Judas vs. Mary on Spy Wednesday | S4 E9

Welcome to The Extraordinary Story.

It’s Wednesday of Holy Week, the day before the big days.

The chief priests hold a special meeting.

They want to find a way to arrest Jesus without alarming the crowds of people in Jerusalem.

It’s hard because Jesus knows their plans and is steering clear.

They’re stuck and they can’t find a way.

And then, there’s a knock on the door, and a man is ushered into the room.

He asks, How much will you give me if I hand him over to you?

We will review why Judas would want to betray his master.

And it’s important that we do, because it’s the same reason you and I may want to betray him also.

This is The Extraordinary Story, a podcast that tells the story of the life of Jesus Christ.

God himself entered the confusing maze that is our world to transform it into a path that leads to him, today and always.

The Extraordinary Story is brought to you by Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

I’m Tom Hoopes.

I’m a writer in residence here at Benedictine College.

And so we arrive at Spy Wednesday, the day the Sanhedrin gets a spy on the inside of Jesus Christ’s operation.

It’s like the pause between rounds of a boxing tournament, and the Pharisees and Jesus return to their corners.

Or it’s like half time at a football game, and the players rest and reconnoiter with their teams to observe the lay of the land.

It is sometimes called silent Wednesday because nothing public happens.

After the torrent of activity, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, cleansing the temple, preaching against the kingdom to come, sparring with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, provoking and propounding and telling urgent stories about each aspect of the kingdom he wants to establish, Jesus is absent from the scene, and a quiet descends on the battlegrounds of the day before.

In the temple, the bustle of preparations for the feast of unleavened bread and the Passover is happening.

But the Sanhedrin isn’t participating in those preparations.

They’re off making plans of their own.

We can join them there, too.

Since God is outside of time and space, his saving actions are available to people across time and space.

So, we can step outside of time and space, step outside of our corridor of the maze, and join him there in its center, as the executioners creep closer to the cross.

Here’s how Matthew puts what happened after all the events of the previous days.

When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.

Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and took council together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.

But they said, Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult among the people.

So, after saying all he had to say, Jesus makes one last prediction of the passion, and then he’s done.

Jesus is no longer holding forth in the temple courts as he had been.

He’s in Bethany, perhaps, two miles away from Jerusalem.

Mark and Luke place this story there, where John had placed it a week earlier in the same spot.

So, the plot turns to look at what Jewish leaders, the Sanhedrin, are doing.

They are gathered in the palace of the high priest, a big difference between Jesus and his friends at the house of Simon the Leper.

The Sanhedrin agrees that Jesus should be arrested by stealth, but not during the feast, lest there be a tumult among the people.

The plan, then, is to wait until people hunker down with their own families before going after Jesus, in other words, kill him on Christmas Day when everyone is occupied, not three days earlier when everyone’s at the mall and alert.

We saw how this went down after the death of Lazarus in the Gospel of John.

The Pharisees saw all the excitement around Jesus and catastrophized about it.

They said, 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.

Like I say, this is an exaggeration, a catastrophization, but it is of the kind all of us are prone to do.

I can’t remember an election in my adult life when both sides didn’t think that if the other guy wins, it would be a devastating blow to all we hold dear.

There have been some very important elections, don’t get me wrong, but we tend to see threats to our own power position as an existential threat to life as we know it.

We do the same thing at our jobs.

The place will fall apart if we leave, we imagine.

But then, if we have to leave, everything seems to go on fine.

So the Jewish leaders think that everything is doomed if Jesus isn’t stopped.

But the opposite is true.

He is their one hope.

But Caiaphas builds on the bad logic to say, it is expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.

We will see this logic a lot in the days to come, because it’s true in this case.

As John points out, he did not say this on his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation.

Then John riffs on the same theme, saying his death will be the salvation, not for the nation only, but to gather into one children of God, all who are scattered abroad.

John goes on to add that from that day on, they took counsel how to put him to death.

So, Jesus no longer went about openly among the Jews, but started to travel in a hidden way.

