April 9, 2009
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Exodus 12:1-411-14; Ps 116:1-2, 12-19; I Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

      Let us pray.  Infinite, intimate God; on this night you kneel before your friends and wash our feet.  Bound together in love, trembling, we drink your cup; we watch and wait with you.  Grant us, we pray, the will to be the servant of others, as you were servant of all.  We beg this in your Name.  Amen. 
 

      In the book, Little House on the Freeway, author Tim Kimmel quotes Eugene Peterson as saying that, “Among the apostles, the one who had the most absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one complete and groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: He was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostles; he skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: He was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of Transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things. He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion. Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honored names in the church and in the world. Judas is a villain; Peter is a saint. Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.” Eugene Petersen quoted in: Tim Kimmel, Little House on the Freeway (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1994), 191-192. 
 

      “Jesus made me do it.”  
 

      Can you imagine using that as an excuse for some mess you have created or for some unseemly thing you’ve done? 
 

      Not that many people would buy that excuse of course, but you have to admit, blaming your outrageous or even harmful actions on Jesus is better than acknowledging that it was the result of your own flawed character or, even darker, that the devil had a hand in it. Being “Jesus possessed” even has a sort of saintly ring to it. 
 

      The claim that “Jesus made me do it” is, in effect, what an ancient document called the Gospel of Judas attempts to do for the great betrayer. Just before Palm Sunday in 2006, the National Geographic Society announced that it was publishing an ancient Egyptian text by that name. The manuscript from which the society’s edition is drawn has been established to be about 1,700 years old and is believed to be a copy of an even older original. Historical theologians are fairly certain of that because we know that in A.D. 180, Irenaeus mentioned the Gospel of Judas in his bookAgainst Heresies, referring to it as a heretical document. Thus the original Gospel of Judas dates from at least 180. It has the ring of Gnosticism about it, but we have no idea who wrote it. 
 

      The leather-bound copy of the Judas gospel was found in an Egyptian tomb back in the 1970s. Consisting of 13 sheets of papyrus written on both sides in Coptic script, it was acquired by a dealer in antiquities, but he was unable to find a buyer. Eventually it was stored in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, New York, where it remained for 16 years. During that time, it deteriorated badly and crumbled into more than 1,000 pieces. Finally, the dealer offered the document to a foundation dedicated to conserving ancient art, and from there, the National Geographic Society got involved in authenticating, dating and translating the work.  
 

      As you know, there is no Gospel According to Judas in our Bible, and, in fact, Judas is presented in the canonical gospels as a sinister figure, a traitor and betrayer of Jesus. In the Judas gospel, Judas still gives Jesus over to the authorities, but both Judas and Jesus are portrayed differently from how we know them from the New Testament. Jesus is described as considering himself as a spirit trapped in a physical body, and Judas is not a betrayer, but a dutiful lieutenant following Jesus’ orders to betray him so that Jesus’ mission could be accomplished. 
 

      But that mission, as N.T. Wright notes in his book, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, is not at all the mission as described in the canonical gospels. In the gospels of the New Testament, Jesus’ mission is the salvation of the world, and his bodily resurrection represents a profound defeat of sin, death and the devil. 
 

      In the Gnostic gospel of Judas, there is, of course, no resurrection.  There is no need for a resurrection in a Gnostic text.  And Jesus’ mission is not the salvation of the world, but in fact his own salvation, i.e., deliverance from a material (read: evil) body of flesh and the consequent liberation of the soul from that same prison of flesh. So Judas acts on Jesus’ orders, but the Jesus of this gospel is a selfish Jesus who saves only himself. That is why in the Judas gospel, Jesus says to Judas, “You will exceed all of [the other disciples] for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me,” i.e., the flesh that “clothes me.” Judas will kill the body, but the soul will thereby escape. This gospel, then, makes Judas the hero.  
 

      Thus, from Judas’ gospel version of the Passion, Judas would have grounds to say “Jesus made me do it.”  Except, that is not what the New Testament gospels say – all of which predate this so-called Judas gospel by as much as 100 years.  
 

      Consider our reading from John’s gospel for this evening. It records an incident at the Last Supper where Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him. And while they are all wondering who it can be, Jesus privately hands to Judas a piece of bread, which he had said would signal the betrayer. John then tells us, “After [Judas] received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him.” Luke also attributes Judas’ action to the Devil, saying, “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve” (Luke 22:3). Matthew and Mark simply report Judas’ action without blaming it on Satan, but they clearly describe it as an act of betrayal. There is no mention in any of the New Testament gospels of Judas’ acting on any kind of instruction from Jesus, and all four agree that Judas acted against Jesus. 
 

      But return a moment to John’s statement that Satan entered into Judas. Throughout his gospel, John has been concerned to explain the life, ministry and death of Jesus theologically, and not just to report specific facts. Thus, when narrating Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, he sees what is going on in cosmic terms. In other words, as far as John is concerned, in the soon-to-occur crucifixion and the events leading up to it, as well as in the ultimate outcome of salvation for all who believe, the real opponents are not Jesus and Judas, but Jesus and Satan. Or, to say it even more broadly, the struggle is between the most-holy God and the Prince of Darkness. 
 

