Judas - Between the Bread and the Silver
Reflections on Betrayal, Repentance, and Redemption, and some thoughts on the novels Silence + The Power and The Glory.
I find myself in a place where I am simply unable to stop thinking about Judas. I suppose Lent and it’s leading into Holy Week is a good season to have him on the mind. Judas is a fascinating figure, of course. In many ways, he’s a marginal character in the narrative, up until he takes center stage. If this were literature, his sort of “heel turn” would be almost eye-rolling in its randomness and unpredictability. But if I trust that the Word and the Gospels have something to tell me, even in what they choose NOT to tell me, then what do I make of the role Judas has to play? And what does it tell me about myself?
If I’m honest, even as a kid, I always felt sort of bad for Judas, and even to an extent Pilate. Not sure what that says about me, but it’s true. I think from the jump I realized given the right circumstances, fears, or pressures, I would be just as prone to betrayal or apathetic dismissal. And the harsh reality is that I have ALREADY succumbed to those things and betrayed or abandoned Christ over and over again, and I will continue to do so, even if I wish is was not so. Sympathy for Judas is really just sympathy for myself. Judas acts as the sort of prototype for our betrayals. Theologian Fredrick Buechner says it this way:
“There can be no doubt in Jesus' mind what the kiss of Judas means, but it is Judas that he is blessing, and Judas that he is prepared to go out and die for now. Judas is only the first in a procession of betrayers two thousand years long.”
When the disciples are plainly told, “one of you will betray me,” two things occur: 1. They all ask themselves if they will be the one, and 2. None of them notice or suspect it’s Judas. The narrative appears to be telling us (me) that betrayal and failing is so likely and so possible that we will both suspect it in ourselves and fail to recognize it as it’s happening. +Rowan Williams notes,
“When Jesus predicts that one of his disciples will betray him, all respond initially by asking, ‘Is it I?’ It is as if they have already learned the lesson that no one can understand their betrayal – or their cowardice – in advance, that all are capable of giving way to the lure of denial. All of us could choose darkness.”
The Nature of Betrayal
The scriptural text doesn’t provide us a lot of information or context on why Judas betrays Christ. In some ways, each of the Gospels presents a slightly different version. Money is always involved, but sometimes it’s because Judas is a thief and others it’s almost an afterthought. Luke and John tell us that “Satan” entered him, and his actions seemed to flow from that. There are other, less textually direct conclusions – Judas was a sort of anti-Roman freedom fighter who wanted Jesus to use the sword; Judas was afraid of Rome and wanted to escape trouble. But for me, the takeaway here is that the motivation for betrayal is so vague (or perhaps so minor) intentionally. +Williams states, “the existence of these imaginative projections, which have slender support in the primary texts, suggests that people felt uncomfortable with the idea of a sheerly arbitrary rejection of the good.” I think what it may be telling us is that each of us possesses the capacity to make the same decision, regardless of our motivations. But it shows us its foolish to expect betrayal/sin to only come from an obvious place of evil. In his “Interpretation of Judas,” Origen of Alexandria suggests that, even if Judas had a capacity for evil, he clearly also had traces of goodness and faithfulness. The disciples’ uncertainty as to who the betrayer would be; Judas rebuking James and John (alongside the other disciples) for their desire for places of honor–Origen sees these as signs of his goodness and faithful relationship with Jesus. Ultimately, the story of Judas teaches that even in our faithfulness and our desire to be good, we too possess the ability to fail, to sin, and to harm. My friend Father David Harvey put it this way: “It should probably worry us more than it does that were we to be one of the disciples, it is likely we would be Judas. Maybe that Jesus allows us to do what we wish, only affirms this.”
Silence & The Power and the Glory
A few weeks back, I picked up a copy of Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence. I had, of course, seen the film (highly recommend), but I had never read the novel (highly-er recommend). Silence follows the story of Father Rodrigues, a 17th century Portuguese missionary to Japan. It is essentially a retelling of Christ’s passion, through Rodrigues’s own suffering, persecution, doubt, and faith. There are a number of small, but significant differences in the text and film I could highlight, but the one that struck me the most was how much more significant the role of Kichijiro is in the original novel. Kichijiro fills the role of Judas to Rodrigues’s Jesus, and continually reappears as a challenge to Rodrigues. After finishing Silence, I was drawn straight into a reading of The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. It was extremely influential for Endō, and much of the narrative thrust is similar. In the novel, an unnamed “whisky priest” stumbles through his own journey of brokenness and doubt, all the while being plagued by “the mestizo,” his own Judas. The novels have so much to say about faithfulness and doubt, pride and sacrifice, “priesthood,” and suffering. But I could not escape this focus on the different ways the narratives chose to present Judas. I think the authors’ portrayals also have something to teach us about the ways in which we want to see Judas, and the ways in which we want to distance ourselves from him.
