Holy Wednesday; Spy Wednesday

Today the church has traditionally remembered Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. One of the most disturbing ways that power operates in our world is by tempting us to betray each other. The powerful do this by making us afraid, or angry, or distracted, or apathetic, or self-righteous, or concerned with protecting our own, or desirous of power. C.S. Lewis gives another account of why we so often betray one another--it is because we want to gain entrance into an “inner ring.” He describes the Inner Ring in the following way:

There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be designated, in simple cases, by mere enumeration: it may be called “You and Tony and me.” When it is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself “we.” When it has to be expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself “all the sensible people at this place.” From outside, if you have despaired of getting into it, you call it “That gang” or “they” or “So-and-so and his set” or “The Caucus” or “The Inner Ring.”

Lewis goes on to suggest that such groups are inevitable and in and of themselves are not wicked, but he asks his reader to contemplate the following question:

In the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.

This desire to be part of an inner circle is a most human desire, but it is also the well-spring of any number of unethical actions.

For nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

I cannot say that Judas betrayed Jesus because he wanted to be part of an inner circle. Judas’ actual motives are somewhat murky-- he has been presented as a thief, an unhappy revolutionary, at times his actions explained enigmatically by the phrase “Satan entered into him” or by the theological explanation that he was “predestined to betray Jesus.” I am uncertain about Judas' motives, but I know my own. When I have betrayed people in my life it has almost always been because I wanted to be part of some inner circle. When we betray someone it is very hard to forgive ourselves. There is great moral peril as we risk becoming hardened by our actions. When we betray someone we often demonize them in our minds to justify what we have done.  There is nothing more dangerous to our souls than this process of dehumanization.

There is hope for us betrayers though...

There is a very powerful poem by Luci Shaw that reminds us that Judas was not the only disciple who betrayed Jesus and I will end with it this morning.

"Judas, Peter”

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me?

-Luci Shaw