"And He called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing."
"Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come. ... The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”"
Miracles got to be an expectation among the disciples: "When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?”"
"And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself."
I wonder what miracles Judas did, and who he paired with for the journey (maybe Matthew?). When you can heal the sick, what's 30 peices of silver more or less? You could get those easily enough (maybe). What would turn you from healer to betrayer?
Jesus Christ Superstar is sort of The Gospel According To Judas, and perhaps gets him right, if no others. He likely thought he was the good guy, pushing Jesus to do the next great thing. Not a traitor but an advisor.
ReplyDeleteHe had, after all, seen Jesus's mother and at least a few crowd members push Jesus into doing more than He had originally planned in terms of miracle.
I cannot read the NT without constantly coming up against the idea that I and my friends are more like Pharisees and like Judas than like anyone else.
I wish it weren't true about the Pharisees, but unfortunately that seems to be the default setting. Of course you find that quite a number of the Pharisees did wind up following Jesus in the end, but at those critical times that isn't where they were.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Judas' job made it hard for him to keep a good focus.