7. Mark 14:10-11
Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.
This is one of the moments in Mark’s account not only of great drama, but also of nearly unbearable tragedy. We do not know what motivated Judas to betray his Lord. Perhaps he had anticipated that Jesus would be the kind of Messiah who would lead an army to vanquish the Roman oppressors. Perhaps, whatever Jesus said to the contrary, Judas’ hopes had been fanned by the adulation of the crowds that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem just days earlier. Perhaps Judas felt now, at last, Jesus would his destiny and start the revolution.
But then Jesus names, once again, his sure conviction that he will die. And Judas is confronted with the fact that Jesus is not and will never be the kind of Messiah he expects. And so spurred by bitter disappointment and his own feelings of betrayal, he offers to betray his teacher to his adversaries.
This is all speculation. There are various clues here and there that might point to this interpretation, but it remains speculation nevertheless. Yet if it is at all close to the mark, then it intimates a parallel to an earlier scene between Jesus and Peter. Peter, too, imagines he knows what it means to proclaim Jesus the Messiah. And Peter, too, is shocked and disappointed by the possibility that Jesus’ destiny might be about shame and death, not power and glory.
Yet Peter manages to overcome his disappointment and remain faithful. Not perfectly, of course, not by a long shot; after all, he will deny his Lord not once but three times, and it is unclear whether he ever really understands what Jesus is about until it is all over. Yet Peter continues to follow. Even the moment of his denial, as we’ll see, occurs as Peter is following Jesus toward the cross. So perhaps Mark offers us two options for dealing with disappointment with God: follow or desert. Following doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t assume we understand what is going on, but it does imply a simple trust that amid the pain and confusion that sometimes attends any of our lives, when we still try to follow, imperfectly, for sure, but trying to follow nonetheless.
Which is, of course, why we go to church. This road is too difficult to travel on our own. Life is too complex and sometimes too painful to handle alone. So we seek out the company of other “doubting disciples” that we may encourage each other and in this way remain imperfect followers. Maybe that’s the tragedy here: that when Judas was disappointed he had no one to turn to and, failing to find a company of doubting disciples, he fled for the company of others.
Prayer: Dear God, we cannot follow you on our own and so we pray that we might be part of a community that shares its joys and sorrows, its moments of faith and of doubt, that together we might follow your Son wherever he leads. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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