Remorseless
A Holy Week reflection on Judas
A break from the usual, I’m reflecting on the Gospel of Matthew this Holy Week.
Realizing what he has done, Judas was choked with remorse.
That’s where you feel it, true? When remorse hits, you don’t put your hands in your pockets. Instinctively upon realizing the horror, of our deeds, our hands go to the mouth, to the throat. Everything you did comes up into your throat.
3 When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus[a] was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders.4 He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent[b] blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.”“Take back this money! I can’t keep it! I betrayed an innocent man!” (Matthew 27)
Judas has come, trying to make confession. His choking soul needs him to confess. Judas even went to the right place, to the Temple, to the priests—they are the ones who are supposed to help people get freed from sin through sacrifice, offerings, confession.
They shrugged and said “What is that to us?” admitting for all of History that they were no priests at all.
But what those so-called priests did next turned the tables:
They confess their sins.
“We can’t accept this money into the temple treasury, it is payment for murder!”
They did not recognize, of course, that they are confessing to murder.
But they are indeed.
And not only that: They Confess to Judas! In that moment, ironically, the remorse-filled traitor Judas became their priest. WE ARE MURDERERS OF AN INNOCENT MAN, they admitted without remorse.
With the coinage, they established their truest legacy — a field of graves.