Spy Wednesday

Wednesday of Holy Week is traditionally known as "Spy Wednesday," the day Judas spied out an opportunity to betray Jesus.  We can only speculate as to the historical nature of Judas' betrayal (though the spiritual nature is made quite clear to us in the gospels and in ourselves).  It's easy to dismiss a Judas.  As easy as promising that we'll never deny Jesus (Peter) or asking rhetorical questions to appear to be concerned ("Is it I, Lord?").  I wonder if Judas is really that different from me.  I wonder if Judas didn't look at his friend and think "if only I could push him from without to really take charge of this revolt...if only I could motivate him to do what I know he really wants to do!"  I wonder if Judas was really spying out an opportunity to "help" Jesus be what Judas thought Jesus should be...using the very religious authority that had battled the kind of rules-don't-matter good-news that Jesus taught.

I bet Judas is a lot like me.  Don't we all sometimes look at our friends and dream about who we wish them to be?  Don't we all try to change others into who we just KNOW they really want to be?  Don't we try to manipulate by bringing in systems and empire and programs to try to "jumpstart" what we think will be their transformation?  Don't we tell ourselves that we love our friends we are trying to help by turning them over to the authorities?  We betray with a kiss...a handshake...a hug.  Nothing sinister here.

Judas was just trying to save Jesus from Himself...manipulate him to greatness.  It was never about the money...it's why he ultimately threw it back in the faces of the clergymen. He realized that he had certainly set things in motion but that Jesus wasn't playing his game.  It's why he killed himself...because in trying to save the Savior, he lost himself.

Maybe I can learn a lot from Judas.  If I can just stay present with the Savior, in every face that I see Him, in every disappointing reflection...perhaps I can stop trying to manage people and instead start loving and being in relationship with people.  Maybe I can stop expecting so much from others and be gentle with myself as well...maybe I can see that everyone is just being the person they can be right now.  Just as I am.  And in realizing that, pray God I can avoid unwittingly betraying my own friends into the hands of unreasonable expectations, religious systems, political ideologies, and selfish desires.

The hand of the betrayer is usually at the table...within, not without...friend, not stranger.  And the love of the Savior endures even in the face of that kind of betrayal...He loved them to the end.  Judas spied out a way to manipulate Jesus.  Jesus simply was...present in the moment, loving to the end, the same loving Savior on the hillside, on the shores of Galilee, at the table, in the garden, in the courtyard, and on the cross.  People were changed and transformed by who Jesus was and not through manipulation or clever programming adapted for local use.  Jesus was fully divine and fully human...and when people came into contact with that kind of RIGHT-now-nothing-missing-everything-at-once Life, they were different because of it.  They found something in their own humanity that they had lost.

Jesus never lost Judas.  Judas lost himself.  May I find myself first...before I try to go "saving" others and end up forever remembered as the friend who betrayed with a kiss.  And when I've gone to far, losing myself and my friends...may the hand of the Savior at the table, dipping his bread into the sop with me, reaching out to me one last time...wake me up to the reality of a God who never loses one sheep and who hasn't lost me.  Amen.