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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The story is told of someone who wanted to know God’s will in a specific situation: he opened the Bible at random and put his finger on words like those we heard tonight in Part Three of our Passion reading, “Judas went out and hung himself.” The story has the person think, “That can’t be right; I’m going to try again,” and then he puts his finger on Jesus’s words to the lawyer to whom Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, “You go, and do likewise.” The story illustrates the danger of one’s using random Scripture passages for one’s spiritual direction—spiritual direction like that bad spiritual direction we heard Judas himself receive earlier in the Passion reading. Tonight I again direct our attention to an excerpt from that Passion reading, the following three verses from the 27th chapter of St. Matthew’s divinely‑inspired Gospel account:
Then when Judas, His betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.
We consider those verses under theme “I have sinned”, each of us individually making Judas’s words in some sense our own, ourselves each saying, “I have sinned”.
The context for these three verses from St. Matthew’s account is of course even broader than that which we heard in our Passion reading. The chief priests and elders were gathered in the palace of the high priest already a few days earlier, plotting to arrest Jesus secretly and to kill Him. Then, after Jesus was anointed with expensive ointment in Bethany, Judas went to the chief priests and asked them what they would give him if he delivered Jesus to them, and they, then and there, paid him thirty pieces of silver, the Old Testament’s price for a dead slave. From that moment, Judas sought an opportunity to betray Jesus, which opportunity he found in Gethsemane, as we heard last week, leading there a great crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and elders.
Only St. Matthew tells of Judas’s change of mind and of the return of the pieces of silver. Perhaps as a former tax-collector, Matthew shared a common past with Judas, who held the money for Jesus and the disciples, and perhaps Matthew wanted to use Judas’s betrayal and doom over money to show how one cannot serve both God and money. Though Judas was not doomed fatalistically, these events fulfilled Scripture and so certainly were part of God’s design. Nevertheless, these three verses from St. Matthew’s account are never read as part of our three-year cycle of readings, though the parallel account of Judas’s death from the book of Acts is appointed to be read in all three years, both on The Seventh Sunday of Easter and on St. Matthias’s Day. Seeming contradictions between St. Matthew’s account and the parallel account from the book of Acts have reasonable explanations, though, to be sure, there are still plenty of other questions about St. Matthew’s account of Judas’s death, most of which questions we cannot answer definitively. Such questions include exactly when and where the incident the verses describe took place, what Judas might have been thinking prior to seeing that Jesus was condemned, and where exactly Judas threw down the pieces of silver. But, for our purposes tonight, however, we can safely say in fact that Judas brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, confessing, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” that they refused to absolve him, telling him to “See to it” himself, that he left, and that he hung himself.
Judas confessed, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” and so his words suggest he knew Deuteronomy’s record of a curse on anyone who took a bribe to shed innocent blood. That curse all the people were to affirm by saying, “Amen”. We must say “Amen” not only to the curse on Judas for his sin, but we must say “Amen” also to similar curses on ourselves for our own sin. We may not have betrayed Jesus historically the way that Judas did, but we are nevertheless still responsible theologically for Jesus’s death. Jesus died as a substitute for you and for me, so in that way our sin is just as much to blame for His death as anyone else’s sin. Judas’s sin of betrayal is just as damnable as the sins you and I commit—sins of thoughts, words, and deeds; what we have done and what we have left undone, as we confess our sins in the preparation for our Sunday Divine Service.
As I suggested a moment ago, Judas can be taken as also having confessed his sin. Although the word used in the Greek of St. Matthew’s account is not the usual word for repentance, several English translations suggest he did repent. The English Standard Version I read at the beginning translates that Judas “changed his mind”, and other versions accent his “remorse”. You and I can probably relate to regretting the consequences of our action without regretting the underlying action itself, say regretting having to pay a ticket for getting caught speeding without regretting the speeding itself. Judas’s conscience certainly moved him to return the money, to make a type of restitution, as it were, but beyond that we cannot say much. I might like to take Judas’s confession at face value, the way I will take confession you might make to me, but, in Judas’s confession, the Christian Church historically does not see true repentance, that is both sorrow over his sin and faith that God will forgive that sin for Jesus’s sake. One reason the Church does not see Judas’s confession as true repentance is because of to whom Judas confessed, in other words, from whom he sought absolution.
