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The trial of Judas Iscariot by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman, part one, the prosecution. The scripture reading of the evening is taken from the gospel according to Luke, the 22nd chapter, reading in the chapter at three different points. The first reading begins at the verse numbered one. "Now the festival of unleavened bread, known as Passover,

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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 chief priests and officers of the temple police to discuss ways and means of putting Jesus into their power. They were

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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 crowd." Continuing the reading now at the verse numbered fourteen. "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

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Passover with you before my death, for I tell you, 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 time when the kingdom

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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, my betrayer is here, his hand with mine on the table, for 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

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be who was to do this thing." And the reading continues at the verse numbered 39. "Then he 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.' He himself withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and began to pray, 'Father,

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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 to the ground. When he rose from prayer and came to the disciples, he found them asleep, worn out by grief. 'Why

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are you sleeping?' he said. 'Rise and pray that you may be spared the test.' 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, but Jesus said, 'Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?'" And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts

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to their understanding. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Some years ago Charles Lamb was asked if he could see any face he had never seen, what face would he most like to see? He responded without hesitation, "I would most like to see the face of Judas Iscariot. It is inconceivable to me how a man could

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live with love and talk with love for three long years and still betray love as he did. I cannot imagine such a face. I would like to see it." I cannot show you the face of Judas tonight. I cannot bring him here in the flesh to stand in the dock before us on trial. But all of you are familiar enough with him and his deeds, familiar enough at

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least that I can bring him before the eye of your mind, that I can present him before your conscience and ask you to render judgment on this one who deliberately and with premeditation betrayed and helped to kill Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, I know, as soon as I say that his act was premeditated, there are those who will argue. The attorney for the defense next week

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will undoubtedly suggest in one way or another that Judas was ill-informed, just too stupid to really know what he was about. How long are we going to let people get away with things simply on the basis that they are uninformed? How long are we going to allow people to mash the face of beauty and rape virtue and slobber all over its corpse and then say to us that

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they just didn't know what they were doing? How long are we going to permit people whose maws are always open to swallow everything except that which is right until their empty skulls rattle with the dry seeds of the discarded thoughts of wiser men and excuse themselves by saying they just didn't understand? You think I overstate the case? You think I am

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too vivid, too adjectival in suggesting that we live in a society which exalts stupidity and criticizes intelligence? Tell me then, why is it that more people read Henry Miller than William Shakespeare? Why do they buy records of Paul McCartney instead of Franz Schubert? Why is the joy of sex on the bestseller list and not the love sonnets of Elizabeth

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Barrett Browning? Tell me why people crowd around to see the inane blobs of paint smeared on some canvas by a beatnik or the like and turn away from the symmetry and joyful excellence of a Bruegel? Why are picture magazines more important than magazines in which words are lifted up and used? Why do people buy cord organs for their homes? Trying to find some

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easy, costless way to accomplish truth and beauty? Why do people hurry after cheapness and relegate truth and beauty and loveliness to the dung heap and the dustbin? Why do they veto it and offer as excuse always, "Well, you must forgive me. I was uninformed." Caiaphas was not uninformed. He had sufficient spiritual sensitivity to understand that this

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man from Nazareth was infinitely above him in the spiritual order of things. Pontius Pilate could not plead stupidity. All his clever words about truth to the side, the plain fact of the matter is he knew what he was about. And Judas can offer no excuse of ignorance either. He had fellowship with Jesus for three long years. And what makes his deed

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so ghastly and so wicked in its intent is the fact that he deliberately and consciously betrayed beauty and truth and goodness. I offer as exhibit A 30 pieces of silver. Not a paltry sum in those days. Those 30 pieces of silver constituted about 120 days' wages, 25 of our 40-hour weeks. It wasn't a bad deal.

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Six months' pay for six hours' work. And Judas was very ready to accept it. He was one, you see, who put his faith in God and in his bank account. It wasn't Judas that Jesus looked when he said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." I believe it was at Judas that Jesus was looking

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when he said, "No man can serve two masters, for either he will love the one and hate the other or cleave to the one and forsake the other." When the rich young ruler came to Jesus seeking the salvation of his soul and went away because the price was too high, it is recorded that Jesus wept. Wept, I think, tears of sadness because he lost the man.

