SPY WEDNESDAY

INTRODUCTION

Today is the so called, “Spy Wednesday”. It’s the most  "backgroundish day" — the most “didn’t-make-it” day — the least featured of the name days in Holy Week. We know all about Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and then Easter. They made it. “Spy Wednesday” didn’t.

Why not? It's the day  Judas is featured. However, when it comes down to it,  Judas is someone we know very little about. Yet he's also someone about whom a lot has been written. I found that out when I went looking for quotes and comments about him. I came up with some  interesting ones and I’ll put a few of them in this homily.

Judas, we hardly know you. Who are you? Why did you do what you did?

SCRIPTURES

The gospels get into his motivation and his story. Yet, do they really know the man and what made him tick?

In the Acts of the Apostles there is the detail about Judas’ death that is very messy - and rarely mentioned. It says, "As you know, he bought a field with the money he was paid for his crime." That seems like a very quick transaction. Then the Acts of the Apostles adds,   “He fell headlong and burst open, and all his entrails poured out” [Acts 1: 18] Is that TMI - too much information - and in a homily? I wonder if that story  about the field is a mix up or misunderstanding coming out the story bouncing off his being buried in a potter’s field [Cf. Matthew 27: 7]. Did someone using poetic license make up the bursting apart story as well as him wanting to buy a field with the money he got for betraying Jesus?

It seems that money was his big motivation.

SPIES AND BETRAYERS

Down through the years Judas is listed with the great spies and betrayers. Spies and traitors down through history have always been disliked people. There’s Brutus who betrayed Caesar. There’s Quisling, the Norwegian politician who was a traitor and collaborated with the Nazi invaders. There’s Benedict Arnold who betrayed his side to the British in the Revolutionary War. In our times in our country there have been traitors like Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, John Walker Jr., Jonathan Pollard and others. What were their motives - other than money?

Judas received 30 pieces of silver for betraying Jesus.

DANTE

“Dante sets him [Judas] in the lowest of all hells, a hell of cold and ice, a hell designed to show who were not hot sinners swept away by angry passions, but cold, calculating, deliberate offenders against the love of God.” (Cf. Barclay, Mark, p. 328)

SHAKESPEARE—RICHARD III

Shakespeare has Richard the Third saying, “So Judas did to Christ: but he, in twelve, / Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none. / God save the king! Will no man say, amen?” (Cf. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, p. 195: 10)

GRAHAM GREEN

Yet if there is any character whom we don’t know, it’s Judas. Everyone thinks they know him, but do they?

Graham Green writes in The End of the Affair [1925] , “If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?”

OURSELVES

We don’t know Judas, yet we continue to stereotype him.

John Le Carre 1963 novel had the title, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Why not dub Judas with that title and ask him in prayer, “What happened Judas? What happened? Why did you do it?” Then listen. Answers might give us some deep insights into yourself and others .

Or maybe forget about Judas and only go into ourselves.

Today’s gospel has what I think is the worst line in scripture, -- the horrible words, “Better for him if he had never been born.” Meaning: “woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” Judas!

Instead of looking at Judas, let’s look at ourselves. Have we ever had that feeling, “I wish I was never born”? We might have that feeling when we have betrayed another or have been betrayed. Or we made a horrible mistake - that broke trust. We want to sink into the ground from which we came.

Betrayal is that kind of a sin: betraying or being betrayed.

SOME MORE QUOTES

In a poem, Emily Dickinson said that the soul can be a friend or a spy. Listen to her adjectives. It can be an imperial friend or the most agonizing Spy.

                “The Soul unto itself
                  Is an imperial friend—
                  Or the most agonizing Spy—
                  An Enemy—could send.”

Francis Thompson in The Hound of Heaven wrote,

              “But with unhurrying chase,
               And unperturbed pace,
               Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
               They beat—and a Voice beat
               More instant than the Feet—
`             All things betray thee—who betrayest Me.’”

Isaac Bashevis Singer “When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.”

CONCLUSION: THE WRONG TREE

Well, when we feel that, it’s not time for the Judas Tree, it’s time for the Jesus Tree—the Cross.

Judas killed the one person he needed—the one person who could forgive him—the one person who called him and gave him a calling. Jesus is the one who said to him,  “You have a reason for being born.”

So if you feel crummy, betrayed, or having betrayed another, start again. Don’t kill yourself. Turn to Jesus.

Let me end there. Let’s begin there. Go to Jesus with a kiss.

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Drawing on top by Brendan Monroe - from The New York Times