Passion Sunday is a day for celebrating Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem .  And yet the focus of our lesson today is what takes place after this.  It’s on Christ’s passion--beginning with Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, and the grim reality of death by crucifixion. Today I want to focus on Judas’ betrayal.

The most poignant scene for us this morning is what takes place in the Garden of Gethsemane . Jesus is in agony, praying to his Father.  At the same time, his disciples are sleeping.  Jesus returns to the disciples and says, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

Enter Judas, and with him a large crowd armed with swords and clubs.  They’ve been sent by the chief priests and the elders.  They await the pre-arranged signal: Judas will kiss the man that they are to arrest.  Wasting no time, Judas walks straight to Jesus, says “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kisses him.  

Notice that he calls Jesus “Rabbi.”  And then the infamous kiss. A kiss of betrayal. A kiss of treachery.  

In many cultures it’s not unusual for men to greet one another with a kiss on the cheek. In Greek and Roman society, people didn’t exchange kisses in public places in biblical times, because it was a family greeting reserved for the home. In Jewish society, however, it seems to have been part of the expectation for house guests.

In Luke 7 Jesus rebuked Simon the Pharisee for not offering him this courtesy at Simon’s dinner party (verse 45).  In Romans 16 and 1 Peter 5 we read of early followers of Jesus greeting fellow Christians with a kiss.  A kiss from a disciple to a rabbi was simply a sign of respect, so Judas’ kiss would not have made the other disciples suspicious when it happened.

That kiss that particular night transformed from a sign of affection and honor to a sign of execution. It was a betrayal which sentenced Jesus to capture by his enemies, and Judas must have known that it would most certainly lead to a violent death.

Responding, Jesus says, “Friend, do what you came for.”  Amazing - Judas comes to the Garden, betrays Christ with a kiss, and Jesus calls him “friend.”  I wonder if that caught Judas off guard.  I wonder if that stirred in him a sense that there was still time to turn away from the path of betrayal he’d chosen. I wonder if he sensed that Jesus still loved him you.

We’ll never know.  All we read is that the crowd took Jesus away in the darkness of the night, setting the stage for the darkest moment this world would ever know.

The beginning of chapter 27 describes what happened next. “Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. ‘I have sinned,’ he said, ‘for I have betrayed innocent blood.’”

Judas threw the money into the temple, left and hanged himself in remorse.  Commentator William Barclay says that Judas’ name may give us insight into why Judas betrayed Jesus. “Judas” is the Greek form of the common name Judah . We know that.  What scholars are not clear on is what “Iscariot” signifies. Usually it would signify where he was from. However, no territory named “Iscaria” has ever existed.

Barclay suggests that the name Iscariot may refer to a fanatical group of people known as the Sicarri--that is, dagger bearers. They were a kind of terrorist organization whose aim was to overthrow the Roman occupation of Israel and restore political power to the Jews. They believed the Messiah would lead them to freedom by force.

The triumphal entry on Palm Sunday fueled their hopes. They saw the crowd was eating out of Jesus’ hand. They sensed that he could easily seize power. His refusal to act may have embittered them. Judas didn’t give up hope, however.  By betraying Christ he may have hoped to force Christ into a corner from which the only way out was to fight and thus begin the battle the Sicarri longed for.

But again, we’ll never know what moved Judas to betray Christ. Of course, there are those who believe that, because it was prophesied that the Messiah would be betrayed, Judas had no choice. Maybe so. But there are some things we can say for sure about Judas.

First of all, Judas made a bad choice. I doubt that I’ll get any argument on that. He betrayed the Son of God. It doesn’t get any worse than that. Anyone here ever made a bad choice? Anyone here married to someone who has made a bad choice? Anyone here ever parent someone who made a bad choice?  Perhaps a better question is to ask if anyone here has never made a bad choice?  Truth is we’re all sinners saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. Judas made a bad choice.

And he paid for his bad choice. He paid as few people have ever paid for a misdeed.  In my travels I’ve met a lot of interesting people with some interesting names.  But I’ve never met anyone named Judas. 

Judas is the most disgraced person in human history. His name is synonymous with betrayal.

Recently I read about a goat that was kept at a company called the New York Butchers’ Dressed Meat Company. The workers nicknamed the goat the “Judas goat.”  Here’s why. The Judas goat would be let out of it’s pen each morning at 7 o’clock.  It would be let into the unloading pens on the river front, next to the slaughterhouse. There the unsuspecting creatures were killed and dressed. The Judas goat made eight or ten trips a day, leading two to three hundred ewes and lambs to their final destination.

The reason the company employed a Judas goat is that sheep, unlike cattle and hogs, cannot be driven. They will follow a leader, however, especially if it’s an animal that looks like them. Because this “Judas goat” looked like them, and had a commanding presence, the sheep eagerly trailed after him, only to meet their doom.  1

The sheep, in choosing to follow the Judas goat, made a bad choice.  And they paid for that choice with their life.  Judas himself made a bad choice and he paid for it, just as you and I pay for our bad choices. Sometimes a bad choice will cost us money. Sometimes it will cost us our reputation. Every once in a while, someone will make a bad choice that will cost them their family. We ought to consider very carefully the choices we make. Some of them can be very costly.

Judas could have made amends for his bad choice; but instead compounded his mistake by taking his own life. When Judas realizes what he has done by betraying Christ, he tries to undo it, but by then it is too late. Then, rather than seeking Christ’s forgiveness, he hangs himself.

And it didn’t have to end up this way.  This is so important. People make bad choices and then they compound those bad choices with other bad choices. They refuse to ask forgiveness from those they’ve hurt. They shut themselves off from those who love them. Sometimes they make the same bad choice for so long that it defines them and becomes impossible to change. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

And it doesn’t have to be that way because Christ came into the world to reach out to people who make bad choices. That’s the whole purpose of his birth into our world. In Mark 2 Jesus says, “It’s not the healthy who

need a doctor, but the sick. I haven’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

In New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage there is on display the casts of the leather gloves Iraeli agent Peter Malkin wore when he captured Adolf Eichmann as he walked home from a bus stop in Buenos Aires on May 11, 1960. Eichmann was the man who organized the transport and death of six million Jews in the death camps of World War II.

Malkin wore gloves when he arrested Eichmann because he could not bear to touch the man. He admits he had no second thoughts about the righteousness of his mission or about Eichmann’s death. He just didn’t want to touch such a despicable man.  2

If, after Christ’s resurrection, Judas had approached the risen Lord and asked forgiveness, Christ would not have reached out to him with gloved hands. He would have reached out to him with nail-pierced hands, hands that were pierced for Judas’ salvation.

Do you hear what I am saying? So many people carry around the heavy baggage of guilt and regret. What’s worse, they make additional choices that only increase their feelings of unworthiness. It doesn’t have to be that way. Christ reaches out to you just as reaches out to me with the nail-pierced hands of love and forgiveness.

In our lesson today, we read of the bad choice that Judas made that put Christ on a cross. And we, too, make bad choices.  Judas’ story is our story.  Question is, how will our story end.  Will we continue to make bad choices and keep Christ crucified on the cross.  Or will we ask forgiveness, change our ways, remove the suffering Christ from the cross, and allow the redeemed Savior to reclaim our souls?