Sermon for Maundy Thursday
Witnesses to Christ: Judas Iscariot
In the Name of the Father, & of the + Son & of the Holy Spirit
Grace to you and peace from the One Who Is & Who Was & Who Is to Come!
When Leonardo da Vinci was forty-three years old, in 1495, he was commissioned by the Duke of Milan, Italy, to paint what would become one of the most famous works of art of all time. On one of the end walls of the dining hall at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, spanning an area of fifteen by twenty-nine feet, da Vinci frescoed an instant masterpiece. The Last Supper. Its image has been reproduced on everything imaginable. The ravages of time and Leonardo's unproven experimental technique have faded and deteriorated the painting badly, but other master artists made copies of it so well-done we can see what its original glory must have been like. Leonardo captured facial expressions, unlike anything anyone else was capable of at the time.
According to legend, when the painting was finished, da Vinci said to a friend, "Look at this and give me your honest opinion." The friend replied that he thought it was wonderful and that the chalice was so realistic he could not take his eyes off of it. Da Vinci painted over the chalice, saying, "Nothing shall detract from Jesus!"
Nothing shall detract from Jesus! Why? Because Jesus is the one who was betrayed. We hear it so often in the words of institution, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night on which He was betrayed, took bread," that they really do not penetrate our consciousness sometimes. Continuing our series "Witnesses to Christ," tonight we meet one of the most infamous men in history, one considered so evil that his name has come to be synonymous with betrayal: Judas Iscariot.
I have in the past said that I did not believe we know that Judas Iscariot is in hell for certain. I recant that error. I am convinced by the evidence of Scripture and the writings of the church fathers that Judas did, in fact, go to hell. We will learn tonight why. However, it is not because of his committing suicide. Do not believe that all people who take their own lives go to hell; there is no Biblical basis for that because the spiritual condition of an individual upon death is known only to God. If you know they were baptized, take comfort in that fact and in God's mercy.
But let nothing detract from Jesus tonight, or ever! Because Jesus was betrayed. Betrayed by a close friend, one chosen to bring the light of the Gospel to the world. One who chose the way of darkness instead. Betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, worth only about $250-300 in today's money. Betrayed with the kiss of peace exchanged between friends and allies. Betrayed in the dark, in a small garden among olive trees that were old even then. Betrayed in the upper room prepared for Jesus to eat the Passover with His disciples before He offered them His last teachings, prayed over them, and prepared to atone for their sins on the cross. After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”1 One by one the disciples began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?”2
St. Matthew tells us Judas was seated close enough to Jesus to allow them to carry on a private conversation. Was Judas given this position to minimize the disruption of the meal when Judas leaves? To prevent the disciples' guilt later that they did not try to stop Judas once they found out what happened? Or was it perhaps giving Judas a private opportunity to confess his deception, repent, and return to the path of light? Then Jesus gives Judas a morsel of bread as one would do with a close friend. "Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him."3 Only John invokes the name of Satan in his account to highlight the seriousness of Judas' crime. In fact, John had called Judas "a devil."4 Both Mark5 and Luke6 use the same grammar to describe Satan entering Judas as they do to describe the demons entering the demoniac in Gerasene, whom Jesus has healed.
Da Vinci painted a pilled saltshaker next to Judas' elbow. Jesus told his disciples, "You are the salt of the earth," but Judas lost his salt because of his avarice. Greed drives Judas. We lose our salt when we lust after ever more, ever newer, ever fancier. When covetousness becomes our god, we are no longer children of salt and light. Judas took the path of darkness and death. In his remorse for his betrayal of Christ, he gave back the blood money he was paid. Overcome with grief and sorrow, he went out and hanged himself. Judas is in hell not because he killed himself but because he sought redemption by his own efforts. He believed his actions could save him or at least soothe the pain. He did not learn anything at all those years on the road with Jesus. He made it all about himself, and therefore God's judgment of Judas was according to Judas' desire – and his works were found lacking. That is why Judas is in hell.
Now ask yourselves how many betrayers are seated around the table in that upper room? There are twelve. How many betrayers are sitting here tonight? All of the disciples stand accused and are guilty. All of us are also guilty. If we dare to examine ourselves, as we should before we receive the body and blood of our Lord, we will discover that this is true. We have failed, through our sins of commission and omission, to live up to the calling God has set before us. We do not carry out our vocations with joyful purpose because we do not love our neighbors as ourselves. We do not love God with our whole heart. Instead of genuinely righteous acts of selflessness, we have sinned against God and neighbor in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
We are sinners. We cannot save ourselves. We are beggars. The Holy Spirit convicts our consciences to know this and to seek forgiveness. Do not be like Judas, whose path led to darkness and damnation, seeking redemption by hanging from a tree, but turn to the light of Christ, repent, and receive His free forgiveness won for us on the tree of the cross.
It is only when our hearts are tenderized by the Holy Spirit that we can see the events of the Passion of our Lord for what they are. Judas' heart was hard. He saw his transgression but could not look beyond himself for a solution. When we look beyond ourselves, beyond the pain and turmoil of this world, beyond our sinfulness and betrayal, allow the scales to fall from our eyes, and see the cross with eyes of faith, we see Jesus Christ for what He is.
Under the old covenant, the priests would sacrifice the blood of bulls and sprinkle the blood on the people.7 As the preacher to the Hebrews tells us: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”8
“Not all the blood of beasts/On Jewish altars slain/Could give the guilty conscience peace/Or wash away the stain.”9 If the blood of bulls could cleanse the unclean from their sins, how much more so can the blood of Christ poured out for us from the cross into the chalice resurrect beggars dead in their sins like us and raise us to new life serving a living God?
Because nothing will detract from Jesus! Our Savior sits among sinners in the upper room as they ask Him, "Is it I, Lord?" There sits the Christ among them, the very solution to the problem of their betrayal, their abandonment, and all their other sins. "Do this in remembrance of Me," he says. We do not eat and drink the Holy Supper in order to remember how Christ did it this very night so many centuries ago. Not at all. We do it to remember what He does for us on the cross, and we actively participate in His Passion and death when we eat and drink of it because He is really actually physically here feeding us with this blessed food of His sacred Body and Blood in mystical union with bread and wine, the true food and true drink elixir of immortality.
We receive the Gospel of the forgiveness of sin for the sake of Christ’s Passion, death, and resurrection in so many ways in the divine service. We join together in confession and receive Christ’s absolution from the pastor’s mouth as his instrument. The same with the Word of God read in our midst and the words I preach to you now. But in the Lord's Supper, we receive attention that is individual, personal, and intimate. Jesus puts Himself in you so that you may have new life and reflect His light to a dark world. Judas chose death by a tree because He did not trust what Jesus had taught him. One by one, the disciples will abandon Jesus, but they will return to Him. They will seek life from the tree that took the life of Jesus. But Jesus was not defeated by that tree; he was not damned or abandoned. He rose again, so the blood shed on that tree becomes a tree of life for us. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
May the peace which passes understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
1John 13:21 (ESV).
2Mark 14:19 (ESV).
3John 13:27 (ESV).
4John 6:70.
5Mark 5:13.
6Luke 8:30.
7Exodus 24:8.
8Hebrews 9:13-15 (ESV).
9Not All the Blood of Beasts. Lutheran Service Book #431, v.1. Public domain.