Judas is my homeboy
Yup. I owned a “Jesus is my Homeboy” shirt. I bought on a corner of China Town in New York City and wore it until it had holes in it. Few five dollar investments have turned out as good as that one. As we inch ever closer to Christmas morning most believers spend some time in the Gospels and we tend to reflect on the life of Christ. Christ’s arrival was more than a 33 year life but the rather the hope of 500 years of silence following the Old Testament. Think about it, the Jewish people are living under Roman rule waiting for the savior to come and rescue them. It’s not hard to see how one might and most likely should conceive this as being a military action led by a warrior king. When Jesus really starts getting into the swing of his ministry and as the rumors of the Messiah finally being on the scene circulate around I can only imagine how many different types of people took interest. When we think about the 12 that Jesus took in as his inner circle we tend to pass them off as dummies who could never really figure it out and we pay a little extra attention to the one that sold out Jesus, Judas. Judas fascinates me. Judas was a zealot. He was most likely part of a group known as the “sicarii” and well, those guys had a vision of God showing up and literally beating up the Romans. They lived with knives strapped to their inner thighs waiting for the war to begin. I don’t think Judas had any sort of “box” for a God who healed the sick, raised the dead and walked on water. He wanted a warrior. He wanted a general and why he got was far from what he expected. Let me propose something to you. Maybe Judas wasn’t just a jackass who betrayed his king. Maybe when the bible says that “Satan entered him” it wasn’t some sort of signing over of his soul but pride instead. Pride in the form of thinking that he could speed up the process and force the warrior king out of Jesus if he put him in a place where he would have to respond. Judas was right, Jesus was and is a conqueror, what he was wrong about was what the enemy really was. Yes, the Romans sucked. Sin sucks more though. Funny, I’m a lot more like Judas than I am Christ. I get an idea of how things should be and I try to convince God of how he is getting it wrong. Think about that and be honest, you do it too. We betray God all the time. It’s sad how often I find myself talking at rather than listening to God. What has to be seen here is that Judas is not a villain but rather a lesson. He shows what happens when we refuse to listen and learn and he showed it on a stage more extreme than any I hope we ever see. I’m not trying to make a hero out of Judas. It doesn’t make me get the warm and fuzzies when I think about how much I have in common with that man. It does remind though of how big God is though. He is always in control and regardless of how big and awesome my plans and ideas are his are always bigger and awesomer (<- yay to fake words!).
Josh