Our two Judasian (not a word) figures present similarly in that they are foils to our Christ stand-ins, and their presence presents challenges, hardships, and temptations that must be overcome. But beyond that, they diverge starkly. In silence, Kichijiro rarely MEANS Rodrigues harm, but continually provides it. Kichijiro continually pursues Rodrigues, looking for a way to make amends for his sins. But this often results in Rodrigues being captured or caught in priestly work. Kichijiro returns, again, to bemoan his state as an apostate and a betrayer. At one point he says, “God asks me to imitate the strong, even though he made me weak. Isn't this unreasonable?” Kichijiro is faulty and weak and scared. He is wretched and poor. In his weakness, he betrays Rodrigues over and over again. And yet, he continues to pursue! He continues to pine for absolution and redemption. The mestizo, on the other hand, is actively working against the whisky priest. He works towards his own advantages and continually attempts to set traps for the priest. He, like Kichijiro, continually pursues the priest, but for him it is in an effort to achieve his own ends. This almost seems more representative of Satan (adversary) tempting Christ in the wilderness. He is even described with canine fangs and yellow eyes – certainly more demonic than wretched or pitiable.
I think it’s telling that, like us, the whisky priest is so ready to assign those qualities of immutable evil to Judas – if Judas represents the ultimate, intentional, unredeemable evil, we can allow ourselves to separate from any notion that we may be like him. After all, even Christ refers to him as “the devil.” The mestizo acts with intention to betray and trap and harm and makes no attempt to repent or make amends. “That could never be me and I could never betray Jesus like a Judas or a Satan.” Kichijiro, in contrast, seems to me a much more representative version of Judas. One who sins, but who, eventually, realizes so and wants to make amends.
Did Judas Repent?
Here we enter the precarious waters of theological controversy. Judas’s acknowledgment of sin and repentance are a contested conclusion amongst scholars and preachers. The text in Matthew tells us that after seeing Jesus’s condemnation Judas feels/experiences something, attempts to return the money, and acknowledges Jesus’s innocence. In one translation, it says Judas felt "remorse." Another says he "repented.” There are plenty of articles and reflections where someone will tell you with confidence and surety whether or not Judas's remorse/repentance was "real." (I found one podcast cheerily titled “Judas in Hell: The Eternal Danger of False Repentance.”) But I can’t get past the fact that focusing so heavily on this translational discrepancy overlooks the fact that in BOTH, Judas says "I HAVE SINNED," and acknowledges the innocence of Jesus. Some commenters will say Judas’s eventual suicide is an indication his repentance was false. But what if it was so true and his understanding of his sin was so deep, that Judas fled himself the only way he knew how? Origen suggests his suicide does not indicate false repentance, but rather INCOMPELETE repentance – one that God certainly would not desire or require. Buechner again:
“There is a tradition in the early church, however, that his suicide was based not on despair but on hope. If God was just, then he knew there was no question where he would be heading as soon as he'd breathed his last. Furthermore, if God was also merciful, he knew there was no question either that in a last-ditch effort to save the souls of the damned as God's son, Jesus would be down there too. Thus the way Judas figured it, hell might be the last chance he'd have of making it to heaven, so to get there as soon as possible, he tied the rope around his neck and kicked away the stool. Who knows?”