How often do you and I seek absolution from someone other than from whom we should seek it? How often do we try simply to forgive ourselves? Or, maybe we try to bury our guilt and not deal with it. Or, maybe we think our sin is unforgivable, that our situation is so desperate that it is beyond any and all hope. Judas ultimately may have thought his sin was unforgivable. To be sure, for Jesus’s murder, Judas deserved the sentence he executed upon himself, just as, for our sins, we deserve temporal and eternal death. However, whether or not Judas in killing himself thought he was carrying out a just sentence is another matter, as is whether or not Judas thought he could atone for his sin by his own death.
In fact, there is only one death that truly can atone for Judas’s and everyone else’s sin, including your sin and my sin, and that death is the death of Jesus Christ our Lord. Judas’s returning the thirty pieces of silver did not buy Jesus back, whether or not that was what Judas intended for their return to do. Neither can you or I ransom ourselves—not with silver, gold, or any other perishable thing. Instead, God redeems us with Jesus’s holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. As Judas himself says, Jesus was innocent; Jesus had no sin of His own for which He deserved death. As an innocent human being, Jesus might have died for one other person, but Jesus was more than human; He was also divine, and as God His death atones for the sin of the whole world, including the sin of each of us. When we are sorry for our sin and combine that sorrow with faith that the God-man Jesus died for us as an individual, then God truly forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. Taking his suicide as evidence of despair, the Church usually understands that Judas did not combine his sorrow over his betrayal of Jesus with faith, in contrast to Peter who did combine his sorrow over his denial of Jesus with faith. We know from elsewhere in Holy Scripture that Peter was forgiven, as are we, when we are contrite over our sin and believe. Faith leads to forgiveness and so to peace with God.
Maybe Judas was seeking such forgiveness, but, if he was, he sought it in the wrong place and got bad spiritual direction as a result. Despite their sacred calling, the cold and hard‑as‑stone chief priests and elders denied mercy to Judas and any kind of responsibility to God. After Judas’s confession of a sin with which they were complicit, they asked, “What is that to us?” And, they added, “See to it yourself”. Literally they said, “You yourself will see to it”. Though not in the form of a command in the Greek, the future statement is no milder or gentler, but it expresses cold indifference and almost compels Judas to his death. In sharp contrast is the “absolution” Peter later received from our Lord, the absolution penitent sinners who come to faithful Lutheran pastors receive. Yes, all our sins are washed away in the waters of Holy Baptism, but, when sins particularly trouble us, we can individually confess our sins to a pastor for the sake of privately receiving absolution from him (and from him hopefully also receiving good spiritual direction). Baptized and absolved, we then receive by our mouths, as Judas himself may have received, the same true innocent blood that Judas betrayed, only instead of receiving it unworthily to our harm, we who believe receive it worthily by faith, and so, with it, we receive and benefit from the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
Even as we live in the forgiveness of sins, we may find that we live a life not that unlike the life of Judas, at times on the edge of despair. Even with good spiritual direction, thoughts of suicide may tempt our minds; we may attempt the deed, and some may even succeed. We maybe were taught or have come to think that suicide is some sort of unforgivable sin, even if only because seldom does suicide leave time for one to repent (as if we literally have to repent of each and every sin in order for God to forgive that sin). To be sure, suicide is a sin, and suicide can be taken as a sign of the despair that can come with a total lack of faith. But, believers live in a state of grace, even those who in a dark moment might successfully commit suicide can remain in a state of grace (and, not every single ordinary sin must be repented of to be forgiven). In the end, God alone knows what is in an individual’s heart, and He alone sentences unbelievers to hell or gives believers the gift of heaven. Thoughts of suicide, attempting suicide, and, in some cases, even successful suicide can all be forgiven by the innocent blood of Jesus, shed for you and for me.
What originally piqued my interest in preaching tonight on these three verses from St. Matthew’s account was the bad spiritual direction seemingly‑contrite Judas received from the chief priests and elders. Because of their failure to comfort Judas with the Gospel, when the law seemingly had done its work, I almost would like to excuse Judas. In the end, I am not sure we can excuse Judas, but we can and have realized our own sin and appreciated God’s forgiveness of that sin, when we combine our sorrow over it with faith in His forgiveness for Jesus’s sake. And, we know that we find that forgiveness where He promises to give it—in the Word and Sacraments, purely-preached and rightly-administered by the Office of the Holy Ministry, from which Office we also seek spiritual direction—spiritual direction far better than that which Judas received or that which we might receive by sticking a finger into the Bible at random.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +