a mere money-lover, spy, or fanatic. We are face to face with Evil itself; Evil Himself.

An aside at this point: I am struck by the number of people who seem to find it quite surprising that present-day, educated Christians might still believe in the Devil. Of course no-one, I hope, believes in a man in a red suit with horns and a goatee beard. But belief in a power which is much bigger than ourselves, which is malign and vicious, which tries to seduce us all the time and which on occasion bursts through in acts of pure destruction — that to me seems one of the more obviously plausible elements of the Christian faith. Every time we sin, that power has a foothold in us; and on occasion it can take possession. But such possession will probably not look much like an overdone scene from a horror movie — it will look much more mundane, much more, for instance, like the bewildering, meaningless betrayal of a master and friend, followed by a despairing, guilty suicide.

The Devil is real, and possession is real: not much in the way of Gospel so far here. But there is, in the way that John tells the story. Satan may enter into Judas, but it is Jesus who says to him, 'Do quickly what you are going to do'; Jesus who knows what is going on in Judas better than Judas himself, and has known it from the beginning; Jesus who takes no steps to avoid any of what He knows Satan and Judas shall unleash. The Devil may be awful and terrible, but in John he is also fundamentally subject. Jesus is the one in control here: all that Satan can do He has already anticipated, already accepted, already taken on as part of what He will deal with, finally, on the Cross. Christians should believe in the Devil — but only as the New Testament teaches we should believe in him, as a fundamentally broken power, as one who has hated and cursed and destroyed to the utmost and still has failed. Love, Jesus, is simply deeper, stronger, wiser and more infinitely resourceful. In the light of the resurrection, the truest description of Satan would use words like 'broken', 'futile', 'fatuous'.

And why that is Gospel — although this must not turn into an Easter Sermon just yet — is because it means ultimately there is nothing in us, and I would suggest more — that there is not one of us — that can in the end be held by Satan. There is no part of my life, however deeply buried, however twisted and corrupted by evil, that must stay that way. There is no human being, however far gone into darkness, that must stay that way. So perhaps it is good that unlike the Synoptics, John's Gospel doesn't tell us what happens to Judas in the end. Probably, that's because John is not terribly interested in Judas as Judas, seeing him simply as a cipher for the Devil. But could we take it also as a hint that, just maybe, Judas' fate isn't clear? That just maybe, the Cross he brought about changed his fate too? I wouldn't be so bold as to say that is what John meant: it almost certainly wasn't. But I will say this: if there is really no hope for Judas, I'm not sure we have a Gospel at all.