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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. (Amen.)
Who handed-over Jesus for you? The answer to that question seems almost too obvious, and in some ways the answer to that question is too obvious. For, even when first naming Judas Iscariot as one of the Twelve Disciples turned Apostles, the Gospel accounts immediately identify him as Jesus’s betrayer (Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:19; compare Luke 6:16). And, as we heard in tonight’s Reading (Matthew 26:30-56), the Gospel accounts can even use the expression “the betrayer” to refer to Judas (confer Mark 14:44). So much is Judas associated with Jesus’s betrayal that even in popular speech the term “Judas” can refer to anyone who deceitfully and treacherously betrays a friend. Yet, using the same Greek verb, which is translated “betray” only about one-third of the time in the New Testament, the New Testament also refers to others than Judas’s “handing‑over” Jesus, such as God the Father’s “giving Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Last week we discussed God the Father, noting that sometimes the references to Jesus’s being “handed-over” were what are called “Divine passives”, and this week we discuss Judas, noting that sometimes the references to Jesus’s being “handed-over”, arguably by Judas, make use of phrases that express not the ultimate agent but only the intermediate agent (Matthew 26:24; Mark 14:21; Luke 22:22; see Wallace, 432, 433-434). In other words, God the Father is the one Who “handed-over” Jesus, but Judas is the one, or one of the ones, through whom Jesus was “handed-over”, at least to the Jewish leaders (John 18:36).
What we heard about Judas last week and this week are only parts of what the Holy Spirit has inspired to be written about Judas in the four Gospel accounts. Similar to how the Gospel accounts’ authors tell us their listeners that Judas is the betrayer at his first mention, we are told, with reference to Judas, that Jesus knew who would “hand-over” Him, from the beginning (John 6:64, 71). In time, days before the betrayal, Judas objected to Mary of Bethany’s anointing Jesus with expensive ointment instead of giving its monetary value to the poor, and the Divinely‑inspired St. John tells us that Judas did not care about the poor but was a thief with charge of the moneybag, to the contents of which he was helping himself (John 12:4-6; Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; compare Luke 7:36-50). At some point afterwards, Satan entered into Judas (Luke 22:3; confer John 13:2, 27), and, as we heard last week, he offered to betray Jesus to the Jewish leaders, and they paid him 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:14-16; Mark 14:10-11; Luke 22:4-6). On the night when Jesus was betrayed, Judas was there at the closed Lord’s Supper, and, like the rest of the Twelve, Judas questioned whether he was the one who would betray Jesus, only, un-like with the rest of the Twelve, by at least one account, Jesus essentially told Judas that he was the betrayer (Matthew 26:20-25; Mark 14:17-21; Luke 22:21-23; John 13:21-30). Then later, as we heard this week, interrupting Jesus’s time with His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas did betray Jesus, with a kiss that otherwise would normally be a sign of their close friendship (Matthew 26:45-50; Mark 14:41-46; Luke 22:47-48, 52-54; John 18:1-11).
At this point in the narrative of the Passion of Our Lord, application is often made from Judas’s betrayal of Jesus to what is then called our “betrayal” of Jesus. For example, The Lutheran Study Bible exclaims, “How often we, too, have betrayed Christ and sent Him to the cross for a lot less than 30 pieces of silver” (TLSB, ad loc Matthew 26:14-16, p.1641). And, there may well be a likeness between Judas’s literally “handing-over” Jesus and our figuratively “handing-over” Jesus. But, the Bible notably does not refer to our in any sense “handing-over” Jesus. Rather, as we heard last week, the Bible refers to God the Father’s “handing-over” Jesus for us all, or, more specifically, for our trespasses (Romans 4:25; 8:32; confer Ephesians 5:2, 25). Without our also being among those who “handed‑over” Jesus, as God the Father and Judas were, we still have more than enough guilt in connection with Jesus’s death, for our original sin and all of our actual sins are in some sense the cause of Jesus’s death on the cross. And, without Jesus’s death on the cross for us, we would suffer not only death now in this world but also torment for eternity in hell.
