For May 24th

Judas turned aside to go to his own place

This line comes from the place in Acts where the disciples must decide on what to do with Judas' apostleship. He had obviously left following Christ. The disciples sought to maintain the original 12. One had to be appointed. One had to be left aside.

What grabs me though is not the decision to call Matthew in his stead but the lonely, quiet line "Judas turned aside to go to his own place." It brings to the surface all those ways we humans talk about other people being careful not to really acknowledge their difficulty while acknowledging there absence. It makes me think of funerals or weddings when people gather in small circles to gossip. You might hear " it was his..." with some visual accompaniment of a person drinking. It is similar to past understandings of Cancer... when it was not polite even to say the word for fear it might strike. Thankfully we are more open about cancer now but I think we as people, especially church folk, still find things to talk about that we don't want to talk about. "Well, he beat his wife" "She had affairs" " He stole the money." "He was one of those" and you fill in the blank.

We don't like to acknowledge sin. It is all around us but there can be this mental understanding that to acknowledge it would be to take it on.

Today's reading has me thinking of Judas. Judas certainly does not come off well. It certainly does not end well for Judas. The one who betrays God to death... a little bit bigger sin than stealing candy from the local 7-11. We want to talk of Judas but do we often think about Judas the man. Did he fully know what he was doing? Did he really understand Jesus to be The Christ? Did he portray Jesus out of malice or to the best of his ability was he convinced he was walking the right path. If we are not to careful we make Judas the black sheep... the anti-Jesus- that sheep sent out into the desert to carry the sin of the people. Isn't it Christ who takes on all sin? Does not he take on even Judas' sin?

No, what haunts me in the line above is the how we care for those who go their own way. It very well may be true that we can do nothing... that folks who have gone their own way are choosing to remove themselves from grace... yet as people of grace we do not have to heap condemnation on top of the hopelessness these people already feel. I can not convince the Judas' of the world to return if I do not allow them the opportunity for them to do so.