HOPE FOR JUDAS ?
Acts 1:15-20, John 17:6-14
Jeff VamosAlthough I'm not a dedicated Star Trek fan, I have to admit that I loved watching those shows as a kid; they seemed to really stoke my philosophical imagination. Somehow, as I was thinking about the topic I'd like to talk about today, this one particular episode came my mind--perhaps you remember it. I researched it on the internet actually--episode number 25, "This Side of Paradise,--it's the one in which Kirk, Spock, Bones and some of the crew go to inspect some lost space colonists, and find themselves in a kind of perfect, paradisiacal world, of complete health and happiness, induced by the magical spores of the local botanical life. After McCoy beams up a bunch of plant specimens, the whole Enterprise crew gets infected with bliss, and starts beaming themselves down. Spock discovers the experience of happiness and love for the first time. Bones makes mint juleps.
It's Shangri-La, paradise for the crew of the Enterprise. But watching it, we get this strange sense that there's something terribly wrong about everything being right. First of all, it's rather boring; perfect happiness makes the Enterprise crew get kind of stupid. And moreover, in their state of bliss everyone has abandoned the Enterprise, with all those urgent cosmic emergencies crying out for a response.
The question at stake in that story is, then: what could possibly be wrong about everything being right?
Or we could also ask the opposite question (and this is the question I'd like to reflect on today): what could possibly be right about being wrong?
In some of the classical formulations of Christian theology, there is an idea called (in Latin) Felix Culpa--here's your language lesson today. I'll give you a moment to guess the meaning....It means "fortunate fault" or "happy sin." One of the lines of the Holy Saturday liturgy of the medieval church reads, "O blessed sin [felix culpa, happy fault] which received as its reward so great and so good a redeemer...."
It's the idea that there's something fortunate the in Fall of humankind, in that most unfortunate circumstance of human life; it's the notion that even the most evil thing we could ever do, the crucifixion of the Son of God, was necessary for the redemption of the world. Isn't that a strange idea? That even evil can be an instrument for good? And yet, that way of understanding evil is part of the way Christians have understood the world.
So--that's what I'd like to reflect with you about today; again, another rather light, narrow topic: the nature of evil. And I'd like to invite you to do that with me by looking at the specific character that the lectionary has offered up for us today: namely, Judas Iscariot.
It's also perhaps "fortunate"--an interesting coincidence that the lectionary (the lectionary simply means the reading assigned to be read for this day)...that the lectionary has brought us to Judas, because no doubt many of you have been reading or hearing about this discovery of the "new" document called the Gospel of Judas. (It's actually not new--it's been around for decades, but just now released to the public.) And along with all this is the hoopla over The Da Vinci Code, which also has to do with the discovery of "lost gospels", and the way in which the New Testament canon was formed. (A side-note on that score: rather than my giving my own spiel about The Da Vinci Code, I've put articles on the Usher's Table from a magazine called Outlook that provides, I think, some good guidance for people who do go to see the movie.)
So...Judas. Let's take a few moments to look at Judas' character, using some of the modern scholarly work available to us that can help us reconstruct who he was.
First of all, many scholars believe that Judas was a member of the party called the Zealots.1 Zealots were revolutionary, nationalist Jews, who sought to overthrow the Romans (the current regime in power) and establish a kind of Jewish Shangri-La--a Jewish Kingdom along the lines of King David, a perfect earthly realm that would usher in a thousand-year reign of peace. Think Che Guevara; think 60s radical with a tie-died shirt and an M-16 strapped to his shoulder. And, according to this understanding of Judas, the reason he chose to follow Jesus was because he thought of Jesus as his best shot at getting the job done. He thought Jesus would be a military leader and earthly King capable of overthrowing the regime.
And so, if all that's true about Judas, scholars believe that his betrayal resulted from a realization that that was not the kind of kingdom Jesus was going to usher in.2 You'll recall in the scriptures the scandal it created when Jesus told them, "I am going to Jerusalem to suffer and to be crucified." And, of course, Judas played a part in that plan, in betraying Jesus. Judas was necessary to make that prophecy come true; Judas was necessary to that redemptive task.
And so that does bring us to the question I want to raise for today: could it be true that what Judas does could be considered in some sense fortunate? Is it possible that, in some sense, evil can be an instrument of good?
I know--I already gave you then answer at the beginning. If we look at the whole biblical witness, I believe the answer is yes. That's the amazing thing about the gospel, and in the message of Paul and the New Testament epistles we hear over and over this message: God uses what is evil in the world to accomplish good--even ultimate good, the redemption of the world. That is the center, and the paradox, of the gospel.
OK--so no doubt at this point you'll be saying to yourself, "but what about...?" And you should say that. There is a huge "but" here. Does that mean that I should go out and wreak some havoc, so that good can result? Should I hit my head with a hammer, so I can feel how good it is when the pain stops? Or--and this hits at the controversy over that document people are talking about, the Gospel of Judas--is it possible Jesus put Judas up to it--Judas does Jesus a favor--as that "new" gospel claims?
The Bible, I believe, is also clear on that question too--no way! (Maybe you remember from that series on Paul's Letter to the Romans, when Paul asks, "should sin continue that grace may abound? By no means!" No way!) God is never about the business of putting us up to evil, or encouraging us to do evil, so that good can come. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," is our prayer each week. Evil is real and terrible. But God is never about the business of putting us up to evil, precisely because we are so capable of doing it all on our lonesome.
As Christians have contemplated the mystery of evil--and that's a good way to put it: a mystery; evil is something we can never fully explain with any system or easy answer....But as Christians have thought about the problem of evil, one way we've understood evil is that it is a kind of by-product, a consequence of that thing that makes us fundamentally human: freedom. If we're going to be free, we're going to screw up. And if we didn't screw up, we would never know this thing called grace. We would never know this experience called redemption. That's the mystery about it.
- · If I hadn't fallen and skinned my knee, I would never know my mother's love.
- · War, as horrible as it is--the jury is still out as to whether it is somehow an unfortunate but natural aspect of our fallen human life--but as such, it is the occasion for courage. It is the occasion for protest, moral examination, as well as self-sacrifice for an ideal higher than oneself. That is what we remember on this Memorial Day.
In John's gospel--Brian read a passage today from John's Gospel, all about "the disciples" versus "the world". And this is how I think of John's Gospel: you might call it "the gospel in bas-relief". You know that method of art, where the picture is revealed by the stuff that sticks out from the background--bas-relief? In this passage we read today, Jesus prayer for his disciples, you could say, is that they might stick out from the background of "the world"--that his message of love would be revealed in them against that background, which is in some sense necessary for the gospel to become visible. And we find that idea, that understanding of "the world" or of evil throughout John's Gospel: the purpose of evil is to expose good, not the other way around.
There's this great story earlier in John, for example, when Jesus is walking with his disciples, and they see a man born blind. And the disciples ask, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" You see, they see suffering as an occasion for punishment for something evil, for sin. But Jesus says to them, "It's not that this man or his parents sinned, but so that the glory of God might be revealed in him." (John 3:3) And he goes and heals him. Evil, suffering becomes not the occasion for punishment, but for grace and compassion and healing.
So...is it possible that the alcoholic hitting bottom was somehow "fortunate"? That's a real question; I don't presume to know the answer--but some have said so. That they never would have known the love and compassion of people helping them up had the not fallen down; they never would have known their own depth had they not gone through that experience.3
But...let's get to the question at hand for today, the question posed in the title of this sermon. Is there hope for Judas? I think to ask that question is at the same time to ask this: is there hope for me? For us? Because it's the same question.
You know, as I imagine this story (and I think the gospels do invite us to imagination over Judas' story), I think that the reason Judas committed suicide wasn't necessarily because of his betrayal of Jesus. I think his suicide had to do with his inability to be forgiven; this becomes especially clear if you read Matthew's version of Judas' suicide--he was not somehow able to compete his repentance with forgiveness.
I love James Wright's poem--printed in your bulletin today. It's a kind of meditation about, what if Judas somehow found his sin an occasion not for self-destruction, but for compassion? Be sure to take a moment to read it. Does Jesus' prayer from the cross include Judas too: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"? It better--because if it doesn't, it doesn't include me either. Is that not an affirmation of this radical good news: that there's nothing "in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:3
So what does all this mean to me, to you, in real life? I guess the main point here is to say that bad things do happen, somehow. They happen to us. We do bad things--all of us. And we're part of a whole system rooted in evil and greed. We can't get away from all that. But setting apart the question about why all this happens, the question for today is: what's our relationship to it? Is it an occasion for forgiveness? Is it an occasion for me to practice redemption?
There is a conflict between Palestinians and Jews. I don't know exactly why it happened. But is it an occasion to shrug my shoulders and say, "oh well; nothing I can do." Or is it an occasion for me to roll up my sleeves and apply the love of Jesus Christ.
The soccer coach chewed me out. Is that an occasion for me to plot my revenge, and nurse my resentment? Or is it an occasion to practice Christian maturity and forgiveness?
All right--so how does the Star Trek episode end, you're wondering. We left them down there on that strange planet, blissed out and carefree, having abandoned the Enterprise. The episode ends this way: they become themselves when they experience evil. Spock snaps back to himself when he experiences anger. McCoy is shamed back to being Bones. The spores wear off, they become mature through the experience of something negative, of anger or shock or irritation.
Is it possible we become ourselves, we become lovers of God, compassionate, whole human beings in wrestling with the hard stuff of life?
"O Fortunate fault, O Felix Culpa, which received as its reward so great and so good a redeemer."
Amen.
1Many believe the meaning of the word Iscariot, for example, derives from the word Sicarii, a militant faction of the Zealots.
2Another theory is that the betrayal was meant to "force the hand" of God, which would spur Jesus into fulfilling this plan for an earthly kingdom.
3 I suppose a more challenging question I could also ask here, which would have taken us down a different and more difficult road, would be: could we ever say the holocaust was in any sense "fortunate"? Would it ever be appropriate to speak of that tragedy's purpose as a foil for human compassion? I find that a much more difficult question.
May 28, 2006
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