A few moments ago we took the time we listen to a hefty portion of our Holy Week drama with a fair knowledge of how it will turn out and who is supposed to fulfill which roles as the story unfolds. There is the ultimate good guy in our story, Jesus, although he gets treated like a bad guy and chooses not to fight back for the sake of a greater cause. Actually some of the good guys in our drama are not guys at all. They are the brave women who refuse to abandon Jesus when others do. Some of the characters think they are brave but they turn out to be “lilly livered,” at least for a time, including Peter and the other disciples.

Who are the bad guys? The religious leaders in Jerusalem come across as really nasty even though they say they are defending God’s honour. Then there is Pilate, the Roman procurator who makes a show of washing his hands of guilt, but still sentences Jesus to death.

But the meanest figure of all, the orneriest guy in town, is someone who betrays Jesus, and does it not with a hat but with a kiss. We heard about this betrayal in just a couple of lines in the midst of this much bigger drama today. The disciple named Judas Iscariot approaches Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and greets him what is supposed to be a kiss of friendship but is really a sign to the soldiers who are there to arrest Jesus in the gloom of night. Only a short while before Judas had shared in the Last Supper with other followers of Jesus, and Jesus has washed his feet, but he has already plotted to turn Jesus over to the authorities for a bag of silver.

You might remember that in last Sunday’s gospel lesson Judas comes across as greedy and conniving and a thief. When Mary anoints Jesus with expensive perfume Judas appears to be outraged that it hadn’t been sold to help the poor, but there is an aside, an explanation in parentheses: “he said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief: he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.” What a dastardly guy!

Yet here is the puzzle. Jesus was the one who chose Judas to be one of his disciples. Jesus must have appointed Judas to be the treasurer of their meagre common funds. And it appears that Jesus knew beforehand that Judas was to betray him. Yet he is condemned for the ages as the betrayer of Jesus. The great twentieth century theologian Karl Barth suggested that Judas was the second most important figure in the gospels, even though he is mentioned only twenty two times in all, because of his essential role in precipitating Jesus arrest, and trial and crucifixion. Without his betrayal the sequence of events which resulted in both Jesus’ death and resurrection would not have unfolded as they did. What a weight on the shoulders of one human being. And throughout the centuries the name Judas has been synonymous with betrayal and evil.

✙Judas goats and Judas sheep are animals used to lead others to slaughter.

✙In older prisons the doors had what was called the Judas Hole, a sliding opening which allowed the guards to look in on prisoners.

✙In some cultures a wooden or papier-mache effigy of Judas would be paraded through the streets during Holy Week and flogged, hung or burned. This still happens in Greece today

✙In Nazi Germany a demonic Judas was used to represent all Jewish people, a form of anti-semitism which has existed through the centuries. His portrayal as the archetypal Jew was part and parcel of the campaign which led to the extermination of six million European Jews.

✙In 2007 a novel called The Judas Strain works on the premise that a microscopic Judas virus turns friend into foe, threatening to exterminate human existence.

Now, there are other portrayals of Judas, other than villain, although they are in the minority.

Some scholars and theologians have argued that Judas had special insight into Jesus’ mission and even his divinity but in the end misunderstood what they meant. So he forced the crisis of Jesus’ arrest in an attempt to get Jesus to act as liberator for his people who were under the heavy hand of Roman rule. The argument is that Judas was really a patriot, but the danger of patriotism is becoming so zealous for the cause that basic principles and loyalties are tossed aside.

Others suggest that Judas was actually a noble figure, a martyr in his own right. He was only doing what destiny and God had designed for him as part of a larger cause. In Jose Saramago’s novel Gospel According to Jesus Christ the bound Jesus is led past Judas who is “sitting in the tree with the noose already around his neck, patiently waiting for Jesus to appear in the distance before letting go of the branch, finally at peace with himself now that he has done his duty.” A chilling image.

A few even attempt to reform Judases’ image, to portray him in a sympathetic light, as though both he and Jesus are outsiders who deserve our understanding. There is an extended poem by Irish poet Brendan Kenelly which offers a reflection on that fateful kiss in the garden:

I come to him

I kiss the tired legends in his eyes

I kiss the pleading lepers in his face

I kiss the mercy flowing in his skin

I kiss his calm forgiveness of sin

I kiss the women hovering at his side

I kiss the men who make him their cause

I kiss the money made and lost in his name

I kiss the murders committed by his children

I kiss the mob adoring him

I kiss the treachery of men

I kiss the ways they will remember him

I kiss the ways they will forget him

I kiss his words his silences

I kiss his heart

I kiss his daring love

He seems relieved. Brendan Kennelly

Perhaps the ultimate rehabilitation effort has come in these past few years with the suggestion that Jesus and Judas were intentional collaborators. Do you remember the media attention back in 2007 when the National Geographic Society unveiled a long-lost Gospel of Judas which they felt portrayed Judas as essentially Jesus’ partner? Scholar Bart Ehrlman had this to say about the Gospel of Judas: “This gospel has a completely different understanding of God, the world, Christ, salvation, human existence—not to mention of Judas himself—than came to be embodied in the Christian creeds and canon.” Well, since this unfolded other scholars who read this “new” gospel have disputed the interpretation of certain words and phrases.

So many portraits of Judas! Are you confused enough now? Could the shadowy figure you may have readily seen as the “bad guy” all through your life actually have redeeming qualities?

I’m going to suggest to you that this figure of Judas who has been given so many different personae over time should be regarded as a human being rather than just a symbol of evil or God’s chess piece in the game of salvation. We live in the twenty first century and we have learned that few of us have led unblemished lives that can stand up to intense scrutiny. Most of us are good people and bad people, both villains and saints. By times we are deeply loyal and loving, and self-giving, and then selfish and disloyal and cruel.

I can’t speak for you, but I can admit that there are times when I have been a version of the “orneriest guy in town,” even though my deepest desire is to be a loyal companion of Jesus, the living Christ. Now this may be where you go “huh, what did he do, what did he do?” I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t have any scandal to confess! I simply lose sight of Jesus and his example of compassion and justice and regret that I haven’t lived in my relationships with others and with Christ more fully. There aren’t many of us who don’t have situations in our lives we don’t regret and really wouldn’t want others to know about.

And we probably all have times in our lives when we come closer to Christ, and want to be loyal followers, only to turn away when life with him is no longer convenient or popular. That kiss of Judas is such an intimate image in the gospel, an act of friendship which becomes the mark of betrayal. I don’t know that we would describe ourselves as a modern-day Judas, but we may recognize that we have been less than loyal to the one who offers us abundant life.

As a faith community we can get so wrong-headed about our mission that at times it’s hard to see how we are still the Christian church. Even in the most positive of congregations we can forget the One we claim to follow.

For all of this though, we can come back again, we can acknowledge our disloyalty and our confusion and our sinfulness and renew that experience of forgiveness and redemption. These days of Holy Week are a time of relative darkness and sadness – we can’t avoid that. Yet there is always the promise of renewal and resurrection life. There is an opportunity to return to Jesus, to mend our broken relationships, to receive the embrace that heals.

I may just be a weak-willed liberal, but I would like to believe that God’s intention is for everyone, even the Judases of this world, to be redeemed. Even the orneriest person in town can find the right hat, and live in relationship with the living Christ.