Judas in the shadows

Judas is associated with all that is evil, bad, frail and treacherous. Could we disregard these labels for a while and extend the  grace of considering him as a person?

When we look at life from his perspective, we are confronted with an awful image in the mirror that could very easily be…. ours. Judas lurks in the shadows, not only of history but also in shadows of each of our lives.

• He was attracted to Jesus, and became one of the disciples. He too chose to follow him.  

Each of us has reasons to follow Jesus. All these reasons may not be the right ones. Judas was a Zealot, who expected and anticipated the return of the Messiah as a conqueror, overturning and crushing the Roman  eagle to the Judean dust. Jesus fulfilled every desire and held the key to every promise Judas eagerly anticipated. He surely was the one worth following.

Why do we follow Jesus?

• Is it because He attracts us with ideals that we cherish and resonate with?
• Is it because He holds the promise of better things to come?
• Is it because He has demonstrated His omnipotent power in our puny lives that leaves us without a shadow of doubt that He is God?

While all the above reasons are valid and true, they still are not on the path that leads through Gethsemane to the cross, but are  attractive neon lit signposts on the way to Akeldema, the field of blood where Judas died.

• The means to the end could involve compromise.

Judas held the purse strings of this band of followers, and the Bible records that he often dipped into it himself. (John 12:6)  I am sure he did not start out that way. But after following for a while, one can justify almost anything from an altruistic perspective.  The altruistic perspective dims our vision of the Saviour, blinding us to see dollars in feet being washed and caressed by a desperate love. It attaches an economic price tag to every act of  service, and seeks to tailor all service to extract maximum “bang for the buck”.  Extravagant love mingling with tears and spilling onto a dusty middle eastern floor can only be considered a frightful waste.  Judas said this, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was in the practice of stealing from the coffer. We always need a reason to justify our greed. Those who don’t steal need no reason at all.

• When our idea of service conflicts with Jesus’s we reach a crossroad that leads to Akeldema. The bible records in John 12 that when Jesus sanctified and edified the extravagant worship offered by Mary, Judas left. Jesus’s ideas are often at variance with popular opinion. He sees into the souls of people, and accepts their worship. Such worship may contradict with our ideas of service.  When looked at from an economic perspective, it may not make any sense at all, and may even reek of  extravagance and be a frightful waste of resources. This is the crossroad that leads to self destruction.  We really have  only two choices, either to continue to follow Jesus on His terms by accepting his perspective and altering our  world view, or leave him and continue in our “service”  along our premeditated path.

• It is at such times when we say “We have to do something about it”. Jesus is just not following the road he is supposed to take. He is not filling the seat that is rightfully his. We need to help him. We need to act. We need to manipulate circumstances and people and plan to elevate Him onto the throne.  One sincere thought that Judas might have had in considering so great a betrayal was that “If  I yield Him up to the chief priests then surely Jesus will declare himself, and show himself for who He is.” Judas had no misconceptions on the either the Lordship or authority of Jesus. He knew His master.  But that knowledge did not foster obedience. Knowledge alone is  a faulty compass on the road to discipleship. It is not enough. That very knowledge led him to diabolically betray His master. Was it because on many a smaller occasion earlier, the end had justified the means? Was it because the coins that had passed through his fingers earlier drove the nail through Jesus’s  hands?  Did those earlier unaccounted for red marks in the accounting ledger paint the path to his field of blood?

• So it was with a sincere kiss, that Judas handed the Son of the God of the Universe over to a smattering of soldiers bravely wielding toothpick swords. Judas may have  anticipated a great unveiling, and a glorious ascension to the throne of the world. Our plans, not His.  Our way, not His. Our path, not His. Yet that path shrouded in the midnight hour, was an elusive deception. Judas may have counted on the fact that the Sanhedrin had no authority to kill. They could only judge according to the law. Jesus then had to be set free, and the only thing he could do was to  declare himself as the Saviour, since that was the truth. The path was predictably secure. It was the sure road to success.

