Lenten Observations, Wednesday, April 1, 2026 - Judas?

 The Dispatch Faith website contains an essay "The Betrayal of Judas," which deserves reading. https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/palm-sunday-judas-jesus/

A few excerpts:

After seeing Jesus condemned, Judas had a change of heart. Blood money in hand, he went to the temple and confessed his sin to the religious authorities charged with mediating mercy. “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he told them. Their response was as chilling as it was brief: “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” In short, “Not our problem. Good luck with that!” Those same religious leaders would later debate what to do with the silver Judas threw down and returned, scrupulous about its moral contamination. In seeking to avoid implicating themselves by taking back the blood money, they were legally precise, but pastorally indifferent. 

For Judas, the combined weight of these two betrayals proved unbearable, so he hanged himself.

.....

English writer Julian Barnes gives voice to these realities at the beginning of his memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of with the confession, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.” Despite describing the Christian story as a “beautiful lie … a tragedy with a happy ending,” he finds that sacred music and poetry stir something irreducible in him, something not found in what he describes as “the secular heaven of self-fulfilment.” He calls this the “haunting hypothetical of the unbeliever… (which is) What if it were true?” Perhaps this is what haunted Judas that night. The possibility that somewhere in the temple, with its sacrifices and rituals of atonement, that even he, the great Betrayer, might find a way to turn the story of his life from a tragedy to one with a happy ending.

Dave Biskopf is making an argument about how political power getting into the church obliterates what the church is supposed to be, and I'm not sure Judas is the best way to get to that thesis (the Jewish temple leaders are not exactly analogous to American politicians). But he ends with this:

All of this is meant to shape the community that bears Jesus’ name, ensuring that no one who comes carrying their own pieces of silver will hear the words, “What is that to us?” Instead, they should find what Judas went looking for that night: grace for a new beginning.