      While John had previously branded Judas as a thief who stole money from the common purse he carried for Jesus and the other disciples (John 12:6), John does not attribute the betrayal to Judas’ greed, but to Satan’s invasion of his heart (John 13:2). What’s more, although the other three gospel writers tell us that Judas received money from the chief priests as a result of his personal greed, John doesn’t even mention the silver coins, effectively discounting the possibility that Judas was motivated by avarice 
 

      No, as John understands it, it was definitely the devil made Judas do it. 
 

      But let’s be honest. That’s a hard conclusion for us to swallow. Do you remember a few decades ago, a comedian named Flip Wilson, while in the guise of his comic character Geraldine, would tell of some outrageous thing she’d done and then excuse it by saying, “The devil made me do it?” And we would all laugh. We would laugh because we knew the claim was ridiculous and was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. And we are likely to feel that way about John’s claim about Judas as well, even though John was being completely serious. 
 

      So we can understand why whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas would take the position he did and try to change the story to “Jesus made me do it.” 
 

      But let’s give John credit. He was looking at the big picture, which was the salvation of the world. From that perspective, Judas was no more than a bit player. Jesus didn’t come to rescue us from Judas; Jesus came to rescue us from sin. And John saw Satan as the author of sin. 
 

      Still, when it comes to the motivation behind our own actions, attributing it to Satan or Jesus is not helpful at all. Most of the time, such claims are merely ways to duck personal responsibility. There is a sense, of course, in which every Christian should be “Jesus-possessed,” but by that we do not mean that Jesus takes over our will. What we mean when we say that is that we do our best to bend our will toward what we understand of his. Our wills remain free, and we remain responsible for our actions. 
 

      A little over a century ago, the psychologist and philosopher William James wrote about human motivation and declared that a person does not, like a physical object, move always in the direction in which pressures push or pull. That’s because human will has a force of its own that can be exercised at the moment of decision, tipping the scales in one direction or the other.  
 

      While most of us would probably agree with Mr. James on that point, we also need to recognize that decisions of the moment are influenced by the underlying practices of thought and the influences to which we have subjected ourselves beforehand. Behind Judas’ decision to betray Jesus was, apparently, a longstanding habit of thievery and deception. Behind the courage of Jesus throughout his arrest, trial and the long march to Calvary were a lifetime of prayer and years of reading the Scriptures. 
 

      What that suggests is that the essence of being possessed by either Satan or Jesus is not that either one of them is a puppet master pulling the strings of our actions, but rather that the places from which we draw lessons for life and models for action are either the lowest common denominator or the highest heaven – or at least somewhere close to one or the other of those. 
 

      I believe I told you this story before about an American journalist that traveled to China to report on the several wars that were going on there at the time. She watched a Catholic nun cleansing the gangrenous sores on wounded soldiers, which was an ugly, repulsive task. The journalist said, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.”  
 

      Without pausing in her work, the nun replied, “Neither would I.” Both, of course, were talking about motivation, but the nun was alluding to a commitment made earlier in her life, to bend her will toward Jesus. It is doubtful that her commitment was ever as specific as to include cleaning diseased wounds of foreign soldiers under battlefield conditions, but that beforehand decision was the basis for why, when the need presented itself, that without hesitation she went to work caring for the wounded without. She would not do it for a million dollars, but she would do it because she was committed to Christ.  
 

      John says that Satan was the motivator in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, but we’re best to understand that to mean that despite all the time Judas had spent in Jesus’ company, he had not committed his will to Jesus. Judas was not Jesus-possessed, no matter what we might read in The Gospel of Judas. 
 

      On this Maundy Thursday, we are once again invited to be obedient, to obey the commandments of Jesus. We are invited to be “Jesus-possessed.” If there is any talk of a hero, it is clearly Jesus, not Judas, and if we are interested in hero worship, we would be much better off to worship Jesus. 
 

      But after all is said and done, in the end, it is up to us. Being a faithful disciple of Jesus is our choice. The Devil cannot keep us away from Jesus, and Jesus will not force us to come to him.  
 

      Later, John also records Jesus saying, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). That is how he accomplishes his mission to rescue us from sin.  Jesus draws us to him, but he does not drag us. 
 

      The choice is ours to make.  Amen. 
 
Sources: 
 

DeWolf, L. Harold. Responsible Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, 189. 
 
“Gospel of Judas.” earlychristianwritings.com/gospeljudas.html. 
 
“Gospel of Judas portrays betrayer as hero.” The Wired Word, April 16, 2006, thewiredword.com.  
 
“The lost Gospel of Judas.” www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/.  
 
Tolson, Jay. “Was this villain really a hero?” U.S. News & World Report, April 17, 2006, usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060417/17christ.b1.htm. 
 
Wright, N.T. Judas and the Gospel of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2006.