OK so Easter is behind us. Jesus is risen from the dead. Everyone's happy, right? Well no, not quite! Apart from the trauma that the disciples are still processing, one of their best friends has just committed suicide. In his book The Vision & the Vow, Pete Greig asks an extraordinary question:

"Each time you fall He will pick you up again... the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent him from taking you to that goal." (C.S. Lewis [1])

Perhaps it was inevitable that such a contemptuous character would one day betray such goodness to death. The apostle Peter certainly seems to have thought so. In the Upper Room awaiting Pentecost he “stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, ‘Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas… ‘May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and, ‘May another take his place of leadership.’ (Acts 1:15-20)

 

Are we therefore to assume that Judas was born on some kind of conveyor belt bound for hell? That he was predestined for death and damnation? There are plenty of people today who feel that way about themselves: ‘It’s just the way I am’. ‘It’s my fate, it’s in my astral charts’. ‘It’s the way I was brought up.’ ‘I’m a bad person and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ ‘It’s a genetic compulsion.’ ‘I’m under a curse.’

 

If Jesus chose Judas with some kind of foreknowledge that this was a man bound inexorably to betray him and hang himself, was not the call more of a curse? And wouldn’t such foreknowledge have dissuaded Jesus from choosing him as one of the twelve sons of Israel in the first place? And even if such foreknowledge did exist in King David or in Christ, is that the same as fore-ordination?

 

This is not the place for a theological debate about predestination, instead I invite you to play an imagination game with me to make an important pastoral point. I invite you to consider Judas and wonder ‘what if?’

 

Of course we can never know, but we can wonder, and there are some interesting clues in scripture as to what might have happened next.

 

Matthew tells us that, prior to his suicide, Judas was ‘seized with remorse’ (27:3). He ran to the Priests declaring ‘I have sinned, I have betrayed innocent blood,’ hoping that there might still be some way in which to undo the deed. Do we dare describe these words as a confession of sin?

 

Judas then tried to return the blood money, flinging those thirty silver coins at the feet of the Priests and fleeing in anguish. Is this repentance or just the demented regret of a desperate man?

 

The Priests, not wanting to be tarnished with dirty money, use the refunded coins to purchase a field as a cemetery for foreigners. And this is where – deliberately or by bitter co-incidence we cannot be sure from the biblical accounts – Judas chose to kill himself by hanging.

 

He had committed a sin greater than any other in the scale of its consequence. Everything seemed hopeless. What does a man think, what does he do, having betrayed the Lord to a tortured death for the price of a field? For Judas there was no escaping the awful horror of his own heart. No future. And so, in the darkest despair he hung himself.

 

 

I love to imagine Jesus on Easter morning deliberately seeking out the disciple more lost than any other. Perhaps now, at last, he might be found! When Judas first sees Jesus I imagine him wondering how this tumult of madness could now be conjuring such an image in his tortured mind. Slowly Jesus approaches but Judas is frozen in disbelief. Closer. Closer. Jesus is now unbearably close - Judas can feel his breath on his cheek. He leans even closer and Jesus greets Judas.

 

With a kiss.

 

He is carrying three questions for Peter. He has scars to show Thomas. But first a kiss for Judas.

 

And some time within those moments I imagine two words – just two – being exchanged very quietly between the men. Jesus looks deeply into the unblinking eyes of his betrayer who is too dumbstruck even to avert his gaze in shame. And then he utters a single syllable, upon which eternity will surely swing. He whispers the word:

 

“Friend.”

 

Do you hear the echo? It was another day, another kiss, perhaps another Judas too. But Jesus greeted his betrayer in the garden that night in just the same way: ‘Friend,’ he had said, ‘Do what you came for.’ And Judas had done it. And he had not been able to undo it. And Jesus had been to hell and back as a result. And now he is standing here, impossibly, greeting Judas again, his heart unchanged for the twelfth of his disciples: ‘Friend’. He too had done what he came for.

 

And now, a broken, broken man, replies to grace with a single word surely more meaningful than we can ever know:

 

“Lord.”

 

 

And then perhaps Judas, in those awkward, awestruck moments made to reciprocate the kiss as one should. Should he? Could he? Would Jesus allow it once again?

 

And as his lips touch the cheek, it is as though a pin pierces him through - his body just crumples upon Christ’s, shuddering with the greatest sobs of redemption in human history. Somehow the irreversible sin has become the very door to salvation - even for him, the twelfth, the last, the least, the thief, the greatest traitor of them all.

 

And with those tears the angelic realm erupts in praise. “Rejoice with me” cries the Spirit, his voice echoing through heaven, “For I have found my lost sheep” and there is always “more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” (Luke 15:6) Praises ring to the Lamb that was slain for the sins of the world – even this the greatest sin of them all. Truly he loves his enemy and does good to his persecutor. He is the shepherd who left the eleven to find at last his one lost sheep. He is the Alpha and Omega who takes the twelfth brother and makes him first, lifting his name as the ultimate example of grace – insurmountable proof of the power of love to conquer the darkness.

 

Later that day I imagine the reconciliation between Judas and the eleven comrades he had also betrayed. Peter, of course, vents his anger at the very sight of Judas but it soon passes like a storm. Gentle John is more complicated, but when he hears Judas naming Jesus ‘Lord’ his loyal heart melts in forgiveness.

 

Some days later I imagine Judas there with the others in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost and he too is being filled with the Holy Spirit now just as surely as Satan had entered into him back then at the last Supper.

 

And then, some years after his Great Commission, I imagine Judas dying a martyr’s death in some far-flung corner of the world – not hanging hopelessly from that tree – but standing valiantly for the one he calls Lord.

 

 

And I imagine him in heaven, perhaps between David the adulterer and Saul the murderer, singing with joy beyond measure:

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

that saved a wretch like me…”

 

Yes, I believe there was even grace for Judas if only he could have held on through that dark and desperate weekend.

 

But of course his guilt appeared too great and so he hung himself and, according to Augustine, his belly split open as though the violence of his crime was just too great for a human body to contain. And when he hung himself perhaps grace was robbed by a mere three days of one of the greatest testimonies of all time.

 

Please do not despair of grace. Never give up. Resist the temptation to pass judgement on yourself like Judas – that is the path of madness and self-destruction. No matter how desperate you may feel today, hold on for tomorrow. Stumble on a few more hours in blind faith, offering God nothing more than your hopelessness and your sin. We cannot rush the resurrection. But wait and watch and he will surely come.

 

No matter what you have done I am convinced of this: there is more grace in God than sin in you. I defy you to tempt such love with so much as a breath or a glance or a whisper of confession. Just one prodigal pace is all it takes to bring your Father running to greet you with the kiss of his grace.

 

And you will call him ‘Lord’.

 

 

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