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Is it too much to imagine that Judas wept because he lost the man's money? He would have had control of it, you know. Judas was the treasurer of the little group of 12. When Zacchaeus came down out of the tree and decided that he would return all that he had taken, I'm sure that Judas welcomed him, hoping that some of the money would have come into the

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bag which he alone kept, and probably regretted it when Zacchaeus gave it all to those from whom he had taken it. Oh, you say this is circumstantial. There is no evidence in Scripture to support this. Well, let me adduce to you that which is clearly recorded on the pages of Scripture. When a prostitute came into the house of Simon the Tanner and broke a

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rare vase full of costly ointment and with it anointed the feet of Jesus, who alone protested the deed? Judas. And what was the word of his protest? "This money should not be spent in such a way. We should take this ointment, we should sell it, and then that money should come into the treasury where I will handle it and distribute it to the poor." And John

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records for us in the twelfth chapter of his Gospel that Judas was a thief. Oh, part of it might have gone to the poor, but how much would have gone to Judas? Thirty pieces of silver. The same thirty pieces of silver paid the executioner that beheaded Paul. The same thirty pieces of silver bought the wood with which they burned Joan of Arc. The same thirty

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pieces of silver slithered across the hand of Benedict Arnold. Wherever greed is exalted, wherever silence is purchased, wherever morality is sold cheap, wherever business deals are perpetrated under the table, there are the thirty pieces. And it's the sound of death. Back in 1923, seven very successful businessmen got together in the Edgewager Beach Hotel

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in Chicago, Illinois. Their meeting was much heralded because the amount of wealth controlled by those seven men was greater at that time than the total wealth of the United States of America. Their meeting, their power, their prestige was much heralded. Unfortunately, the stories about these men were written too early. They should have waited until the end

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of their lives to write of their power and prestige. For you see, Charles Schwab, the president of the world's largest independent steel company, was at that table, and he died a pauper. They had to borrow the money to bury him. And Arthur Cutton, the greatest wheat speculator in the world, was at that table, and he died a broad insolvent. And

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Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, was at that table, and he died while serving a term in Sing Sing Penitentiary. And Albert Paul, a member of the president's cabinet, was pardoned from the penitentiary in order to go home to die. And Jesse Livermore, who was at that table, the biggest bear on Wall Street, died a suicide.

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And Leon Frazier, the president of the Bank of International Settlements, died a suicide. And Ivan Kruger, the president of the world's largest monopoly, died a suicide. So it is when one puts silver before the Savior, when one tries to buy eternity with what one cannot take with him. And this was part of Judas's crime.

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Or I suggest to you another exhibit, exhibit B, a piece of bread soaked in wine. In the Middle East, no act of friendship is considered to have so much meaning as to dine with a person. Their understanding is as follows. If you and another are eating the same food together, then because the same food is entering into both of you, you become by that act one.

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And you never transgress against the friendship of those with whom you have eaten. Not only that, not only that act of great significance, but this piece of bread soaked in wine was the sop of honor from the Passover meal. The holiest week of the Hebrew year was the week in which Christ was crucified. The holiest night of that week was Passover

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night. And it was at the table of Passover that the father of the family or the one in charge of the feast would, before the feast began, take a piece of bread and soak it in wine and then present the sop of honor to the one at the table he wished most to honor and to encourage. And Jesus, at that meal, gave this sop to Judas and did it knowing

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full well that Judas had already betrayed him, knowing full well that the 30 pieces of silver were already in the bag at the trader's side. We know that Jesus knew, for he says at the meal, that one of you has betrayed me. But he's still the good shepherd, you see, even in the midst of betrayal, reaching out with great sensitivity and love, trying

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to honor Judas and thus to encourage Judas back into the fellowship of love. He even saves Judas's life. For when the moment comes for him to accuse Judas, he does not utter the words out loud. Had he said them out loud, the other disciples would never have permitted Judas to leave that room alive. Instead, the record is clear. He whispers

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to Judas, "After the sop has been rejected, after the honor has been rejected, after the plea of the shepherd to the sheep has been scored," he whispers to Judas, "what you are to do, do quickly." And Judas does it. He betrays the friendship of the one who ate with him and honored him, the friendship of the one who comforts the lonely, the friendship