This leaves the Sanhedrin in a quandary.

They have no way to get Jesus in an efficient way that won’t cause an uproar when he’s out in public, and they have no idea where to find him when he’s not out in public, because he’s on to them, he’s hiding.

And then Judas walks in.

Quote, then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me if I deliver him to you?

And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.

And from that moment, he sought an opportunity to betray him.

So Judas comes in just in time to save the day for the Sanhedrin.

Here is one of Jesus’ trusted followers.

He will know where Jesus is, and he’ll be able to bring Jesus to them, or bring them to Jesus.

And now it’s time for us to look a little closer at Judas, because though we touched on him briefly before, we didn’t go into much detail.

Because it’s at this point that Mark adds a story that we have already heard.

John tells us the story of the woman breaking the bottle of perfumed ointment for Jesus, as happening six days before the Passover.

The other gospel writers include it here.

Though it’s worth noting, they don’t include time language.

They don’t say it happened on Spy Wednesday.

In fact, it’s hard to figure out how the logistics would work out if the ointment story, a dinner, and Judas’ betrayal story happened on the same day.

Anyway, it’s at this point in the story that the three synoptic gospels inform us of a dinner where Judas spoke up and then fell.

I think John’s gospel, when it got circulated, wanted to set the record straight about the timing of it.

At any rate, in the episode Waste It All On Jesus, we read John’s account.

Let’s read Mark’s now.

And while he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment, of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the jar and poured it over his head.

But there were some who said to themselves indignantly, why was this ointment thus wasted?

For this ointment might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor.

And they reproached her.

But Jesus said, Let her alone.

Why do you trouble her?

She has done a beautiful thing to me.

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them.

But you will not always have me.

She has done what she could.

She has anointed my body beforehand for bearing.

And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money.

And he sought an opportunity to betray him.

End quote.

So like I said, we talked about this woman before.

She’s Lazarus’ sister Mary, the one who poured out all her time on Jesus in an earlier story.

And here she pours out her expensive perfume.

And the worldly types looking on were indignant, says the Gospel.

They were infuriated with her.

They asked, why has there been this waste of perfumed oil?

Mark’s being polite here.

As we know from John, it’s Judas who said this.

Jesus argues back, saying, it is worth it to waste everything you have on him.

Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what has been done will be told in memory of her, he says, because she has anticipated anointing my body for burial.

This makes even more sense when you know that it is Lazarus’ sister, Mary, who is doing the anointing.

Jesus has just once again predicted his passion.

He says he will be crucified.

No one else wants to even consider the possibility.

They don’t want to think about this thing he keeps saying, that he’s going to be crucified.

But Mary’s brother Lazarus has just been risen from the dead, thanks to the power of Jesus.

So, Mary is willing to accept that Jesus is going to be crucified and buried like Lazarus, but that he will come back.

And if that’s true, then she agrees with what the Sanhedrin said, it is better that one man die than that they all perish.

But she does it from the position of faith.

And if it’s true that Jesus will die and rise, then who really cares how much her perfume costs?

There is a good chance that this is the most valuable thing she has, and her anointing Jesus with it shows that she sees his strength, sees that he is the most valuable thing that she has, and sees that she has nothing to lose.

Well, Judas also understands that Jesus is going to die.

He sees the writing on the wall, he saw what happened after the raising of Lazarus, and he also figures that he has nothing to lose.

As John’s Gospel puts it, But Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, who was to betray him, said, Why was assointment not sold for three hundred dinarii and given to the poor?

This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to take what was put into it.

Try to think about it from Judas’ perspective.

Judas left everything to follow this guy, and now maybe Judas feels like an idiot.

In fact, he’s felt like an idiot ever since Jesus said, You must eat my flesh and drink my blood.

That’s when it was first revealed that Judas is turning away from Jesus.

We can understand what’s going on.

He followed a holy man who turned out to be a crazy man.

