Tuesday of Holy Week, March 26, 2024

John 13, 21-33; 36-38

Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant. One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ side. So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant. He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him, “Master, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.” So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him. So Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” Now none of those reclining at table realized why he said this to him. Some thought that since Judas kept the money bag, Jesus had told him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or to give something to the poor. So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.  When he had left, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you.”  Simon Peter said to him, “Master, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, though you will follow later.” Peter said to him, “Master, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow before you deny me three times.”

“Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”  The Lord says these words to the Apostles not in order to rouse them to action against Judas, but in order to give Judas a chance to reconsider what he was planning to do.  The Lord gave Judas multiple opportunities to change his mind and to repent.  The Lord etting him know that he knew would certainly have scared off all but the most determined of men.  Only a true enemy would go through with his scheme after learning that the one against whom he was plotting was aware of it.  Again, when the Lord indicated that the betrayer would be the one to whom he offered food, Judas could have turned back.  The gesture should have reminded Judas of all that the Lord had done for him and for those who had come to him in their need.  Then, when the Lord said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly”, Judas could have opted out, again knowing that the Lord could stop him or order the loyal disciples to stop him, or even that the Lord could slip away from him, as he had several times before from those who would have killed him before his time.  And then, in the Garden, when Judas approached the Lord with his band of thugs, and the Lord said to him, “Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”, Judas could have whispered to him to get away, and he could have assisted his Master’s escape by hindering those with the torches.

Sometimes we see portrayals of Judas in movies or books which attempt to show him as confused, tricked by the chief priests, or even believing that he was helping the Lord bring about his Kingdom.  In reality, Judas was a deadly enemy set upon the Lord’s arrest and murder.  His later feelings of apparent remorse stem more from his fear of retaliation from the Lord’s followers than from concern for the Lord whom he had sold to the chief priests.  

We each receive multiple chances throughout our lives to repent of our sins and return to a God who is desperate for us, so much so that he sent his Son to die for us.  Let us truly turn from sin and from every attachment that yet binds us to the things of this world so that we may finish our lives here like Peter, and not like Judas.