• Alas,  as the night progressed, a nightmare awakened, as Judas watched Jesus handed over to the Roman empire. The Romans had every right to torture, maim, lash and crucify. The unthinkable nightmare suddenly was stained with real blood.  The “perfect plan” was out of his hands, and it had run away. There was nothing he could do but watch in horror from the sidelines on the bloody course  of this unwritten script. It was too much for him to take. Deep down, the small compromises had led him to betray the one person he had looked up to and held most dear. He could not watch Him being nailed to the cross, knowing that his hand too, had helped drive that nail into the beam. Judas checked out. He took his life. Judas was truly sincere, but  he was sincerely wrong.  His world had no room for the crucifixion and therefore, was also denied the resurrection.  A potters field is his heritage, even to this day.

Today, our misplaced missions leave Potters fields in our arenas of service, mausoleums and monuments to a life sincerely lived, but which may also have been sincerely wrong. And many a mission is maligned by the stains of blood that lace our life offerings, as we design castles in our vineyards where maybe God only planned turned earth and broken soil.

May God have mercy upon us all to see Judas lurking in the shadows of our lives, and grant us the grace to go to Golgotha, rather than spilling our insides out after a life of service that leaves only a field of Blood.

Take care of me

She held my hand tightly, almost desperately. “Take care of me” she said. She was seventy one years old, and had just survived her first heart attack. She was brought in with severe chest pain and we had thrombolysed her and she had come out of the icu only yesterday. Not anticipating any trouble, I had reassured her that she could be now shifted to a step down ward and probably be discharged in a day or two.  

This was a false prophecy, since a little later in the day, she developed a second heart attack, was put on the ventilator back in the icu and two days later she passed away. I still remember the desperation in that hand clutch. 

Did she know? Could we have known? One aspect of medicine that we are not taught is serependity and the inclusion of “patient instinct”. 

Intercede or intervene?

People can cause distress to us in  many ways. As we go through life we find that some people can really push  our buttons, cause us frustration, or elicit anger, disappointment, and sorrow in us. Others are the source of much joy and gratitude. If we are in an administrative capacity and find ourselves having to deal with folk on a daily basis, implement rules and administer correction, we may tend to accumulate the negative feelings more than we have occasion to consciously celebrate the positive ones.

Our decisions in such circumstances may often be a knee jerk reaction expressing those negative feelings welling up within us, or we may intervene to implement our convictions, convinced that it is for the common good.

That often backfires as it stokes the fires of dissension. We must remember that God’s kingdom and His righteousness does not need a trellis to support it. Truth stands by itself without being buttressed by our efforts to reinforce it.

God is still in control, and it is His world.

Rather than intervene, our response can be directed to intercede. Oswald Chambers defines vicarious intercession as "deliberately substituting God's interest in others for our natural sympathy with them.  This practice changes our perspective entirely, and removes our paltry frustrations, as we together come to the throne room, pleading for mercy on us all.  How many of our frustrations reach the presence of the throne room? How many of those people placed in our lives for a reason that is beyond our comprehension actually are upheld by us in prayer?

“For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer	60
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.” From “The Passing of Arthur”  by Alfred Lord Tennyson

In His hands

HE HOLDS US IN HIS HANDS

The bible is full of encouragement of how God holds us in His hands. We often fret, fume and worry about the inconsequential. Scattered clouds on our horizon become looming portents of disaster. We see neither the rainbows or the rain. No matter what threatens, God has us in His hands, and we are safe.

HOLD PEOPLE LOOSELY

God holds people in His hands. We often assume unnecessary and unrealistic responsibilities that burden us with unachievable hopes we nourish for them and from them.  Similarly, we over react to opposition and hurt people by our disproportionate responses, because we are holding them too tightly in our minds. God is in control of those that oppose us for the wrong reasons. Opposition for the right reasons are opportunities for us to change.

HOLD WORK LOOSELY

We cling to our identities and professions as if they define us completely. We forget that we are first children of God, and then whatever he has allowed us to become, or do. When our work is threatened, we feel personally threatened, forgetting the one who holds it all in His hands anyway.  If we are asked to lay our work down, we have tremendous difficulty severing the ties that bind us to it, since in many ways, we might have personalized our efforts, forgetting that He is the one who gave us the opportunity to work anyway.

All these injuctions are not so that we can become lazy, or irresponsible, disregard those we work with, or become careless in the dispensation of our duties. These things characterize one end of the spectrum that most attention is paid to.  On the contrary, at the other end of the spectrum, work can stealthily climb on to the throne and displace the place that rightfully belongs to our God.