by Jeff Vamos / April 16, 2014
As we listen to the story once again – and I hope you will hear the whole story via one of our Holy Week services – we might tend to think of only one infamous betrayal. Judas, of course. But we do well to remember that there were two. Peter, whose betrayal took the form of a three-fold denial of Jesus, was the second. We might consider the irony: Peter, the “rock” on whom Jesus founded his church; Judas, a suicide whose epitaph read: “it would be better for that one not to have been born.” (Matthew 26:24)
So here’s a question for us to ponder during Holy Week: is there hope for Judas? Or perhaps to put it in the context of the narrative itself, was there hope? Was the tragedy of Judas, as depicted in the gospels, a foregone conclusion – was he fore-ordained to play the villain character, in a story that required one? Is his story that of irredeemable moral failure? Or was his tragedy primarily owing to the fact that he, unlike Peter, was unable to repent, to accept the kind of forgiveness that is at the heart of the gospel? (Here’s an interesting piece on that tack.)
It’s not a new question. One recently (re)discovered fragment of a gnostic account of Jesus teachings, called The Gospel of Judas, asserts that Judas part was a necessary one, in that his betrayal brought about the necessary death of Jesus. (I don’t necessarily buy in to the gnostic take on the story – but it’s an interesting thing to study).
What do you think? Was there hope for Judas? Does it matter? How does our take on Judas’ role in the story affect our understanding what (and who) is unredeemable?
