10Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.11When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.
Notice that Mark, the first Gospel written, does not attribute a particular motive to Judas. Matthew, Luke and John, all written later, speculate on what his motive might have been. They seem to think it was for money, but Mark says that Judas volunteered first and then the priests offered to reward him. Chances are Judas, human as we all are, is not purely a villain, but was trying to do what he believed was right. Some scholars have speculated that the name Judas Iscariot is a transliteration of Judas Ish Sicarius, literally Judas Man of the Knife. These Men of the Knife were the first suicide terrorists we know of. They were Jewish patriots that carried sicarii, long thin knives designed slip between the joints of Roman armor. They would mix in with crowds of Roman soldiers or collaborators and stab as many as they could before they themselves were hacked to pieces. Evidently, Jesus had recruited Judas and Simon the Zealot from the ranks of revoltuionaries, and sought to bring them to a new understanding of what the kingdom of God was all about. One wonders if he had to sleep between them and Matthew Levi the tax collector and known collaborator with the Romans' puppet government.
It is altogether possible that after Jesus had refused the efforts of the crowd to make him king, Judas had finally given up on Jesus leading a successful revolt. Perhaps he thought the arrest of Jesus might still lead to a popular uprising, and when it only led to Jesus' humiliating death, Judas gave up all hope for change and even life itself.
Adam Hamilton, author of 24 Hours Which Changed the World, the book we have been studying this Lent, has a question that we Christians need to deal with: "What if Judas had lived?" If he had not killed himself, if he had waited 3 days and met the risen Lord, what might have happened. Wasn't Jesus the one who preached about loving our enemies? How would he have dealt with Judas?
Love, as the Gospel presents it, consists of three parts - compassion, nurture and liberation.
Compassion seeks to understand who the beloved is, their needs, their hopes, their dreams. Nurture tries to fulfill these needs. Liberation seeks to free the beloved from what is holding them back from fulfilling their hopes and dreams and to enable them to love as they have been loved.
Surely Jesus' compassion for Judas would have enabled him to understand one who dreamed of living in the land of the Zealot's motto, "No king but God." He would have understood all Judas' motives, misguided as they might have been. He would have shown Judas how following the way of sacrificial love would fulfill his dream of a new world. And surely Jesus would have sought to liberate Judas from the guilt which drove him to suicide and forgiven him just as Jesus had forgiven those who directly tortured him to death on the cross. Imagine, Hamilton says, what a powerul witness Judas would have made, even more powerful than Peter, telling the story of his betrayal and forgiveness.
And Hamilton leaves us with one last question, "If Jesus would have forgiven Judas, can he not forgive you?"
You know the answer.
"If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;2and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." - 1 John 2:1-2
