Wednesday of Holy Week, March 27, 2024

Matthew 26, 14-25

One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over. On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, My appointed time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.”  The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered, and prepared the Passover.  When it was evening, he reclined at table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” Deeply distressed at this, they began to say to him one after another, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” He said in reply, “He who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me. The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” Then Judas, his betrayer, said in reply, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” He answered, “You have said so.”

“What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?”  Judas asks a very dreadful question.  He has planned to hand over Jesus to certain death for “thirty pieces of silver”, a sum large enough as to used to buy a substantial piece of land outside Jerusalem (cf. Matthew 27, 7).  It is no secret that the chief priests and the elders were trying to kill him.  Jesus himself spoke openly of this: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes: and they shall condemn him to death” (Matthew 20, 18).  Judas is quite aware of what his actions will lead to.  His return to the chief priests later on and throwing the money back at them with the cry that he has betrayed innocent blood shows not repentance but panic that he would be blamed.  He certainly managed to keep his nerve at the Last Supper when Jesus revealed to the Apostles that one of them would betray him, and he went on with his deed anyway.

“Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” He answered, ‘You have said so.’ ”  Jesus exposes Judas, and still Judas betrays him.  In the hubbub after Jesus announces the betrayal, either the other Apostles do not hear, do not understand, or do not believe such a thing possible.  Judas, for his part, seems to have no concern for his own safety, so great is his desire to betray him.  He is like the chief priests and the elders who, worried for their lives, said to each other in regards to killing Jesus, “Not during the festival, lest perhaps there should be a tumult among the people” (Matthew 26, 5) — and then they did it all the same.  They could no longer restrain their hatred of the Lord, come what may.  It is a mirror image of how greatly the Lord yearned to offer himself for us on the Cross.

“When it was evening, he reclined at table with the Twelve.”  A note about the physical aspect of the dinner.  In accordance with the practice of the time, Jesus and the Apostles reclined on couches to eat at formal meals.  The couches would be drawn up before the table laden with food and a person would recline with the upper part of his body leaning on his side on the table while the lower half was sprawled behind him on the couch.  The diner would have one free arm with which to eat.  John the Apostles recalls that he reclined on the couch next to Jesus.  The English translation says that he reclined at the side of Jesus and that he leaned back against the Lord’s chest to ask him who was going to betray him, making it sound as though John and Jesus shared the same couch, but this mistranslates a Greek idiom for dining on the next couch.  

During these holy days let us hand ourselves over to the Lord Jesus who died in order to gain us treasure in heaven.