Easter 2009

Denise Giardina

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19

Oh God, confront us, challenge us, and restore us. Amen.

Growing up in a small evangelical Methodist church in the southern part of the state, I learned about Judas early on. I learned Judas was the ultimate traitor. Forget Benedict Arnold. Judas had been one of Jesus’s best friends, his disciple, and then for some unfathomable reason, Judas betrayed Jesus. Money, the 30 pieces of silver, was presented as the likely explanation by my impoverished Sunday School teacher. But what sort of human being would betray his savior for money that will only last a little while? Judas, I decided, was a pathetic enigma at best, an inscrutable monster at worse.

Fast forward to my college years at West Virginia Wesleyan. I belonged to Kappa Phi, a Christian sorority. We were good girls. We did good deeds, service projects, instead of angling for dates and partying the night away like the regular sororities.

In those days, all Wesleyan students signed a pledge. An abstinence pledge. No, not that kind of abstinence. We pledged in writing that while we were Wesleyan students we would abstain from alcohol, not only on campus, but off campus as well. Those were the days, by the way, when the Methodist Church was leading the fight against allowing alcohol to be served in restaurants in West Virginia. So we good girls of Kappa Phi were happy to go along.

Then, during my time at Wesleyan, a cultural phenomenon swept the nation. The first ever rock musicals appeared, and one of the first of them was Jesus Christ Superstar. Those of you over a certain age will remember those days. But if you’re not old enough, try to imagine the novelty of the rebellious rock music of the 1960s married to the story of Jesus in the Bible. Needless to say, we young women of Kappa Phi were shaken to our core, but intrigued as well. One of us obtained an album of the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar. We were not at all sure our sponsors would approve, so we retreated to our meeting room in the basement of a dormitory, locked the door, and pulled out the record player. We brought with us some cartons of Coke and some ice, so we had our beverages. And we listened, enthralled.

I recall my own response. Jesus had a great voice and some nice songs. But the really central character, the most complex, and yes, rocking character, was Judas. At the end, Judas hanged himself but not before pointing out the necessity of his betrayal, and accusing Jesus, “You have murdered me!” And then from beyond the grave and from the 20th century, he sings the title song of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, which contains those unforgettable, pretty BAD lines, “If you’d come today you would have reached a whole nation/Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.”

The Judas of Jesus Christ Superstar seemed very human, and likeable, and sad, and complex – not the inhuman monster I had grown up with. And then, while we young women of Kappa Phi were listening to Jesus Christ Superstar, a strange thing happened. A bottle of rum appeared. I don’t recall where it came from – it seemed to materialize from thin air. Did I and everyone else pour some in our cups of Coke? Yes we did.

We never talked about it afterward. The enormity of it hit me along with my headache the next morning. I had broken my pledge. I had for the first time in my life consumed alcohol, not just on campus, but inside a dormitory on a Methodist campus during a Christian sorority meeting. And yes, I had enjoyed it a great deal. I felt – well, I felt like Judas.

In her sermon last week, Susan reminded us that the lessons over the past few weeks of this Easter season have given us many moving images that present Christ to us. But in this last Sunday of Easter the focus seems to change. Three times we are confronted, not so much with the risen Lord, not even with doubt, but with betrayal. In the first epistle of John we are told that those who do not believe in God have made God a liar. And more pointedly, in the passages in Acts and the Gospel of John, we are reminded of Judas.

In today’s lesson from Acts, Peter, speaking to fellow believers, says, “the scripture had to be fulfilled,” and implies that this fulfillment came about through “Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus.” The scripture continues for a few more verses which are not included in today’s lectionary, perhaps for the reason of not wanting to ruin our breakfasts or lunches, for it describes the death of Judas by falling headlong into a field where he burst open in the middle and his bowels gushed out. (I might add that, in a contradiction unexplained by biblical literalists, the gospel of Matthew tells us that Judas hanged himself.)

Today’s gospel, from John, also contains a brief, but cryptic passage when Jesus, speaking to God and referring to his disciples, says, “not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that scripture might be fulfilled.” A note in the text of the New Revised Standard Version, which we use, also translates “the one destined to be lost” as “the son of destruction.”

Ironically, the further away we get from the time of Jesus and Judas, the references to Judas increase, although modestly. In fact we know, from the gospels, very little about Judas. And perhaps more importantly, Judas seems to morph from a disciple like any other who has some connection to what finally befalls Jesus, to the central, and evil perpetrator. This is pointed out by Susan Gubar, who has written a new book called Judas: A Biography. Gubar says that in the earliest gospels, Mark and Matthew, Judas is “one of us.” In Luke and John, Judas is “one of them.” Gubar writes, “Judas develops in the New Testament from a typically obtuse apostle in Mark to a repentant sinner who atones through self-sacrifice in Matthew, from a self-destructing creature possessed by Satan in Luke to a devilish treasurer who collaborates in deicide with similarly devilish Jews in John.”

Moreover, like Jesus, what happened to Judas after his death is even more important than what happened before. Gubar is onto something important. The figure of Judas, who grows from Jesus’s companion in the time of Jesus into an alien, demonic figure in the decades after, has lodged himself very, very deeply not only into our religious imaginations, but into our western cultural identities, as the alien, the other.

I don’t have time this morning to go into great detail about 2,000 years of history. But consider: the name Judas is the Greek form of the tribe Judah, from which the Jewish people get their name. Even such eminent theologians as the 20th century’s Karl Barth have connected the name of Judas to the Jewish people. In the Middle Ages it was commonly stated that the crimes of Judas extended to all Jewish people. Such charges extended all the way to Nazi Germany and beyond. Even today we are not free from this idea that Jews are different, the other. Arkansas State Sen. Kim Hendren, who is running for the U.S. Senate, at a recent appearance referred to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, as "that Jew." By way of apology, Hendren dug his hole a little deeper by saying, “At the meeting I was attempting to explain that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on The Andy Griffith Show.” Jews, then, could never be a part of those values, and Barney Fife would never hang out with a Jew.

Consider Jesus Christ Superstar, which has been performed in a variety of incarnations for the past forty years. Almost always, an African-American portrays Judas. The other, who is often demonized.

Or consider our own Washington National Cathedral, where the twelve disciples are carved in wood on the altar. Except in the 12th spot, Judas’s spot, there is only a blank block of wood. Not even a human being.

The great 19th century theologian Søren Kierkegaard said, “One will get a deep insight into the state of Christianity in every age by seeing how it interprets Judas.”

We are living in uncertain times. We are not in total turmoil as in the 1930s. But if that happens, let us be on guard. Let us pray our own age treats Judas with empathy, rather than demonizing an “other”.

Perhaps we might start by recognizing the “otherness” of Jesus. Jesus was a scapegoat, the ultimate scapegoat who died for our sins. But Judas was also a scapegoat, for 2,000 years made to shoulder the entire blame for what we ourselves are responsible for. Jesus and Judas are closer in many ways than any other two in that gospel story.

My 19 year old self felt like Judas. Because I was. So are each of us. It is time to recognize the humanity of Judas, the common humanity, so that Judas does not represent any “other”, but all of us. Perhaps we might understand that one side of the betrayal of Judas was his absolute hope in Jesus, his desperate hope that somehow Jesus would make right the problems of the world. Perhaps the failure of Jesus to do that in the way Judas expected broke his heart. Perhaps his disappointment led him to screw up, as we so often do. Perhaps we might identify with the total despair he must have felt, as he was driven to take his own life. Perhaps we might even venture to love Judas, as ourselves.

I think that Jesus did love Judas, and does, and that far from being lost, Judas participates in the Kingdom of God as fully as anyone.