“Who knows?” indeed. I certainly don’t know if Judas’s repentance was real or not. In fact, the only thing I can say with confidence is I don’t believe that conclusion is mine to even reach. I do believe there is a lesson there for us: no sin is too great for repentance. No sinner is too far gone for redemption. I may be taken by greed and Satan may enter into me, but nevertheless I can recognize and repent and flee to mercy. The passage in John where Jesus identifies his betrayal ends with this verse, “So, after receiving the piece of bread, [Judas] immediately went out. And it was night.” Another translation says, “Judas, with the piece of bread, left.” We don’t know if Judas consumed the bread, participating in a sort of act of delayed sacramentality. But we do know Jesus gave it to him freely and then released him. In an essay on this passage, Lore Wilbert reflects”
“Judas still brought the bread with him. He brought the body of Christ with him, even in his rejection of Christ, even in his misplaced hopes. And I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t just give me hope for my friends who’ve walked away. It gives me hope for me. Because just yesterday I let a wafer melt on my tongue and just this morning I doubted God’s goodness to me. Just yesterday I whispered ‘Thanks be to God’ as I received the body of Christ and just this morning I forgot him.”
If Judas carried the bread with him, if he bore the body of Christ even as he walked into the night, then what does that say about us? About the ways we fail and return, the ways we doubt and yet still long for grace? Repentance is not about deserving forgiveness; it is about turning back toward the One who offers it. Incomplete, imperfect, desperate—repentance acknowledges the need for redemption. And if there can be hope for Judas, even in his final act, then surely there can hope for us too.
Can Judas Be Redeemed?
And now we come to perhaps the most dicey waters. The place wherein I must really, truly, ask myself if what I want to be true and what I believe to be true and what is true are all one in the same. The question I believe started this whole journey for me – Can Judas be Redeemed? Now I will readily again admit these waters are too tricky for me to navigate alone. There are, unsurprisingly, numerous theological stances here. Von Balthazar argues Christ was not betrayed, but surrendered and delivered himself up, rendering Judas’s acts not a betrayal. Several Catholic catechisms refer to Judas’s “eternal perdition.” Pope John Paul II, somewhat vaguely, says:
“The words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel, He speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Mt. 25:46). Who will these be? The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard. This is a mystery, truly inscrutable, which embraces the holiness of God and the conscience of man. The silence of the Church is, therefore, the only appropriate position for Christian faith. Even when Jesus says of Judas, the traitor, ‘It would be better for that man if he had never been born’ (Mt. 26:24), His words do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.”
John Calvin believed Judas was predestined for Hell, but still ascribed that end to Judas’s free will. John MacArthur’s commentary on Matthew says plainly: “No man could be more evil than Judas Iscariot…who did not take so much as the first step of faith.”
So, is Judas eternally damned to Hell? Christ came to take on the sins of the world, but why is it necessary for someone to place those sins UPON him? Could God’s purposes have been realized without betrayal? And if not, and Judas becomes necessary for God’s plan to be fulfilled, how can he be doomed to eternal damnation for his necessary role? If anyone MUST be damned, what does that mean for the price of my salvation? I think these are all valid and important questions. +Williams:
“At one point in the Gospel narrative, Jesus says that he ‘goes on his way’ as has been foreordained – but that it would have been better for the man who betrays him never to have been born. For Jesus to achieve his liberating mission, someone must be the catalyst for the final confrontation and also must be destroyed by that confrontation. So is God responsible for Judas’s betrayal? If so, why should Judas be punished? And if the salvation of the world necessarily results in the death in suicidal despair of the predestined betrayer, is that a price worth paying? These rather Dostoevskian questions leave both believer and unbeliever with unpalatable issues. Whether we are talking about God’s purposes or merely the achievement of definite human good by human means, the challenge is to answer if there are any courses of action to be taken for the sake of the good that are guaranteed to be free from a cost that has nothing to do with punishment and reward. Must it be the case that for anyone to be saved, someone must be damned?”
There is also a question here about Jesus’s role in Judas’s betrayal. Several times, Jesus notes that he will be betrayed and he indicates that he knows who that betrayer is. Yet we see no effort to intervene or to divert him from this course. When confronted with Kichijiro’s betrayal yet again Rodrigues asks, “Did Jesus pray for Judas?” Some of the uncertainty around Judas’s betrayal and motives, and Jesus’s response to him could easily leave us, like Rodrigues, wondering how Jesus even felt about Judas. And that leaves us wondering how Jesus would and does feel about OUR betrayals. My friend, Fr. Paul said it this way: “The fascination with [Judas] is sparked by the very fact that we acn’t make sense of him, and in some ways can’t make sense of Jesus apart from him.”