Although later Judas to the Jewish leaders confessed his sin of betraying Jesus’s innocent blood, Judas apparently did not combine his sorrow over his sin with trust in God’s forgiveness for Jesus’s sake (Apology of the Augsburg Confession II:36), but rather Judas seemingly despaired of God’s mercy and took his own life (Mathew 27:3‑5; confer Acts 1:18; Smalcald Articles III:iii:7), and so Judas presumably began to experience that torment for eternity in hell, though not yet in his resurrected but unglorified body. In Judas’s case, what Jesus arguably prophesied, about the one by whom He was betrayed, came true, namely, that it would have been better for Judas if he had not been born (Matthew 26:24; Mark 14:21; Luke 22:22; confer John 19:11)—not that Judas fatalistically had to be, as Tim Rice put it, “damned for all time” (Jesus Christ Superstar), but, if Judas ended up “damned for all time”, Judas ended up “damned for all time” because he did not heed the Holy Spirit’s enabling call for him to repent. Judas’s example warns us against not heeding the Holy Spirit’s enabling call for us to repent. But, as tonight’s Psalm put it (Psalm 32; antiphon v.5), when we confess our transgressions to the Lord, then He forgives the iniquity of our sin, and we against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered—we are truly blessed for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The devil may have tempted Judas to betray Jesus, and Judas may have betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but God had a different motive in “handing-over” Jesus, and what they meant for evil God meant for good (Genesis 50:20). As we sang in tonight’s Office Hymn, God’s deep, broad, high love led Jesus to be betrayed by wickedness for us (Lutheran Service Book 544:5). Judas apparently knew that, by taking a bribe to shed innocent blood, he came under a curse (Deuteronomy 27:25), and Judas may have known also that God required a man’s life for his sin that led to the taking of a man’s life (Genesis 9:5-6), but Judas apparently missed the fact that the man Jesus’s life was given for his sin, as the man Jesus’s life was given for all of our sin. Indeed, on the cross Jesus died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. As true man, Jesus could die for the sins of the world, and, as true God, His death was sufficient for the sins of the world. When we combine sorrow over our sin with trust in God’s forgiveness for Jesus’s sake, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us through His sent ministers’ faithfully preaching His Word and administering His Sacraments.
Earlier in Jesus’s ministry, Jesus had acknowledged that the Jewish leaders both were Moses’s successors and taught with Moses’s authority, but Jesus criticized the Jewish leaders for their un‑faithfully fulfilling the holy duties that were entrusted to them (Matthew 23:2-3; confer Deuteronomy 17:10-11). We see their priestly malpractice with Judas! Instead of the Jewish leaders’ pointing Judas to God’s mercy and grace, offering a sacrifice for and pronouncing absolution to Judas, the Jewish leaders told Judas to see to his sin himself. In comparison, we hear God’s law and Gospel faithfully read and preached to groups such as this group, and we have God’s Gospel faithfully administered to us individually with water in Holy Baptism, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us for the forgiveness of sins and so also for life and salvation. In all of these ways, through His faithful ministers, God forgives our sins, transforming us and enabling us to persevere to eternal life.
Judas’s fall from the Twelve and his later replacement with Matthias were seen as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy (Acts 1:15-26, with reference to Psalm 69:25 and 109:8). In all aspects around Judas’s “handing-over” Jesus, God’s saving purposes were fulfilled then, as, God’s saving purposes are fulfilled now. Even things that others might mean for evil God can mean for good. As the Divinely-inspired St. Paul writes to the Romans and to us, for those who love God, all things work together, at least for the good of conforming us to the image of God’s Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:28-29).
Last week and this week we considered God the Father and Judas as those who handed‑over Jesus for you, and, in the three Midweek Lenten Vespers Services still to come this year, we will consider three other not-so-obvious answers to that thematic question “Who handed-over Jesus for you?” May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit continue to bless our Lenten walk together, to the glory of His Holy Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +