April 9, 2020 Maundy Thursday Sermon

Sermon: Luke 22:47-48 While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd appeared, and the man called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He came near to Jesus to kiss him. 48 But Jesus said to him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

Personal betrayal hurts. It can leave you feeling lost and fragmented, unsure of who you can trust and what you can safely do. It brings a battle up close and personal between you and your betrayer, and even a battle inside of you, one of regret and self blame. It can leave you picking up pieces, trying to rebuild and recover. You can wonder if you’ll ever feel close to anyone again.

Maundy Thursday is an evening in which we remember and celebrate how close Jesus want to be to us. Tonight we remember the role of personal betrayal in his mission of getting close to us.

The personal betrayal endured by Jesus was not accidental; but a purposeful part of Jesus doing what he came to do. He came to go forth to war, and the battle was personal. The battle was personal because the problem Jesus came to deal with is a personal one. God is a person, and God create human people to live relating to him appropriately. Sin then is not just a breaking of some arbitrary set of rules, but a breaking of a personal relationship. The problem is personal, and so the battle to overcome the problem had to be personal.

Jesus was not able to act like so many soldiers today; he didn’t get to fight this battle from a distance. There still are times when today’s soldiers have to fight up close and personal. Military training still involves some training in hand to hand combat; but far less than in the past. Soldiers today have far more efficient ways of ensuring that the fighting they need to do can happen from a distance when it’s needed at all. But the battle Jesus came to fight was different. It’s a personal problem, that required an up close and personal fight. By observing and learning from Jesus and the personal betrayal of Judas, we can learn how better to transform the way we deal with personal betrayal when it happens.

The writer Dante about 700 years ago wrote a poetic conception of what hell is like. And in his poetic writing about hell, he had layers of hell, and do you know who the lowest layer of hell was reserved for? It was reserved for the betrayers. Anyone who has endured your spouse cheating on you and leaving you; anyone who has been abused by a family member, anyone who has been personally betrayed probably wouldn’t disagree with Dante.

Personal betrayal hurts so much because it means there was a relationship of trust and care to be betrayed. A stranger can’t cheat on you, a husband or a wife can. An insult from some random person on the street won’t affect you too much; a cruel word from a close friend will, because it betrays your sense of kindness that you thought was there. Personal betrayal can cause you to feel lost. You thought you could trust someone, you thought you knew where you were in life, and you find out you didn’t.

So for those of you who have endured personal betrayal; one take away of these verses is this: God knows what its like. He’s not immune to personal betrayal. Judas was one of the 12. Jesus picked Judas to be one of the 12 people who spent a lot of time with him, who interacted with him most; who spoke on behalf of him. Judas was even trusted enough to be in charge of the finances of this small group. You don’t give someone that responsibility unless you see some good qualities in them. When Jesus said that one of the 12 would betray him earlier on that Thursday evening, none of the others even suspected Judas. He seems to have been beyond their suspicion. Whatever his journey to betrayal was, it was not outwardly obvious to any of them that this would happen. And in many ways, it makes the betrayal more painful when it happened.

It was bad enough that Jesus had religious rulers who wanted him dead. But to be handed over to them by one of his 12 closest friends only adds to the pain he endured during those hours. God knows what personal betrayal feels like; because he became a person, and was betrayed. There is much mystery in the journey of Judas to betrayer. How much did Jesus know, when did he know it?

Those questions aren’t totally spelled out. What is certain is this: By that Thursday evening, Jesus knew. And on that Thursday evening, Jesus allowed it to happen.

We don’t know all of Judas’ motives either. Greed was a part. He negotiated with the religious rulers a price of 30 pieces of silver. He had come to the place where that amount of money seemed worth the cost of handing over his teacher, his leader, his one time friend. Perhaps he thought Jesus had taken the group as far as he could, and now it was time for someone else to lead the charge forward, we just don’t know. But in some way he had decided that this was worth doing; that decision was firm enough that if there were second thoughts, they didn’t keep him from carrying through.

Another thing we know about Judas is that by this time whatever faith he once may have had in Jesus, was poisoned to death by his greed and by his willingness to betray him. Judas later regretted his betrayal, but didn’t turn to Jesus for healing. Instead he hung himself. And Jesus said of him; it would have been better if he were never born. That is as strong a word as any we find in the Bible that someone is not in heaven. Right now Judas’ soul is enduring the torment of existence apart from Jesus, he’s in the place where weeping and gnashing of teeth is the only way to deal with his regret, with his burning greed, with his undealt with sin. And one day his body will have to join his soul and his torment will never end. That’s how bad personal betrayal can be.

Tonight we do well not just to lament the times we’ve been betrayed and look for a way that Jesus helps us deal with it. We do well to consider the danger of not addressing the times when we are the betrayer. I don’t mean that we all have done exactly the same thing as Judas. No one else has literally sold Jesus into the hands of his enemies for 30 pieces of silver. But we have personally betrayed others.

Think of a time when you had a chance to speak up for a friend who wasn’t around and their name was being torn down, and instead, you joined in, you betrayed them to gain more social status yourself. Or ways that if you’re married, you’ve hurt the spouse you once vowed to care for with your cruelly devised words that you knew would hurt them, with actions that you knew would wound them. Now again, I’m not saying every careless word is an act of intentional betrayal like Judas; I am saying be careful to cast too much hatred on Judas before looking into your own heart. Isn’t it the case that we all have looked at our God, known about all the love he showers on us; but then turn right around and make harmful choices that a better part of us knows is wrong, and is an insult to our loving God? All of us are capable even with our kisses of betraying God; we’re capable of having our supposed good works motivated by a selfish desire to be the center of attention, to put God in our debt.

The real scary part of this story is that we all have it in us to betray others. None of us should totally discount the danger of greed or a desire for power causing us to betray what God says is right. We all must be aware the possibility of losing our way; and ending up with the betrayers who never turned back to God and found forgiveness and restoration.

So where’s the hope? The hope is in seeing Jesus on that night in the Garden. Judas came after Jesus had already begun to feel sorrowful to the point of death. As if the suffering already had begun, a taste of that bitter cup had already been given to Jesus, and yet he allowed Judas to come with those soldiers. He let Judas, the treasurer of the group, to lead a band of heavily armed dangerous men who

wanted to take him and kill him. He allowed Judas to come close enough to kiss him. He didn’t back away or repel Judas, but accepted the kiss of personal betrayal.

And then Jesus spoke to Judas. It was most likely a question. Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? It may also have been a statement. Judas, you’re betraying the son of man with a kiss. It seems Jesus was inviting Judas to think about what he was doing. To think about what kind of a person he must be in order to betray someone who had been so gracious, such a good leader, what kind of person are you if this is what you’re doing? It seems Jesus was giving Judas a chance to reevaluate, and to turn back to Jesus in faith.

Not only did Jesus speak to Judas the betrayer, he let the betrayal continue, and lead him where it would. How many times in the next hours leading up to his final breath did Judas cross Jesus’ mind?

How many times in those hours did you cross Jesus’ mind? That personal betrayal did not only lead to a sense of loss of friendship with Judas, but a loss of closeness to his heavenly father. That personal betrayal was far worse than Jesus losing his sense of where he was in life; it lead to the lose of his life.

Jesus went to a place where in a sense he would endure all the betrayals against God that have ever happened. His father would treat him as our betrayals deserve. And he would die fragmented and torn apart. That’s how personal Jesus was willing to let this battle get.

What was the battle for? It was a battle for you. Jesus was battling by dying in order to bring you close to God again. In order to keep your betrayals against God from being permanent and fixed. He died to show you just how much he wants even you close to himself again. He died to show you that your kisses of deceit have been absorbed and forgiven. Now he accepts your kisses of thanks. He died to show you that betraying him doesn’t need to mean the end of friendship; but that he’s able to absorb the hurt, the pain, the loss, and persist in creating a friendship with you.

He was betrayed to death by Judas; but that wasn’t the end of Jesus. His resurrection proves that he’s able to endure the worst of personal trauma and pain and agony and still come out of it living and loving and welcoming people close to himself again. Now you can know that Jesus is near, and he wants you near and close to him. He wants you near when you’ve been betrayed. In those times, you need a friend who you can be sure won’t betray you. Jesus is that friend. In those times when your foundations have been shaken, you need a foundation that will stand, and it’s the once dead but now living Jesus.

You need Jesus for those times when you realize that you have betrayed another. Those times when you come to your senses and say what have I done? He invites you to come to him, to allow your betrayals to be put on him so you don’t have to carry that weight and regret. Yes there are things you can do to ensure that those betrayals happen less intentionally and less frequently; but ultimately the weight of your betrayals against God himself have been carried by Jesus; and he doesn’t hold it against you. He lives to give you a life where that weight isn’t yours to carry, where you get to make changes in your life in a context of freedom, not debt. Your debt has been taken by him. The moment when you have betrayed with a kiss don’t need to define you; they need to be looked at honestly and not denied; but ultimately what defines you is this: Jesus allowed the battle to get personal so you could be defined by his death and resurrection and your connection to him through faith.

One way that Jesus invites you close in in Lord’s Supper.This year is unique in that we’re not able to celebrate this gift in person. But let the absence of the celebration cause your appreciation of it to grow. Let your excitement for the next time you receive the bread and wine which is Jesus’ body and blood to be received into you and by you that his life may become yours in a special way. And enjoy the ways that he continues to come to you even when LS isn’t one of them. Through the

remembrance of baptism. Through the spoken and heard word of Christ himself which he offers to you repeatedly, often, so that he may be close to you. Accept his humble invitation to come close to him again tomorrow in a special way by worshipping from your own home, tuning in online on good Friday. Remember the honor he paid you by giving his life for you.

Then accept his joyful invitation on Sunday morning to celebrate his resurrection; his assurance that no amount of betrayal endured by you, no amount of betrayal done by you needs to be the end of your story like it was Judas. Jesus rose from the dead and offers you new life, new closeness to him.

Jesus’ resurrection can even get worked into the ways that you deal with even the hardest parts of life in this world. That doesn’t mean that you have to forget the really terrible betrayals others have done to you. But it does mean you don’t have to repay evil for evil; but in Jesus you can overcome evil with his goodness living in you. But it does mean you don’t have to carry the burden of betrayal alone. Jesus offers himself to you as a friend, as a savior, as a guide, as a resurrected Lord to help you through those difficulties. You are not alone. Because the battle was personal, and Jesus personally achieved a victory that he now person to person offers to you free of charge. It’s yours because he is yours. Amen.