The passage for study falls naturally into five episodes:
I Judas' Resolve
14 - 16
II Passover Preparation
17 - 19
III Supper
20 - 25
IV Covenant
26 - 29
V Prediction of Disciples' Failure
30 - 35
Matthew tells us that what precipitated Judas' decision to betray Jesus was the spontaneous and extravagant gesture of love he witnessed in Mary: "From that moment he sought opportunity to betray Him." Why should that have affected Judas so? Simply because, when our hearts are out of tune, we hate anyone whose heart is in tune; their rightness rebukes our wrongness. One of the tragic facts about sin is that it may be goodness that triggers it into action! We must not fancy ourselves immune from such perversity. Have we never felt a sharp sting of resentment in our soul to see another blessed in a way we have not been blessed? When that happens, ours is a 'Judas' heart.
Matthew, by the juxtaposition of these two paragraphs, throws Judas's attitude to Jesus into sharp contrast with Mary's. She 'wastes' $15,000 out of love for Him; Judas covets $5,000 out of hate for Him ... and it was to be wasted too! *
As to Judas' motive, it was, according to the Gospels ...
He was treasurer for the group and was already in the habit of pilfering (John 12:6). No doubt he meant no great evil by it; just a 'rort' here and there, like any politician's. Everybody did it. What he did not realise - what we never realise - was that petty sins blind us to higher levels of reality so that we go our merry way in the indulgence of them unaware that they are luring us into shameful betrayal.
The 'Iscariot' in his name implies that he had, before he became a disciple, been a member of the underground resistance movement, the Iscarii, pledged to a policy of terrorism to overthrow Rome. Had Judas seen in Jesus, not the Messiah of prophecy, but the political leader of his own dreams? And when he saw that Jesus had no intention of fulfilling Judas's dreams of him, did he turn on Jesus out of disillusionment? The episode in Simon's house, for example: all Jesus talked of there was death; the man had no fight in him. Did Judas feel, "He has cheated me of my dream"? If so, pride and rancour turned him traitor.
Pride and rancour will, if we yield to them, always lead us through disillusionment and bitterness to treachery. If we will not let God destroy our pride, our pride will make us intent on destroying God. If this simple observation does not make our hearts tremble, then God have mercy on our souls, for they are in danger of the same perfidy as Judas's.
Passover lambs were slain on the Thursday, and the feast had to be eaten in the city that evening, with a minimum of ten people participating. This put enormous pressure on accommodation within the city, so that arrangements had to be made well in advance. Jesus had clearly provided for that. It was absolutely vital to His purpose that He share this meal with His disciples: there was a thing He had to do at it of the most profound significance.
Before we come to it, notice the implication of resolute purpose in Him. Two plots were going on, the Leaders' and the Lord's.
i. "Not during the Feast," they had said; but "during the Feast," Jesus determined. To have Him die during the sacred festival would in their eyes be an offence; in the Lord's eyes it will be a fulfilment
ii. Judas thinks he is serving his own aims or the aims of the Lord's enemies; in fact he is, unknowingly, serving the Lord's aims. Jesus at the Supper will institute the New Israel with a fresh mandate. Even as He arranges to do this, old Israel, as embodied in its leadership, is oblivious that it is proceeding with its rituals after the King has withdrawn its mandate.
Jesus is seen here as Master of Circumstances and of Men. They have Him cornered, they believe; but all the while it is He Who is forcing their hand.
Sin in the heart of man said, "Let Him be
crucified."
Obedience in the heart of Jesus said, "Let Him be crucified."
Love in the heart of God said, "Let Him be crucified."
The altogether extraordinary truth of these events is that grace and sin are moving toward the same event. As Campbell Morgan observed: "This was no human teacher to be bruised and battered by man's choice. This was the King, His hand upon circumstances governing the Sanhedrin, letting them work their own nefarious designs, yet seated so high above them all that presently He will take the spear of their uttermost malice and bathe it in the blood of God's utmost Grace." (G. Campbell Morgan, 'The Gospel according to St Matthew' [Revell], p. 298)
What men were doing with venom in their hearts, God and His Christ were doing with love in their heart. Men were achieving sin's ambition, to be rid of God; Christ was achieving God's ambition, to be rid of sin. The Feast which for the authorities that year was a Feast of Hate Jesus was making a Feast of Love. The very stuff of sin in its worst expression is the raw material God uses out of which to fashion atonement for it. There is a mystery in that which is sublime.
