Monday April 18, 2011

Matthew 26:14-16

"Then one of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, 'What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?' They paid him 30 pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over."

I don't know what to do with this. Honestly. Perhaps I would if I wasn't exhausted and recovering from my tipsy state after having a large glass of wine in response to a full day with a well-performed but highly misogynistic play. But I don't know what to do here.

There's some obvious places to go - don't betray your faith, what is the price of your honesty, your morals, your faith, your soul? We hear a lot these days that everyone has a price - that everyone has a breaking point. Everybody talks under torture - whether it's sense or not is less clear. But that's when you don't have the Holy Spirit to help you. How else would the martyrs do it?

Perhaps my instinct here is to find some way to defend Judas Iscariot, but I don't really want to. Perhaps I would some other day. It's not that I want to throw stones at him either - and it seems like with Judas you can't get say anything about him without doing one or the other. He was a man, who got weak and scared, and made a terrible decision that was selfish and of little faith. Both does and doesn't deserve the rap that he gets. We're responsible for our actions, and he made a series of choices, not mistakes.

But it's not our place to judge, and who's to say we wouldn't be, if not like Judas, than at least like Peter? Is that the lesson we're supposed to take from the 30 pieces of silver? The denying three times? That we're human? We have our own examples of that.

Or is the real answer enshrouded in what I talked about yesterday - how Jesus even at the Last Supper, even at the Garden, was trying to tell Judas that he didn't have to do this, that forgiveness and love was always waiting for him. That after the Resurrection Peter was asked three times, "Simon Peter, do you love me?" to erase the three times he denied knowing Jesus. There is always forgiveness. Suicide is never the answer.

And perhaps - even if you are amongst the holy, even if you are as close to God as a brother - temptation is always present. Evil never stops being one of your options. You have to choose every day. That living by faith and morality is not a choice that you make once but one that you make constantly. Like alcoholics - one day at a time. In AA, according to TV shows anyway, you think "I'm not going to have a drink today" every day. Not "I will never have a drink again" but "I'm not going to have a drink today." And that's how you get through. You have the same choice every day, and it never gets easier. Perhaps you get better at making it, but the temptation is always the same. You grow strong in learning that you can make that choice. And if you screw up, you can come back.

I am not going to sin today. Today, I am not going to be hateful. I am not going to be jealous today. I am not going to pick a fight today. I am not going to marginalize someone today.

Sounds more doable, doesn't it? Than saying, "I will not sin for the rest of my life." But we'd do well to remember - however close we get to God, the temptation to sin never goes away. Judas was an apostle. Living and traveling full-time with the Messiah, the Son of God, listening to Him preach day in and day out, in a small inner circle of those Jesus loved most. And he fell to temptation. We don't get to have it easier, resisting temptation, even when we grow stronger in our faith. We can only get better at resisting, we can only get better at relying on God to give us the strength. The temptation is always there.

If we let it sneak up on us, we're just giving it more power.

Dear Lord, please help me to be strong and resist the temptation to sin. Help me to resist the temptation to turn from You and Your ways. Be with me, and help me to resist, this time and today, and help me and everyone else, when we fall, to know that we can always come back to You. Every time, every day. And bless all those who died today.