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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "The Trial of Judas Iscariot - The Prosecution." We shall continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke, the 22nd chapter.

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I shall be reading various portions of the chapter, and I shall be reading from the New English Bible, not the Bible which you have in the pew racks. I begin with chapter 22, verse 1. This is the scene before the Passover supper.

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Now the festival of unleavened bread, known as Passover, was approaching, and the chief priests and the doctors of the law were trying to devise some means of doing away with Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, and Judas went to the

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chief priests and officers of the temple police to discuss ways and means of putting Jesus into their power. They were greatly pleased and undertook to pay him a sum of money. He agreed and began to look out for an opportunity to betray him to them without collecting a

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crowd. And now moving to the 14th verse, we pick up the narrative during the Passover meal. When the time came, Jesus took his place at table and the apostles with him, and he said to them, "How I have longed to eat this Passover with you before my death, for I tell you,

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never again shall I eat it until the time when it finds its fulfillment in the kingdom of God." Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, "Take this and share it among yourselves, for I tell you, from this moment I shall drink from the fruit of the vine no more until the

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time when the kingdom of God comes." And he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and he gave it to them with the words, "This is my body." But mark this, Jesus said, "My betrayer is here, his hand with mine on the table, for

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the Son of Man is going his appointed way, but alas for that man by whom he is betrayed." At this they began to ask among themselves which of them it could possibly be who was to do this thing. And finally I pick up the narrative at the 39th verse, and this is the scene which immediately

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follows the Passover. Then Jesus went out and made his way as usual to the Mount of Olives, accompanied by the disciples. When he reached the place, he said to them, "Pray that you may be spared the hour of testing."

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He himself withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and began to pray, "Father, if it be thy will, take this cup away from me, yet not my will but thine be done." And now there appeared to him an angel from heaven bringing him strength, and in anguish of spirit he prayed the more urgently, and his sweat was like clots of blood falling

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to the ground. When he rose from prayer and came to the disciples, he found them asleep, worn out by grief. "Why are you sleeping?" he said. "Rise and pray that you may be spared the test."

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While he was still speaking, a crowd appeared with the man called Judas, one of the twelve, at their head. He came up to Jesus to kiss him, and Jesus said, "Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?"

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And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word, and to him be the honor and glory forever. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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If it please the Court, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Charles Lamb was asked on one occasion if you could see the face of any person out of history whose face you have not already seen, whose face would you most like to view? And without a moment's hesitation, he responded, "I would like to see the face of Judas Iscariot.

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I cannot imagine what a man who could dip his hand in the same bowl with the Son of God and still betray him could possibly look like." Well I cannot bring Judas before you into the witness stand this morning, but I can bring him before the court of your imagination.

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I can bring him before the judgment bar of your conscience. And I wish to do that, for here is a man who deliberately rejected good for the sake of evil. Notice that I am saying that Judas' crime was a premeditated one.

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Oh, I know there are some who say that he was ignorant of what he was doing, that he was somehow stupid or confused by the circumstances of the moment. People say those same things today. Some individual who has mashed the face of beauty and then slobbered all over its corpse

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will end by whimpering that he didn't know what he was doing. But we know our people go to see the films of Scorsese instead of the plays of Shakespeare. Our youngsters especially listen to Mick Jagger instead of the music of Mozart or of Mancini. Let's read the sexual drivel of Jackie Collins and do not turn to the beautiful pages of

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Maya Angelou. We stare in titulation at the sadomasochistic photographs of a Robert Mapplethorpe and forget about Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen. We pay our athletes obscene amounts of money and leave our teachers and our sorcerer workers

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and our nurses not receiving what they ought to receive. And we know what we are doing. A few months ago, a musical group, two live crew, began to sing songs on a record so filthy, so obscene, that they were arrested for what they did.

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We were careful to protect their rights and they won their case. Not only that, but two million more Americans went out and bought the record just to hear what they had been singing. And a professor from Duke University, Dr. Henry Gates, said, "The two live crew was

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doing in its own way work as significant as that done by Shakespeare or Chaucer or James Joyce." Mothers and fathers do not hesitate to sit down with their children before MTV and watch the masturbatory fantasies that are portrayed endlessly on that television network.

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We live in a time which vetoes beauty and vetoes truth and vetoes justice and vetoes decency. And none of us are so stupid that we do not know that. We know what is going on in our time just as Pilate and Caiaphas and Judas knew.

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They saw the excellence in the life of Christ and knew how his life beggared their own. They saw the riches of his experience and saw how poverty-stricken they were when compared with him. But they allowed themselves or they encouraged themselves to be deluded.

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They entered into conscious evil and with premeditation brought the beautiful Savior to his death. And mind you, this Judas of whom we think today did what he did for the sake of money. I offer as exhibit A this sack which contains 30 pieces of silver.