The first episode in his narrative of the Supper Matthew chooses to record is the Lord's statement that one of those present will betray Him. Why did Jesus say it? Where was the gain in that?
i. He did it, it seems to me, in the first place for Judas's sake
a. To confront Judas with his sin.
b. To confront Judas with His own appeal.
a. Judas must be confronted with his sin if he is to be discouraged from it. While he believes he has kept his guilty purpose a secret he feels safe in the pursuit of it. Once the secret is out, a crisis of decision is precipitated. He must either quit or commit himself to do it swiftly. What the Lord in fact was doing was to embarrass Judas into a last opportunity to regret what he planned, and give it up.
In fact the Lord went further than that in His bid to pull Judas back from the brink of treachery on which he trembled. As William Temple observed, "It was customary for the host at a Passover meal to show special honour or regard for one of his guests by dipping a choice morsel in the dish and handing it to him. The Lord showed that special honour and regard to the one He knew to be planning treachery. He made a last appeal and watched to see its effect." (William Temple, 'Readings in St. John's Gospel' [MacMillan], p. 218)
The effect was ... to give Satan access to his heart.
When we resist the Lord's appeal, that is what we do. It is a solemn and challenging point in the Passion narrative, this. There is more than meets the eye in Matthew's simple observation, "While they were eating ..." It recalls the tragically prophetic statement in Psalm 41:9, "Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me." Table fellowship in the East implied a bond of loyalty. By sitting at table with the One he intended to betray, Judas was offending against both his own deepest instincts and the strongest social pressures of his time, and it hastened on the undoing of his soul.
Steadfastly to resist Jesus will be the undoing of our very soul.
b. Further, Judas must be confronted with the sinful purpose in his heart if he was ever to be forgiven it. There can be no forgiveness without a reckoning. When God moves to forgive us our sin He first confronts us with it, and we are not ready to receive forgiveness until we smart under the condemnation of it, repent of it, and long for deliverance from it. Without that essential step in the process the only effect of God forgiving us our sin will be to encourage us in it.
ii. I believe too that there was yet another reason why Jesus voiced His warning that He was about to be betrayed: to precipitate the action at the time Jesus wanted it. He was forcing the pace. If Judas responded to His warning and entreaty, tragedy would be averted; but if he did not, then he was left no time in which to manoeuvre; it obliged him to act swiftly, and by that means Jesus precipitated the crisis "during the Feast," precisely when the authorities wished to avoid it. The Lord, not His enemies, is in control of events. And it is necessary that His death be during the Passover, for that is one of the facts that gives it its meaning, as we shall see.
"Is it I?" they all asked, for known weakness made them fearful of failure; but the way Judas asked it was different - known guilt made him fearful of discovery. The disciples said, "Lord"; Judas said "Rabbi." Even in deceit he could no longer own Jesus as his Master.
"You have said so ..." Jesus replied to him, meaning, "the choice is yours." However 'predestined' the action was, it was nonetheless Judas's own free action. Human nature was bound to throw up this perfidy somewhere, in someone; in that sense it was 'predestined.' But it did not have to be Judas. His own yielding to temptation made him the one.
His punishment was severe: 'better he had not been born.' What that means we do not know, but it should make us shudder.
And so we come to the Passover. Here in this simple, traditional meal, something of immense significance was enacted: the new was born out of the old.
The traditional Jewish Passover was a commemoration of the deliverance of Israel of old from the slavery of Egypt; it was a thanksgiving (for national deliverance) and an affirmation of hope (in the gift by God of a new future). But it fell short of the full blessing God intended for mankind. For a grimmer tyrant than Pharaoh rules the hearts of men, the tyrant sin; and a greater future awaits us in the purpose of God than national liberty, the liberty of the spirit that belongs to the children of God. These Jesus will now provide.
It is no accident that He established two symbolic actions at the Supper, the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine.
There can never be any question whether He intended the bread and the wine to be more than symbols. The notion that He miraculously transforms the bread into the literal flesh of His body is impossible: at the time He appointed bread to be the symbol of His body, the bread in His hand was obviously separate from the hand of flesh in which He held it, and the wine outpoured obviously separate from the blood which flowed in His veins while He did it.
But the separation of body and blood by the two actions is suggestive of sacrifice, for that is what the ritual of sacrifice always secured - the separation of the body from the blood which is its life. And His words, "This is my blood of the New Covenant which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" established the wine as the symbol of a Covenant. The making of a Covenant was always attested by the offering of a sacrifice.
