The Problem of Judas

Judas Iscariot has always fascinated me. Every Easter, when I write blog posts and skits and devotionals, I keep coming back to him over and over again.

Sometimes, I think about how I would view him if I were one of the people who knew him best: his fellow disciples. I picture them, huddled, frightened on that dark Saturday, together but feeling very alone. They were thinking about Jesus, of course. Of what to do next. But I bet Judas’ name came up too. And I picture myself there and wonder what I would say.

If I am Matthew, I would be nervously cracking my knuckles, thinking—maybe saying—“I knew it all along. Remember? I told you. I knew he was stealing from us. The numbers didn’t add up. And when I asked about it, whenever I said anything about it, he’d just make some snide comment about how the Roman’s financial management system wasn’t the same as good, honorable Jewish math and maybe that was my problem. Like I was still just the resident tax collector, the friendly local cheat.”

But what I wouldn’t say, what I would just wonder, quietly, was: And look what happened to him. Did it start that way, you think? Just a few cut corners, a bit of pocketed change? With tiny justifications and self-righteous denials?

Maybe, all along, he wasn’t planning to betray Jesus. Maybe he just wanted things his way. Wanted to be in control, to not have to trust God. And every compromise got easier.

I know that feeling. If Jesus hadn’t called me away…. Face it, I was the friendly local cheat. What if I had been given responsibility for the money bag? Old habits die hard.

It could have been me.

Sabbath Reflections: Reflections on the Death of Aslan

If I’m still in an Easter mood, I blame it on Narnia. I went to see a musical production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night at a local high school.

Now, I have to preface this with the fact that I’ve never liked Susan. She’s always too darn practical. (For fans of the series, this led to a smug, “I knew it!” in The Last Battle which I immediately felt guilty about.)

Anyway, the Susan in the musical was just like that. In the sister’s song right after Aslan’s death, this is what she sings, “Little sister, no more tears / Though the night is long and dark / Still the dawn appears. / Dearest Lucy, dry your eyes. / Yes, the dawn is cold and gray. / Still the sun will rise.”

I get the point. Really, I do. This was supposed to be a sweet and touching moment of the play. But it just made me angry. I wanted to yell, “Let Lucy cry!” Susan has the annoying habit of wanting to make everything reasonable.

Sabbath Reflections: The Traitor and the Betrayed

I’ve been the Force/narrator in several games of Star Wars Mafia. This puts me on the outside looking in, which provides a great opportunity to psychoanalyze people. (Yeah, it happens. Don’t play a game with me if you don’t want your brain picked and turned into a blog post.)

Often, there comes a point in the game where two people are claiming to be the exact same character. One is telling the truth. One is lying. And they both know who the other person is.

Over time, I noticed something that all of the honest parties had in common, guys or girls. There is one way you can spot the person who’s telling the truth.

When Easter Hurts

If I see a happy, smiling Easter bunny right now, I will throttle it. There is no flavor of jelly bean that can take away the bitterness of something like this happening. All of the trappings of the holiday that I normally look forward to and smile at feel plastic and meaningless.

Except for the cross.

A great tragedy happened on my campus today. Students everywhere were crying, whispering in their rooms, walking into the street in front of cars because they were so stunned.

Easter is about joy. All of the concerts and programs end on a triumphant note, because Jesus is risen. Death has been swallowed up in victory. And that’s true.

But we’re here. And we’re fallen. And nothing feels right anymore. When things like this happen and I wonder how a loving God could allow it, I run to the cross.

Not just because Jesus understands what it’s like to suffer, although that’s true. Not just because the crucifixion displays a more somber mood that fits with the emotions my campus is feeling right now. But because the cross proves that God is love even when we don’t understand how that can be.

I cling to that when there is nothing else that makes sense, when there are no other explanations that work for both my head and my heart.

The way we treat Easter in America doesn’t have answers for times like this. But God has the answer, and the answer is Him, the dying God, the one who gave up everything for us. No, He didn’t take away pain and He doesn’t always stop tragedy. But He loved us enough to die.

This is my favorite George MacDonald quote of all time: “That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, ‘Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.’”

Right now, I have no answers. I have no joy. I am hurting and confused and full of regret, like so many others. I have come crying to God from the bottom of my heart, without anything to give, stripped of self-righteousness and security and thinking that everyone is fine like they always tell me.

I’m in Good Friday right now. I don’t feel the sunrise of Easter coming. Everything is dark, and I’m scared. But I believe that Jesus died and that He died for me. No amount of confusion about why terrible things happen can overcome that.

Perfect in faith? No, not yet, George. But I’m trying. I’m waiting for the morning, and I wait with hope. Because of the empty tomb? Yes, but mostly because of the cross.

Sabbath Reflections: Mythologizing Easter

Take a second and think about how you would tell the story of the first Thanksgiving in a few sentences. (Yes this is a post about Easter. No you did not enter into a time-warp that took you back to November. Why would you even think such a silly thing?)

I actually did an activity like this at a Thanksgiving party last year, where three different groups performed skits to summarize the event. Here were the main plot points that pretty much everyone included:

• Pilgrims flee religious persecution of some kind.
• They travel to the New World on the Mayflower.
• They land on a rock.
• Lots of them die in the winter.
• The kind Indians help them plant corn.
• They celebrate with a feast.
• And they all lived happily ever after.

Even some of these details were fuzzy to a few people who will remain unnamed. (I overheard one conversation involving whether the Pilgrims arrived before or after Columbus.) But that was the general flow of the summaries.

Everyone probably knew that the Indians who attended the first Thanksgiving didn’t say, “Me eat corn now.” They probably didn’t think that all of the traditional dishes—sweet potatoes with marshmallows?—were served at that feast. And, if I had asked, they could probably have explained how the Pilgrims would have viewed the modern celebration of the holiday (I’m sure they’d love the parade, especially those Rockettes) given their religious beliefs.

But the picture that comes into our heads is the cartoon version, the coloring book plot that was drilled into our heads since we were young enough to wear paper-bag Indian costumes and newspaper pilgrim hats.

In our culture, Thanksgiving is considered a real, historical event…but that’s not what we think of first. We’ve made Thanksgiving into a myth.

To Christians, Jesus’ resurrection is considered a real, historical event…but that’s often not what we think of first, because we’ve made Easter into a myth.