In John 13, knowing his betrayal is coming, Jesus looks to Judas and says, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” Rodrigues cannot escape questioning these words from Christ: “What emotion had filled the breast of Christ when he ordered away the man who was to betray him for thirty pieces of silver. Was it anger? or resentment? Or did these words arise from his love? If it was anger, then at this instant Christ excluded from salvation this man alone of all the men in the world; and then our Lord allowed one man to fall into eternal damnation. But it could not be so. Christ wanted to save even Judas. If not, he would have never made him one of his disciples. And yet why did Christ not stop him when he began to slip from the path of righteousness?.” At the end of the novel, Rodrigues has committed what he perceives to be his own act of betrayal. He cannot imagine why Christ would lead him to this place to only cast him away. At the peak of his despair, the same place Judas must have been when he says, “I HAVE SINNED,” Rodrigues prays, yet again, and finally hears the voice of Jesus:
“Lord. I resented your silence.”
“I was not silent. I suffered beside you.”
“But you told judas to go away: ‘What thou dost do quickly.’ What happened to Judas?”
“I did not say that. Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish just as you are now.”
Endō presents this beautiful reflection of Christ’s love and flips how I hear those words on their head. Christ does not resent Judas, nor does he rebuke or abandon him. Christ ushers him through his anguish and his sin, quickly and mercifully, and, I believe, in love. This is ultimately the image and nature of Jesus I wish to trust in. The Jesus who, in the moment of his betrayal, calls Judas friend. Buechner, again: “this is the last time that he will ever feel the touch of another human being except in torment. It is not the Lamb of God and his butcher who meet here, but two old friends embracing in a garden because they both of them know that they will never see one another again.”
Can Judas be redeemed? I can plainly say I don’t know. But the question matters. And Judas’s redemption matters because our redemption matters. Williams: “The other question, about freedom, about God’s ‘complicity’ in the possibility of evil actions, has produced even less in the way of a final theoretical perspective. The nearest to a resolution seems to be the hope, sporadically expressed throughout Christian history… that there could be absolution for Judas. This says both that evil is real and appallingly destructive and that the pain and loss it brings are not the last word.” I am Kichijiro – weakly betraying, but ever returning. I am the mestizo – selfish and sneering in my self-justifications. I am Judas – acting traitorously on motives either unknown or so small as to be inconceivable. And so are you. And we will fail and succumb to weakness or evil or betrayal and our sins will bring about destruction and pain and loss. But it is not the final word.
“’Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ said the Divine, making excuses for his murderers, not after it was all over, but at the very moment when he was dying by their hands. When the Father succeeded in answering his prayer, then his forgiveness in the hearts of the murderers broke out in sorrow, repentance, and faith. Here was a sin dreadful enough surely—but easy for our Lord to forgive. But must we believe that Judas—who repented even to agony, who repented so that his high-prized life, self, and soul, became worthless in his eyes and met with no mercy at his own hand—could find no mercy in such a God? I think, when Judas fled from his hanged and fallen body, he fled to the tender help of Jesus, and found it—I say not how. I believe Jesus loved Judas even when he was kissing him with the traitor’s kiss, and I believe that he was his Savior still. I cannot believe O my Lord, that thou wouldst not forgive thy enemy, even when he repented. Nor will I believe that thy holy death was powerless to save thy foe—that it could not reach to Judas. Have we not heard of those, thine own, taught of thee, who could easily forgive their betrayers in thy name? And if thou forgive, will not thy forgiveness find its way at least in redemption and purification?” – George Macdonald
Thanks, as always, for reading. Special thanks in this edition to Fr. Paul Paino (Link) who let me ask him endless questions via 10,000 texts and emails and really helped flesh this out. Thanks to Fr. Daniel (Link) for letting me use his image above. Thanks to Fr. David for letting me steal his quote without permission, and for conducting a heretical proofread.
This one was a loooooooot of work for me, so if you have the impulse for a share, send it along! Appreciate you all.
Great work! Have you read Sergei Bulgakov’s Judas Iscariot: Apostle and traitor?
Incredible read. Maybe or maybe not so surprisingly, I too have had those thoughts about Judas and pilate... Feeling a bit sorry for them, wondering what I would have done... What would thet have written about me? To your point, we have all been Judas.
4 judases was my favorite