There is that famous incident when the Beatles went all in for a guru, and went to India to follow him, only to discover that he was a fraud, looking out for personal gain.

John Lennon wrote a song about it called Sexy Sadie.

He called it that to avoid saying maharishi, which is the title of the guru and the original title of the song.

The lyrics would go, maharishi, what have you done?

You made a fool of everyone.

One sunny day, the world was waiting for a lover.

He came along to turn on everyone.

We gave him everything we owned just to sit at his table.

He made a fool of everyone.

That’s how Judas probably felt about Jesus.

He felt like he was being duped.

He was looking for answers to his heart’s longing and imagined he found them in Jesus.

Then he starts talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and people leave in droves, and those who stay look foolhardy.

Even Peter couldn’t come up with a reason to stay.

The best he could say was, Where else shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life.

Which sounds like what it must have sounded like to John Lennon when he saw people sticking with the maharishi despite the evidence that they should go.

You have the words we love to hear, so we will stay.

So Judas started keeping the money and felt entitled to help himself to some of it.

Now and again, it was given to a fraud, maybe, he figured.

So why not help himself to a little bit of it?

So now he sees that Jesus is going to die and he makes a calculation.

While I simply look foolish when I’m on his side now, later when he’s killed, I will look foolish and I will be branded a heretic by the Jews and a criminal by the Romans.

So he decides that he will turn him in.

And what will he get in return?

Money for turning him in, honor for leaving the crazy cult and fame.

He will be known as the guy who brought down the crazy rabbi.

What really drives him up a wall is Jesus saying to this woman, this crazy woman who wasted expensive perfume, that she will be praised for all ages.

That adds insult to injury.

He is the guy who’s giving alms to the poor.

She’s the one wasting money.

He is the one who feels like an outsider.

She’s a cozy special friend of Jesus, who’s so close to Lazarus, Martha and Mary.

Exacerbating this issue, Judas Iscariot may have been the one non-Galilean among the men from Galilee who are apostles.

Iscariot means a man from Carioth, which is a city in Judah across the Dead Sea from Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is 100 miles from Capernaum, Jesus’ headquarters.

Carioth is 125 miles away from Capernaum.

If that’s what his last name meant, Judas was a bit of an outsider to the other apostles, but he was also closer to Jerusalem, but from across the Dead Sea.

So he may have felt like somebody who was almost on the inside, but nonetheless an outsider his whole life long.

The Gospels make it a point to show that Judas was not alone in sinning, however.

He was an accomplice of the devil.

Jesus says in John 6, when Judas turns against him over the Eucharist, one of you is a devil, referring to Judas.

In Luke and in John, the devil enters Judas before he leaves Jesus’ company to betray him.

But you can’t blame the devil exclusively.

Judas is the betrayer.

The devil doesn’t cause us to sin.

He plays upon a weakness that already exists.

The movie The Passion of the Christ does a good job of dramatizing this in Judas’ story.

In the movie, Judas’ relationship with the devil is more like a haunting than a possession.

There is a reason that when we are excited, we say our spirits are up.

And when we are depressed, we say our spirits are low.

Angels in the Bible are spirits.

They don’t work as forces in the physical world so much as they play on our emotions.

The fathers of the church named the angels as angels of courage, angels of peace, angels that fill us with joy and exultation.

Just as angels fill us with energy, the devil fills us with fear and dissipation.

The movie The Passion of the Christ depicts Judas as being haunted by the devil.

Under the influence of the devil, everything begins to look frightening to Judas.

Innocent things look wicked and corrupt as children taunt him with hideous faces.

On the other hand, Satan makes things that look disgusting to us look better under his influence.

Pornographic degradation is desirable.

The harming of innocent people is no big deal.

Evil and violence looks like a live possibility.

All sin is violence because it’s from the devil.

Satan having rejected God sets his sights on undermining him, on marring his image in us, his people.

He can do nothing against the all-powerful God, so he sets his sights on us.

All sin shares the character of Satan’s sin and Judas’ more explicitly so.

