Spy Wednesday: Judas Iscariot, Who Betrayed Him

For a summary of Passus XIX, see Seventeenth Day of Lent.

In his response to Will in Passus XIX, the Samaritan (Christ) uses several examples to connect the threeness of God with our salvation through the works of love.  To illustrate the way in which our response to God’s grace is part of how we are saved from our sins, he offers the image of a candle:

            “And as wax and a wick and warm fire together

            Foster forth a flame and a fine blaze

            That serves for the workmen to see by at night,

            So does the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together

            Foster forth among folk fine love and belief

            That cleanses all manner Christians of their sins.

            And as you see sometimes suddenly with a torch

            The blaze blown out, and yet the wick still burns—

            Without flame or light fire lies yet in the wick—

            So is the Holy Spirit God and grace without mercy

            To all unnatural creatures who covet to destroy

            The very body and life that our Lord shaped.”

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are like wax, wick, and fire offering the light of love and belief (faith) to the darkness of our lives.  This light, the dwelling of God’s life in our life, is what cleanses us of our sins and leads us forth from death.  And yet, the Samaritan notes, even though God is the source of the light and sustains the light, this light which we cannot make on our own we are nonetheless capable of extinguishing on our own, so that we reduce the flame of God’s love in our lives to a smoldering wick.  Does this mean things we do can cause God to stop loving us?  No, of course not.  But if we refuse and reject the light of his grace and blow out the candle of his transforming power within us, that love cannot transform us and make us new creatures.  If we do not accept that love, we cannot be that love, cannot live that love.  And that being and living is what salvation is.

To some people, the idea that our hatred for our neighbors and disobedience toward God could reduce the flame of his grace to a smoldering wick is a dangerous heresy.  And, indeed, it is certainly much more comfortable to think that, no matter what we do, we can’t “impede” God from bringing us into new life.  But God would not have created us with the potential to rebel as well as to obey if he did not intend for us to share his everlasting life through that same freedom of will.  Nor would we truly be sharing God’s life if we ourselves do not become just, loving, and holy as God is.  Thus the gusts of our sinfulness and rebellion are always threatening to blow out the candle of God’s grace which makes our lives lives of light and not lives of darkness.  And sometimes we are so turned from God that it is blown out—but never will it cease to smolder.

We know that the candle can be blown out because we know Judas.  We know that the one who betrayed Jesus to the priests and authorities was one whom he had chosen to be among his closest disciples.  He was the one they trusted to manage the common purse.  He had seen Jesus heal and cast out demons.  He had heard Jesus teach, not just preaching to the crowds, but also more personal instruction.  He had lived with Jesus—and yet it was he who betrayed him.  He preferred to hand the light over to darkness rather than to receive and cherish and shine with the light.

To what darkness are you surrendering your light, and for what silver?  What are the gusts buffeting the candle God has set, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in your heart, that candle which is his very life and love and grace?  Do you lay your light bare to those blasts?  Or do you foster and cherish and increase its light by practicing the justice and love that it has given you?

“Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.  When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money.  So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.”  (Mark 14:10-11)