Clinton or Obama, Obama or Clinton. When
you turn on the news these days you’re bound to see something about the
One thing that has been happening, though, is that over the last few weeks various people have been switching their allegiance from Hilary Clinton to Barack Obama. She’s also been running out of money, a sure sign that her support, at least among the big wheels, is beginning to fade. There’s begun to be a cascade of support moving from one candidate to the other, and the more people see it happening, the more likely others are to follow suit.
The same thing happened a year and a half
ago at the Liberal Party convention here in
People are in politics for all kinds of reasons, some good, some not so good, but often one of the most important things is to be on the winning side when the final whistle is blown. Because no-one wants to be on the losing side.
Why did the disciples decide to follow Jesus? Mark doesn’t tell us in his gospel. He just records that Jesus called them and they followed.
Mark 1:16
As Jesus walked beside the
But that wasn’t the first Simon Peter and his brother Andrew had heard of Jesus. John tells us a lot more about the disciples in general and he tells us a bit more about their response to Jesus’ call.
John
1.40-41 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was
one of the two[disciples of John the Baptist] who heard what John had said and
who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother
Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ).
We tend to super-spiritualise the gospel stories, because we read them with the benefit of hindsight. But these guys didn’t know how the story was going to turn out when they started following Jesus. Although their reasons would change, they first followed Jesus because they believed him to be some kind of political leader who would set everything right. Andrew and Peter believed they had found the Messiah, and they had, but the messiah they were looking for was more political than spiritual, and it would take the next three years for Jesus to help them see otherwise.
Later on in John chapter 1 we read the
story of Philip and Nathanael. John 1.45,49 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We
have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets
also wrote—Jesus of
Nathanael was even more specific. He called Jesus the “King of Israel.” Considering that there was already a king on the throne and that Caesar was supposed to be the overruling king, those words amount to treason! If the wrong people hear you saying things like that they’ll string you up, or chop your head off.
A while ago we looked at James and John in Mark 10. 35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” 36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. 37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
James and John knew why they had
decided to follow Jesus. They had hitched their wagon to a star and they were
expecting to get some pretty important jobs out of it at the end; sitting on
the right and left of the new king of
Over time, they came to see that Jesus was
not the person they had first thought him to be. He was more than that. As he
went about teaching and healing they realised that he was more than just a
potential leader of a rebellion against
But that was a long process, one which didn’t really come to its fulfilment until after Jesus had died and been raised from the dead. When they started out, all they knew was that this man was going to change their world, and they wanted to be part of the story.
Judas never got beyond that.
Now the Passover
and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief
priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest
Jesus and kill him. 2 “But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the
people may riot.” …
According to the first century Jewish
historian Josephus, there would have been nearly three million people in
10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray
Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to
give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
Why did he do it?
Just as we tend to super-spiritualise the gospels, we tend to demonise Judas. In many ways Judas wasn’t that different from the other disciples. When push came to shove, towards the end of Jesus’ ministry, nobody did very well.
Still, you can understand why many defected
when Jesus’ teaching became more challenging. In John 6, when Jesus began
speaking about his death in metaphorical ways, talking about eating his flesh
and drinking his blood, it says that 66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed
him.
You can understand that response. “OK, this is just too weird. I’m outta here!”
You can understand why all of the disciples
deserted Jesus when the temple guard came to arrest him in the
And you can understand why Peter denied him
in the courtyard when Jesus was being tried. It says Peter 71 … began to call
down curses on himself, and he swore to them, “I don’t know this man you’re
talking about.”
Even though he had followed the posse back into the lion’s den, so to speak, he too got scared when he was directly challenged and he denied that he even knew Jesus.
You can understand people defecting, or deserting Jesus, or denying him, as emotional responses to the situation, but Judas’ response was different. It has the ring of cold calculation about it.
Why would he do that?
Mark doesn’t tell us, but I’d like to
suggest that Jesus just didn’t match up to Judas’ expectations. Like the other
disciples he had signed on to see regime change in
I suspect that, to Judas, Jesus was only
ever a means to an end, the political reformation of
It doesn’t help us to demonise Judas, to make him into some kind of inhuman monster. That may make us feel better because it puts him in a different class from us. But it doesn’t help us learn from his choice. People did the same thing after 9/11. The men who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Centre were, “monsters,” or “insane,” or “inhuman.” We told ourselves that, partly so we could believe that we were incapable of such an act. If we do that to Judas we miss the chance to learn from him.
So I’m forced to ask myself, “What disappointment in Jesus would it take for me to betray him?” What if something terrible were to happen to my family? Job lost everything; children, workers, animals, houses, and although he was deeply disappointed in God, yet he didn’t turn his back on him. His wife, on the other hand, encouraged him to, “curse God and die.”
What would it take?
Into the middle of this dark story of
betrayal, Mark drops a sparkling gem; the story of a nameless woman in
Judas’ story is all about calculations. The priests and teachers calculating how to arrest Jesus without causing a riot. Judas calculating his moment to betray Jesus.
But what happens in
And she doesn’t just kind of dribble a
little bit on Jesus’ head. No! She snaps the neck off and pours the whole lot
on him. The others around the table get a bit ticked. I can hear my own voice
in there too. There are so many “better” things that I could think of to spend
$21,000 on. I just received a request for support from some former colleagues
who oversee the work of 66 missionaries working from
But what does Jesus say? 6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus.
“Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The
poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want.
But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She
poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 I
tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what
she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
“She has done a beautiful thing to me.” There is no calculation here; just extravagant devotion. It’s not that Jesus suddenly changed his position on the poor. He was deeply committed to the poor. It’s just that at this point, in the last few days before his death, he appreciates this expression of devotion. “She did what she could.”
Jesus says that the story of this woman’s devotion will be told all over the world. (And we are fulfilling that prophecy this morning.) He sees something beautiful in it.
Judas only sees something disgusting. Jesus is talking about his death again, which Judas sees as defeat, and he accepts this expensive gift, which Judas probably sees as “betraying the revolution.”
And there lies the question. Where does our commitment lie? To Jesus’ programme, or to Jesus’ person?
Judas was committed to what he thought was Jesus’ programme; freedom for the oppressed, restoration of proper worship, challenging the authorities. That was what he had signed on for.
The woman at Bethany, and the other disciples to a greater or lesser extent, had become committed to Jesus’ person. Their first loyalty wasn’t to Jesus’ teaching. It was to Jesus himself.
And, you know, that is what makes the
difference between life and death. It’s not our theology that saves us; or our
commitment to social justice; or our commitment to “the gospel”; or even our
commitment to “the
If we get that right, then everything else will follow; because we will want to value the things that he values, and do the things the he does. But it is possible to take our eyes off Jesus and focus instead on any number of good Christian things, and in the process miss the most important thing in life, that he wants to have a relationship with us.
That woman in