But it’s important to notice that Judas is quoted saying in this incident by John, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?

This is another typical human sin to focus on the horizontal dimension of life, our concern for other creatures instead of the vertical dimension, our devotion to God.

Because no matter how noble it seems, to put love of neighbor over love of God is idolatry.

As sure as worshipping any created thing is idolatry.

Whether it’s Caesar, you are worshipping as God, or it’s your neighbor, you are serving as your highest priority, you are an idolater.

Jesus said the greatest commandment is love for God above all things.

And second is love for your neighbor.

When we put love for our neighbor first, things quickly get out of whack.

Marxists put love of neighbor first in a way, but every communist government in history has harshly put down dissent in order to enforce its policies.

Idolatry of the lower classes ends by making life even harder on the lower classes.

Fascism is a different but just as destructive kind of idolatry.

In November 2022, Pope Francis drew attention to the political aspect of Judas’ story, saying the betrayer confuses Christ’s mission with political messianism.

The idea is that Judas expected, like several other apostles, that Jesus had come to defeat the earthly powers of the enemies of Israel.

That’s not why Jesus came.

Politics is critically important, but evangelization is even more so.

This is where a lot of us are.

We are willing to trade our morals for a political answer, often without much hesitation.

To put your faith before your politics in either party is often very much frowned upon.

And that’s why a number of spiritual writers point out that we have to be on our guard unless we become Judas’.

Pope Francis said, Let’s think of the little Judas’ that we have within ourselves.

Every one of us is capable of choosing between loyalty and self-interest.

We are each capable of betraying, or selling, or making choices based on our own interests.

Where are you, Judas?

Or Bishop Robert Barron observed that, Those of us who regularly gather around the table of intimacy with Christ and yet engage consistently in the works of darkness are meant to see ourselves in the betrayer.

So how do we keep ourselves from being a betrayer?

I think Mark put these two stories together to show us the difference.

On the one hand, you have Lazarus’ sister, Mary.

She’s convinced of Jesus’ saving power because she has seen her brother raised from the dead.

She has seen Jesus’ power in her own life.

She also lived through the pain of her own brother’s death.

She mourned him thoroughly and saw her tears turned into joy when he rose from the dead.

She’s shameless about her faith, unselfconscious about it.

She’s eager to show it because she believes it wholeheartedly.

She has hope wholeheartedly.

And what about Judas?

He should be in the same place.

He was there when Lazarus was raised from the dead, and when the widow’s son was raised from the dead, and when Jairus’ daughter was raised from the dead.

So he has a problem with faith and hope.

For some reason, he does not believe.

But he also has a problem with love.

He had gotten into the habit of carefully measuring out his love, of being the careful steward of the money box.

Think of your life as a money box.

The money box is filled by Jesus Christ, just like it was for Judas.

He brings all the good things that Judas collects, and Judas loves giving it away prudently, a little here and a little there, and keeping a little for himself.

So do we.

We love the consolation and grace gives us in our little money box.

And we give a little of our life back to him, a little here and a little there.

But we keep a little for ourselves, too.

We never give it all away.

We want to love, but we also want to be comfortable.

We want to love, but we also want to take care of ourselves.

Compare that to Lazarus’ sister Mary, who gives it all to Jesus.

Self-gift is love.

Anything else is holding back, and that’s selfishness, not love.

Pope Benedict explained that, the word to betray is the version of a Greek word that means to consign.

Sometimes the subject is even God in person.

It was he who for love consigned Jesus for us all.

In his mysterious salvific plan, God assumes Jesus’ inexcusable gesture as the occasion for the total gift of the Son for the redemption of the world.

And that’s what we will see in the days ahead.

God is taking our sinful acts, our betrayals, and doing away with them forever.

This is the whole point of Jesus Christ’s interaction with Judas.

And it’s the whole point of his extraordinary story.

The Extraordinary Story is written by Tom Hoopes and produced by Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Benedictine College is transforming culture in America through our mission of community, faith and scholarship.

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