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of the one who strengthens the suffering and brings balance to the successful and courage to the fearful and life to believers and the promise of life to those who can come to believe. Judas rejected all of this. He turned away from trust. He turned away from entreaty. He turned away from petition. He turned away from help. And he turned toward death. With

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one hand, he shook the master's, and with the other, he stabbed him in the back. It's interesting to notice, good friends, they will sometimes call upon one another when their need is great. But I have noticed that more often than that, there is some inexplicable understanding between them which enables them to encourage and support one another without

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even making their act of helpfulness overt and deliberate. Have you ever noticed how your friends will listen to you when you recount your side of the story and by the very way in which they listen to it will encourage you? You know how it is when you come away from some conflict situation and the words you wish you had then come to you now. And

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so when you tell your friend, you tell him with the words that you wish you'd had then. And he, with great kindness and patience and understanding, believes you. There's something about the gentleness of friendship. There's something about the lifting of power of friendship. There's something about the support that comes in friendship.

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And all this Judas had in Jesus, but he betrayed it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, surely you know that no evil man can be a good friend. And when Judas went out, the Scriptures say, it was night. Night when panic spreads and phantoms prowl and wild beasts seek their prey and thieves work their will. It was night. A night so dark that Judas could not see before

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him his own hand. A night so dark that even Jesus, looking within Judas, could not find his heart. But I offer another exhibit. A broken fern from Gethsemane. Gentle and fragile, but tramped upon and crushed by a traitor's foot. I suppose the question that is asked most often about the relationship between Jesus and Judas is, did Jesus know from the

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beginning what Judas would do? I would submit to you that this is not so. Had Jesus known that all of his relationships with Judas would have been some kind of play acting, a pretense, some effort to make things look other than they really were. And this is far beneath the dignity and the truth which was to be found in Jesus. No, when Jesus selected Judas,

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he selected him not because he knew what he would do, but because he knew what Judas could do. What possibilities there were in the man. Many centuries ago, there was an Italian artist who wanted to paint a picture of the Madonna and Child, and he sought out a beautiful woman with a beautiful baby, and he painted them as best he could, and the painting still hangs

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in an Italian gallery. Some years later, he turned again to a biblical theme, and in this picture he decided to paint the betrayal of Jesus, and he sought one to represent the countenance of Judas. And trying to find such a one, he went into the skid row of his days, into the slums, into the places of poverty, into the jails and the prisons, and finally

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he found a man whose very face represented to him evil, a man who had been condemned to death and was waiting for the execution of the sentence. And he went to the prison day after day after day, sketching the face of that man. And as he sketched it and became sensitive to the structure of the face, something dawned upon him which filled him with an awful

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dread, for he discovered that the man whose face he now painted as Judas had been the child in its mother's arms, whose face he painted as the face of Jesus. All possibilities, all treasures, all gifts and talents hidden in Judas so great that Jesus selected him as one of the twelve and then made him one of the leaders of the twelve, treasurer, inviting

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him into the inner circle, the circle of leadership and prestige within the group. All of this was his. And he turned away from it, his possibilities profaned, broken like this fern from Gethsemane. There is an insect which sometimes, coming upon a cocoon into which a caterpillar has spun itself and is sleeping, preparing to become a butterfly, there is an insect which

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will climb upon the cocoon and somehow insert inside the cocoon an egg. The egg then hatches and eats, in some strange way I do not begin to understand, into the body of the caterpillar so that the caterpillar does not die, indeed it is transformed into a butterfly. But when the moment comes that the chrysalis cracks and the butterfly spreads its wings, it discovers

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that it cannot fly and it falls immediately to the ground and dies. What entered into Judas? Jealousy? Greed? What led him to become like a devil? He profaned the Passover, the holiest night of the year. He came and with cruel foot stepped on the garden sanctuary, the place of peace to which Jesus went with his disciples for a time of rest. He was the

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first one of those who will insert themselves, intrude into a company of belief, into a place of peace and rejoicing and mutual support. And then, when they get into the very midst of that, will, with slandering tongue, create rumors and discord and dissension and disagreement. There's one in every church, there's one in every fellowship of belief. It is almost as

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if the good cannot get together without one so inserting himself into that group that he can break rather than build. You think of Tennyson's words in the Idols of the King in which he describes Vivian as a woman whose tongue raged like a fire until she left not even Lancelot clean nor Galahad pure. So Judas came into the peaceful quiet of Gethsemane,

