Good Friday: The Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, 2022
JOHN 18:1-19:42

Judas, who betrayed him

John’s Gospel does not tell us what happens to Judas after he hands Jesus over in the garden. There are two other accounts of what happened to Judas, one from Matthew, and one in Acts. in Matthew, Judas repents. In Acts, Luke has Peter tell a different story; Judas does not repent, but rather “falling headlong, [Judas] burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.” Mark doesn’t seem to care what happened to Judas.

But John, as careful as he is with his telling of all things, still doesn’t tell us what happens to Judas. Instead, this is the last we hear of him: that “Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came [to the garden] with lanterns and torches and weapons.” Does Judas repent? Does Judas not repent? On this, John is silent.

In this way we are meant, as we ask, what happened to Judas? Did Jesus love Judas to the end, too? And to ask further questions: “what happens to the people who betray Jesus now?” What happens to the Patriarch of Moscow, who most certainly seems to be betraying Jesus when he uses his religious authority to support the war in Ukraine? What would it mean if the Patriarch of Moscow were to repent or not repent? What happens to the person who betrayed me? What would it mean, to me and to others, if they were to repent, or not repent? What happens to the person who betrayed the person I love? What would it mean, to me and to the one I love, if that person were to repent or not repent?

John’s Gospel, quite intentionally, by not giving us an end to the story of Judas allows us to wonder what it might mean to repent, or not to repent, for the most egregious of betrayals, and about what the manner of love is, for those who betray.

In John’s Gospel, Judas just vanishes into the crowd. He vanishes just as we start to hear, in earnest, about all the other ways that people fail the Son of Man, the Messiah, the chosen one of God. Judas fades into a crowd that includes the Roman soldiers and the Temple police, there together to deliver Jesus to his death; a crowd that includes Simon Peter, the man of violence who strikes a slave on the head, and the disciple who would deny Jesus; a crowd that includes the high priest who would strike Jesus on the face; a crowd that includes Pilate, who would have Jesus flogged, and who would do the expedient thing for himself, and sentence Jesus to be crucified; a crowd that includes the soldiers who would flog Jesus and crown him with a crown of thorns; and a crowd that would rather have  Barabbas released—a murderer and a bandit—than they would have Jesus avoid the death penalty.

So while Judas’s betrayal, being a betrayal of the tightest sort of intimacy and the closest kind of community, would hurt the most—it is still a betrayal that becomes one of many different kinds of betrayal.

John tells us that not long before the episode in the garden—when Judas brings the Roman soldiers and the Temple Guard to Jesus to take Jesus away—John tells us that not long before this, that “Satan [had] entered into [Judas],” and earlier yet, that it was the devil that had put it into Judas’s heart to betray Jesus. And so even if Judas repented, what would he repent for? Is Judas personally responsible for what he has done, if he was under the influence of such malign forces? Should we not hold those malign forces responsible, rather than Judas, for this betrayal? But then, if we were to pin this betrayal on forces bigger than Judas himself, does Judas get off the hook because the devil made him do it?

It’s a question that wouldn’t be just about Judas: what of the Roman soldiers and the Temple Guard were working at the behest of others, without much of a choice? What of the other Temple authorities who were afraid to keep a fragile peace made with violent Roman occupiers? What of the disciples that deny the one who loved them most dearly, were they not concerned for their bodily safety? What of the crowds, who, even as they enjoyed the spectacle of a public trial, were hoping for peace? Judas fades into this crowd, a crowd subject to difficult decisions while under the sway of malign forces, but who also make bad and selfish decisions; a crowd that surely includes us, right?

Each of us are able to point to forces that keep us in sin— who here can say that they don’t participate in an economy that values return on investment higher than it values a livable planet? Who here can say that they don’t benefit materially from the colonial exploitation of a land once occupied by others? We all have our own entanglements in sin, and we all have opportunities to blame other people or other forces. But the truth about Judas, and the relationship between his own personal responsibility and the responsibility of malign forces that would be largely out of his control, is the truth about us.

But, as David Ford puts it: John’s Gospel “does not give theoretical solutions to problems such as the mystery of evil and sin or the interrelationship of divine freedom and human freedom but rather describes a reality in which … three elements are combined and to be taken seriously:  individual human responsibility, evil beyond the individual […] and the love of Jesus.”

Judas’s fate is entwined with our own fate; the fate of the ones who betray the gospel and betray Jesus in our own time is entwined with our own fates; the fate of those who have betrayed us are entwined without our own fates, too; and we are all entwined not just with sin for which we are responsible as individuals, nor with sin and evil that is well beyond us as individuals—we are also entwined in the love of Jesus.

And Jesus loved Judas. Judas was one of the 12 disciples; Judas received the bread and wine at the last supper; Judas had his feet washed by Jesus. This discipleship of Judas tells us two things. First, that the deepest betrayals come from those who are closest; keep this in mind if you are a disciple of Jesus! Those of us who are closest to Jesus and his mission are the ones most likely to betray him most deeply. Second, it also tells us that Judas was part of Jesus’s community of friends, a thing that cannot be taken away; in this sense the salvation of Judas is sure and fast, despite his betrayal, regardless of his repentance or lack thereof.

Should Judas have repented? Most certainly! Should Judas have repented for what he chose to do, and for what he did under the sway of evil forces that were beyond his control? Absolutely. But if we are convinced that, on the cross, Jesus gathers all things and all people to himself; and that on the cross, sin and death are conquered for us; that Jesus, there, is the sacrifice and propitiation for our sin, that he is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, that he is the lamb slain for us and for our salvation—then even the betrayers will have a share in the salvation wrought by God in Christ on the cross.

Jesus loved Judas. Indeed, may we hope in repentance, for the sake of those who betray, for the sake of the betrayed; but may we be sure in their salvation, just as we would be sure in our own.

The Revd Preston DS Parsons