In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This Holy Week, the sermons are focusing on our emotions – in particular, how the Passion of Jesus evokes different emotional responses from us and the characters of Scripture. Tonight, on Holy Monday, we consider fear.
Fear is a powerful emotion that operates at a subconscious level. Before our brains start to analyze or rationalize, our pulse quickens, senses go on high alert, and our body shifts into survival mode, often described as “fight, flight, or freeze.” While fear can end up saving our lives when we are in danger, fear also often narrows our vision and closes us off to others. And that’s exactly what we see happening in the case of Judas.
The Gospel text from John notes that Jesus has just come to home of Lazarus, his friend whom he had raised from the dead. We’ve seen that scene in art and heard it preached so often that we might be numb to just how shocking and frightening this event was. Think about it, a person who is four-days dead is reanimated. That’s how zombie movies begin. Fear is in the air. If we go back a few verses in John, this is exactly what we find: “Some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed… So from that day on they planned to put Jesus to death.”
Later in Holy Week, we will see different people respond to this sense of fear in different ways – Peter will deny that he knows Jesus in an attempt to save himself, the other disciples will flee and leave Jesus to carry his cross alone, and the crowds will give into hysterical fear as they shout “crucify.” Judas is caught up in this fear as well.
Judas, we know, is connected to the high priest because that is who pays him to betray Jesus. How true it is that when we spend time around fearful and anxious people, we take on that fear and anxiety ourselves. These days, a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum have given themselves over to fear, and rarely do we make our best decisions when we are afraid. The same is true for church leaders – there’s a lot of fear about budgets and the future of the institution. It’s so much easier to follow false saviors and chase after idols when we are afraid. So this passage is a cautionary tale for us. It’s why God and angels so often say, “Do not be afraid,” because fear closes us off to grace and hope
Judas is often associated with the Zealot movement of this time – a group that sought to end the Roman occupation of their land. It’s hard to assign motivations to others, but it’s not a stretch to see Judas growing more and more frustrated with the status quo. Jesus isn’t shaping up to the be the Messiah the Zealots were hoping for and there was very likely some fear that he had put his faith in the wrong person. As the prophet Isaiah records, “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways.” We don’t always or often comprehend God’s logic, and we give into fear when things don’t go as we expect. This is a reminder for us to trust that even the valleys of the shadow of death, our Good Shepherd is with us.
The next instance of fear comes up in the lavish and intimate action of Mary towards Jesus. She takes a pound of costly perfume and anoints Jesus’ feet. Vulnerability is something that many of us fear. Judas isn’t comfortable with this offering of love. The word that John uses to describe the purity of the nard is the same word for faith – so we might say that in this prodigal act, she is putting her faith into action. But Judas, like many of us, is afraid of the cost of discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls it.
Many people are interested in a faith that helps them in difficult times and helps them to become a better version of themselves. But that’s not what Jesus is all about – he’s about the total transformation of our lives as we are incorporated into his death and Resurrection. Jesus makes us a part of his New Creation – which means that faith in Jesus isn’t just about how we deal with struggles, it’s also about how we relate to those who wrong us, it’s about how we spend our money, what we put on our calendar, and how we vote. A lot of people are afraid of the pervasiveness of faith.
Think about what a vulnerable posture looks like – standing tall, arms stretched out, sort of like Jesus on the Cross. That’s the posture of faith, openness to what God in doing not just in a part of life, but the whole of it. Contrast this with a closed off and protected posture, perhaps the fetal position. That’s what fear does to us, it closes us off to God and others. Mary’s gesture is that of vulnerable and open love, a love that has financial and social implications. Judas couldn’t stand this; it made him afraid of what following Jesus might cost him. And it’s something we all have to consider this Holy Week – are we willing to go as far as the Cross to follow Jesus?
Another type of fear is that of scarcity, which is what motivates Judas to quip that the perfume could have been sold and given to the poor. John adds the parenthetical note that Judas didn’t really care about the poor, but he just wanted to be able to steal the money. When we think there is a limit, we become afraid when resources appear to be wasted. The lesson here is that when it comes to love, there is never a shortage and there is never a waste.
Elsewhere in John, Jesus tells us that he has come that we might share in the abundance of his life. But so often, because of our fears, we find scarcity instead. We worry about if there’s enough time, enough money, enough support, enough success. When God is involved though, there is always enough. That’s what feeding miracles of the loaves and fish are all about. There is always enough with God, but Judas saw scarcity and that led him to fear not having enough.
You all know that one of the things that I preach about most often is Grace – the claim that you are enough and that you are loved. God does not love us because we are smart enough, thin enough, nice enough, or successful enough. No. We are enough because God has made us and called us “very good.” We are stamped with goodness and enoughness. When we lose sight of that, the fear of not having enough creeps in and sends us on the endless and insatiable search for more.
And lastly, the fear that runs throughout this passage is about death. Lazarus had been dead and Jesus is being anointed before his own death and burial. That previous idea of abundance versus scarcity is what undergirds the fear of death. We fear that there is a limit to eternal life, that somehow, we become less when we die. CS Lewis speaks about eternal life as being even more real and substantial than life as we know it. At the end of the Narnia series, he describes heaven as going “further up and further in” to the reality of God’s abundant love for us. But, being surrounded by a dead man brought back to life and another man who can’t seem to stop talking about his impending death, Judas shows a fear of death that many of us know. And when we fear death, we end up focusing on that instead of enjoying the gift of life.
Certainly, there is a lot of fear in Holy Week, as there is pain, betrayal, uncertainty, and death. Fear might well be a natural and human response, but that is not where God intends to leave us. Instead, Jesus assures us we have nothing to be afraid of, because in him there is an abundance of the love which is making all things well. And that is more than enough.