Blood and Covenant. Jesus is saying that His coming death will be a sacrifice to God by means of which a new Covenant relationship between God and man will be established Forgiveness of sins is the core of it: "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I shall be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sins no more." (Jer. 31:33-44) Forgiveness removes all obstacles to intimacy.
As God incarnate, Jesus suffers sin to have its full, unbridled expression against Him: He bears it - receives its blow and absorbs it. He suffers the 'death' it deals Him, and He 'puts it away' in the mystery of His own pain and passion. That is how sin is removed from between us and God. There is no other way sin is ever removed. And it is on the basis of that action that God established His covenant with us.
A Covenant defines a relationship. In the ancient East, Kings always established ('cut' ) a covenant with a conquered people; by the terms of that covenant the relationship between king and people was governed. That is what the Covenant God has 'cut' ** with us means: the relationship between ourselves and God is governed by its terms. Its terms on God's side are everlasting faithfulness and mercy, and the terms of it on our side are perpetual trust and grateful obedience.
The 'many' are in view; in the language of the New Testament the phrase 'the many' means 'all.' Salvation is for all men and all women regardless of rank or race (the broad view). And the Messianic Kingdom is in view: "I shall not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's Kingdom" (the long view).
It was a Love Feast.
It is extraordinary that despite His preoccupation with suffering and death, Jesus should have cherished so bright a hope beyond it and by means of it. Even as He dies, it is the Kingdom that fills His thoughts. Suffering and death, He knew, were vital as the basis upon which the Kingdom would be secured to us all, but it was upon the Kingdom He would achieve on that basis that His heart was set. "For the joy that was set before Him He endured the Cross, despising its shame, knowing that by that path - that path alone - He would be seated on the right hand of the Throne of God." (Heb. 12:2)
The Hymn they sang was undoubtedly the Hallel, Psalms 114-8, with which the Passover meal traditionally ended. It began with the recollection of the great event in the past in which God had disclosed His nature as the Saviour of His people: "When Israel came out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God's sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back ..." (114:1)
A selection of verses from the remainder of it is highlighted below; ponder the meaning they must have carried to the mind of Jesus as He sang them with His friends.
116:3 The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of Sheol came upon me; I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord: "O Lord, save me!" The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.116:8 For you, O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
116:13 I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfil my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people ... precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His chosen.
118:11 All the nations surrounded me on every side, they swarmed around me like bees ... I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me.
118:15 Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: "The Lord's right hand has done mighty things! ... I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.
118:22 The stone the builders rejected has become the corner stone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Finally, consider the further prediction Jesus made that His disciples would all "fall away on account of Him," for when the Shepherd is struck, the sheep scatter. He trod the winepress of God's wrath with sin alone, for no other may tread it for us. This too was as inevitable as Judas's betrayal, but in the same way the element of personal responsibility is not thereby impaired. The predestined salvation is achieved by the Son's free obedience.
Was it cruel of Jesus to tell them, "You're all going to fail"? If He said it petulantly ("You miserable lot, you!"), it would have been. What could that have done but add uselessly to their misery?
But that is not, I believe, how Jesus said it. He said it sadly, no doubt, but surely with a tenderness in His voice. He was not chiding them, but preparing them to understand that His power to save would run far on past their failure: afterwards, He will meet them again in Galilee, and number them among His own.
"You will fail me, but I shall not fail you. My power to save will far outrun your propensity to fail. Never believe that any failure need be final." Dismayed they may have been when He said it; afterwards they would be glad He said it, for they knew then that their failure was not the end of their story.
He knows both that we will fail Him, and that He will not fail us. Always He will "go before us to Galilee," where we shall be restored.
* The 'thirty pieces of silver' were argurions. Scholars are not sure if 1 argurion equalled 3 or 4 denarii; but on the same basis we reckoned the value of Mary's gift, that a denarius was near enough a standard days' wage for a working man, the sum Judas contracted for with the authorities was 90 to 120 days' wages: some-where between $5,000 and $7,000.
** The phrase used, "to cut a covenant," is explained by Jer. 34:18: "The men who transgressed my Covenant, and did not keep the terms of the Covenant they made before me, I will make like the calf they cut in two and passed between its parts." What happened was that an animal was cut in half, and the two halves laid out. The covenant was sworn while the parties stood in the space between, meaning, "If I be-tray the covenant, let it happen to me as it has happened to this animal, for I shall have 'split myself apart'."
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