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That may not seem like much to you today, but in the time of Judas in the first century, 30 pieces of silver were the equivalent of six months' work. So what Judas did was to work for six hours to gain six months' income. He went for the money immediately after that incident, you will recall, in which the woman

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came with the vase of very rare perfume and broke it and with it anointed the feet of Jesus and only one person complained about this and it was Judas. He said that money should not have been so spent. It should have been spent instead by feeding the poor, first of course being put in the

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treasury of the disciples. And of course Judas was the treasurer and John notices in the sixth chapter of his gospel that he was regularly pilfering from the bag's treasury. In other words, when Judas couldn't get the money of the woman who wanted to show her

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devotion to Christ, he went after at least the 30 pieces of silver. And how many times that money has been spent since those 30 pieces? They paid the executioner who beheaded Paul. They bought the wood that incinerated Joan of Arc.

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They crossed the palm of Benedict Arnold. They have crossed underneath thousands of tables where business was being conducted. They've been used to buy union scabs and to bribe crooked labor leaders. They've been used to bribe politicians and also to hire corps of lawyers to protect crooked

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women. They have been slipped into offering plates to cover up penurious giving. They have fouled our seas with oil. They have fouled our lives with drugs.

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They have fouled the savings of the aged with the savings and loan debacle. They have fouled the shelves of our stores with inferior merchandise. They have even fouled the very air that we breathe with toxic waste. Norman Prodhurst a few years ago wrote a book called Making It.

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He was 35 years old when he wrote the book. And in the introduction, he explains that it wasn't until he was 35 that he first learned the importance of money and the value of power. And he goes on to say that the reason he didn't know this earlier was because he hadn't realized

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that the gospel of success, which is basic to American living, is in direct contradiction to the gospel of love and service, which is presented in Jesus Christ. And so Norman Prodhurst decided to choose just one of those gospels. And he chose the gospel of going for success.

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He went after it whole hog. And thousands bought his book and followed his example. And of course, tens of thousands had already known what he had to say and were already doing what he was talking about doing.

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And you see, the tragedy is that these people were not really choosing between Christ and money. You can't choose between Christ and money because we all end up without money. We all die broke.

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The real question is God or nothing. Judas, God is 30 pieces of silver, but he couldn't take a single one of them with him. And notice also how this man before us profaned the beautiful countenance of love. The Bible says that the highest love is the love extended to the person who does not deserve

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it. And that is the kind of love which Jesus extended to Judas. In the first place, Jesus asked Judas to dine with him at the Passover meal, now in the Middle East.

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To dine with a person is to become one with them. Since you both partake of the same food, it is assumed that there is a oneness which comes to exist between you so that you stand up for one another, you defend and encourage one another.

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Not only did Jesus invite Judas to table with him, but it was the Passover table, the most sacred religious feast of the year. Now on the Passover table there was always at least three things. There was a paste made out of nuts and fruit.

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There was a plate of bitter herbs, and there was some unleavened bread. And at one point in the meal, the host at the table would take some of the unleavened bread and would dip it into the paste and into the bitter herbs. And this was called the sop of honor.

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And the host would give it to the one at the table he wished most to honor. And Jesus, the scriptures tell us, gave the sop of honor to Judas. I offer it as exhibit B. And further, if you study the Gospels and notice the position of the various disciples

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at the table there that night, that Passover night, you will discover that Jesus gave Judas the seat just beside his own. Now mind you, Judas had already gone out and made his dealings with the soldiers and the high priests.

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The bag that he was wearing at his side already contained the 30 pieces of silver which he had been paid. And not only that, but Jesus knew this, for Jesus announced early in the meal that he was going to be betrayed, and later he says privately to Judas that he knows that Judas

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is the one who is going to betray him. And still, he extends to him the place, the meal, the sop of honor. Jesus knows, and Judas knows that Jesus knows. The good shepherd, you see, is making one last effort to reach this one lost sheep.

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If Jesus had said to the other disciples, "It's Judas who's going out to betray me," Judas would have never left that room alive. But Jesus said nothing, and Judas scorned his love. He tramped on that which was most precious.

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He rejected friendship and trust. What can be more perverse than that? What forgiveness is conceivable for one who could do something like that? But the situation is even worse.

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This Judas brought great harm to the fellowship of the disciples, that is, to the early church. You know, whenever you talk about Jesus and Judas, the first question that most people bring up is, "Did Jesus know that Judas would betray him at the time when he called him to be his disciple?"

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And the answer to that question is no. If it were any other, then God would be slandered, the scriptures would be rendered untrue, the doctrine of providence would come to mean nothing, and the Gospels would be nothing more than play acting.

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Now, when Jesus looked at Judas, he saw in Judas great possibilities. I'm not saying that he did not see the moral contradictions which were present in the man. After all, Jesus was a good leader, and any good leader sees those kinds of things in those whom he calls to his side.