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crushing its gentle ferns beneath his feet. And Jesus, always the good shepherd, leaves his disciples behind and comes out to meet the traitor alone. When Judas came, he came with troops, with guards who carried clubs and lanterns. And when Jesus saw the preparations with which they came, he said to them, these words are his, not mine, "You come for me

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as you would come for a robber." For a robber. People have tried to make Jesus into all kinds of things. Some try to dress him in the uniform of their country and make him a soldier. Some try to attire him in pinstripe and make him a banker ready to defend their own economic philosophy. Some try to put him on a donkey and make him a Democrat. Some try to put him

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on an elephant and make him a Republican. Some let his hair grow long, put him in a sports shirt and make him a pop psychologist. Some wrap him in the flag and make him a patriot. Some put a green beret on his head and push it to one side and try to claim him as one kind of revolutionary or another. They try to make him into all kinds of things. But

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for the love of God, could anybody think of making him into a robber? This man who was so opposed to violence, who only once in his life displayed any violence and even then touched no one with the thongs and was violent not on his own behalf but on behalf of his father's. This one who would not even perpetrate psychological violence against another. This

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one who was so like his father that he would let the prodigal go where the prodigal wanted to go, that he would cause his reign to fall both on the just and the unjust, that one could speak blasphemy to him and he would not strike them down. This one who used in all of his life only one leverage, the leverage of love. I know a priest in New England who

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came to his parochial school a couple of years ago and found every window in it smashed. And later in the day they brought into his office the young student from the school who had done all the damage. And the youngster cowered before him and the priest asked the officers to leave and then sitting down before the boy, he wept. He said, "You know, I'm

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getting older and the time will come when I must leave this place and there must be others to come after me to stand for what is right and true. And I weep now because I hoped and I prayed that you would be the one." And with that love so passionately expressed the heart of the boy was opened and cleansing and reconciliation began. Judas,

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like a robber, this Christ who accepted, his head accepted thorns, his hands and feet accepted nails, his side accepted a spear, his face accepted spittle, his ears accepted curses, and in all of it he was vulnerable love. And Judas, when he came, and my tongue, my tongue leaves to my mouth as I say this, Judas, when he came up to Jesus, kissed him. In the Middle

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East until this day you will often see a student kiss his teacher, but only once. In the passage the Greek makes it very clear that Judas kissed Jesus repeatedly. Here is the face of Judas, so close to the face of Jesus. He can see on that face all the bloody sweat from the time of prayer in Gethsemane which had been only minutes before. He can see in the lines

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of that face all the suffering and hurt. If anyone on the face of the earth could see it, Judas could see it when he was close enough to kiss him. But Judas, unwilling to keep his promise to Jesus, instead keeps his promise to the soldiers. "The one that I kiss is the one you will arrest." And I believe I am far within the mark when I say that no sweat that

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ran down the master's face that day, no blows his face felt, no spittle that worked its way into his eyes, no Syrian fly that increased his agony, no tear in the fine flesh which was his stung him like that kiss, the final act of hypocrisy. So ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you Judas, a man who sacrificed truth for deceit, who put his confidence in

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silver rather than a savior, a man who trampled on friendship, a man who ruptured the peace of believers, a one who tried to make Christ into his image, and the one who in the final act of hypocrisy made a kiss into a symbol of betrayal. Now what is your judgment about such a one? To what conclusion can you possibly come? Is there any other possible sentence,

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any other just judgment that can be rendered than this? Death. Oh, I hope there is some other judgment. Oh God, I hope there is some other judgment. Because as I look at him, his face becomes familiar. And I want to say to him, "Is it you or is it I? For I too betray him. I too rely more on things than on God. I too treat my most precious friendships sometimes

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cruelly and casually. I too unleash my tongue so that it wounds and burns and hurts. I too seek peace, and I too try to make Jesus fit my theology. Oh Judas, I pray there be some other judgment. For the words of Jesus are in my ears, and I cannot forget them." "With the judgment you give," he said, "you will yourself be judged."

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Let us pray. We must forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. So close up his eyes and draw the curtain close, and let us all to meditation go. Oh Lord, is it I? Amen. Amen.