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But when Judas was looked at by Jesus, Jesus was thinking not about what Judas would become, but about what Judas could become. The caterpillar spins itself into its cocoon, and there is metamorphosized into a butterfly. But not always.

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Sometimes a certain fly will come and insert a part of its body into that cocoon and into that sleeping caterpillar, and will there lay an egg. And that egg will hatch into a tiny grub, and it will begin to eat the body of the sleeping caterpillar without the caterpillars even being aware of it.

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And that caterpillar never becomes a butterfly. And so it was with Judas. Instead of being a disciple, he became, according to John's Gospel, a devil. He broke the brotherhood of believers.

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He even smashed to smithereens the privacy of the Garden of Gethsemane, that quiet little place where Jesus used to take his disciples for prayer and intimate conversation. I offer as an exhibit C, this bit of ivy from the garden, all smashed and broken where the soldiers have stepped upon it.

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Even to so ruin peace, to so destroy unity, Judas, you see, is the patron saint of those liars and gossips, of those arrogant, of those superior ones who ruin the peace and the unity of the church even until this day. When I was early in the ministry, I used to read all of my mail, even the letters which

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were unsigned. I haven't done that for many years now. Unsigned letters never even get to my desk, let alone get read by me. But in those days long ago, I learned that these people, these caterpillars who never

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become butterflies, have in them most often either the fly of Phariseeism, they think they're better than anybody else, or the fly of failure. That is, they never amount to anything out in the world, and so they try to throw their weight around within the body which is the church.

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Sometimes it is the fly of frustration because they can't stand to have any vote go against their will. Sometimes it is the fly of falsity, that is, they lie and cannot live with their own consciences. And sometimes it's the fly of family.

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They have been a part of the church for so long, they assume that no thing can happen there without their first approving it. Yes, some caterpillars never become butterflies. They're earthbound.

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They drag themselves through life limping. And that's the way Jesus, Judas, came to Gethsemane. And when he got there, Christ came out and faced him and the soldiers alone. The Good Shepherd left the faithful disciples, the sheep, back in the shadows of the garden

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and came to stand between them and those who would attack them. And this is when Judas crowned his calumny with a kiss. You know, sometimes people, especially in the entertainment industry, change their names. Isher Dimski, we call today Kirk Douglas.

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Francis Grum, we know as Judy Garland. Marian Morrison was John Wayne. We don't think much about that. But there are times when individuals change their names, and by changing their names try

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to appear to be different than what they really are, but they in point of fact have not truly changed, and this is hypocrisy. Judas called himself a disciple and then betrayed Jesus with a kiss. You see, in the first century it was common for students to show their affection and their

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regard for their professors by greeting them with a kiss, and that's what Judas did. Only the Greek notes that he kissed Jesus repeatedly. He had said to the soldiers, "The one that I kiss is the one to arrest." The promise he made to the soldiers he didn't break.

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The promise he made to Christ, that's the one he smashed. In the next hours, some terrible things would happen to Christ's face. It would be furrowed with the lash. It would be bruised with blows.

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It would be spat upon. It would be torn with thorns. But the worst thing that was done was when a traitor kissed him, put his arms about Christ, and then stabbed him in the back.

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Now what kind of judgment can you and the jury bring to this man? I mean, is there any other verdict than guilty? Can there be any other sentence but death? Think of all that he has done.

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I offer you this morning Judas, who chose evil deliberately over good, who worshiped silver before the Savior, who trampled upon friendship and trust, who ruptured the peace and the unity of the church, and who, in a crowning act of hypocrisy, claiming to be what he was not, kissed the Son of God to death.

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We must find him guilty. Unless, of course, we often choose evil rather than good. Unless, of course, our checkbooks testify to our pitiful stewardship. Unless, of course, we have broken the bonds of friendship with the one who died for us.

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Unless we have harmed the church, not through disagreement but through disharmony. Unless we, donning the skin of the chameleon, try to make ourselves to look like other than we really are. You see, if we have done any of these things, then we dare not condemn Judas because Jesus

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says, "With the judgment you give, you will yourself be judged." Maybe then what we ought to say is what all the other disciples said there in that upper room. Hearing that Jesus was to be betrayed from his own lips, they responded, "Lord, is it

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I? Maybe we need to ponder long and to remember that single sentence of Shakespeare, "Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. Close up his eyes and draw the curtains tight and let us all to meditation go."

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Lord? Could it be? Is it I? Let us pray.

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Oh, it's such a dangerous prayer to pray. And we know ourselves well enough to know that's true. We ask, "Lord, is it I?" And even as we ask, we know that what the traitor did, we in our own ways have done.

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Oh, God, be merciful to us as sinners. Cleanse us of our unrighteousness. Lead us by thy Holy Spirit to repent of what we have been and to dedicate ourselves to Christ thus to what we ought to be.

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We pray it in his name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]