Daily Devotion - May 10
I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara
Blessings today as we remember the family connections and bonds that hold us, amidst the poignancy and pain of distance.
(I will be taking much of the week off, so will not be sharing daily reflections online).
We are in Easter Season – noticing how resurrection happens to people when they meet the resurrected Jesus. We've been with Mary when Jesus met her in her grief and offered her hope, Thomas, when Jesus met him in his doubt and offered him assurance, Cleopas, when Jesus met him in the familiar and offered him insight and connection, and Peter, when Jesus met him in his shame and regret and offered him forgiveness and love.
We almost chose for our day, Matthias, because in our scripture today he’s the one they pick to replace Jesus among the twelve. But what stuck out to us most in this text was not their funny decision process or the one who comes in afterwards, it was the one they’ve written off, the hole they have to fill, the gap where Judas used to be.
So today’s resurrection story is Judas’.
Acts 1:1-26
I had a seminary professor (Ray Anderson) who once saw scrawled on the wall of a men’s room in a bar, “Judas, come home. All is forgiven.”
It eventually led him to write a book called, The Gospel According to Judas, imagining a post-death encounter between Judas and Jesus, Judas’ own resurrection story.
In the story as we have it, Judas betrays Jesus to the religious authorities for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus knows this is coming, and brings it up at the last supper, and tells Judas to go do what he is going to do. Then, when Jesus is praying in the garden, Judas shows up, and gives the soldiers the sign, kissing Jesus and calling him “rabbi.” And Jesus is arrested.
Afterwards, Judas is so filled with remorse that he tries to give the money back. The leaders refuse to accept it and he throws it on the temple floor and flees. Steeped in shame and regret, Judas hangs himself. The plot of land where he dies is bought with his blood money and used as a pauper’s grave. It comes to be known as, “The Field of Blood.”
Last week we were with Peter in his betrayal of Jesus. We saw the Risen Jesus forgive him and call him back to love. It’s easy to have compassion for Peter – we can relate to having a scared, bad moment, and hurting someone we love. We can imagine what it is to live with such terrible remorse.
But interestingly, we never have that kind of imagination for Judas. We never try to think what he must have been feeling, why he did what he did, what was going on for him afterwards. We never wonder about who he was, or what his life was beyond this terrible act of betraying Jesus.
And, frankly, neither did the disciples or gospel writers. He gets a “heads up” nearly every time he’s mentioned in any of the gospels – Judas - the one who would betray Jesus. He’s called a thief, the devil, and painted as crooked and evil from the beginning.
Betrayal is a particularly egregious sin. It always happens within the context of a relationship of trust and loyalty. If it had been a stranger who pointed out Jesus to the authorities, would the disciples even have remembered their name? But it wasn’t a stranger; it was one of their own. Judas betrayed not just Jesus, but them too.
Love is a risky and vulnerable business. It holds within itself the possibility of betrayal. Betrayal feels like the unforgiveable sin because besides the act, it’s a violation of the relationship itself. It feels impossible to ever trust again.
So we’re justified in cutting off the betrayer. We feel right to define them from then on only by their terrible act, as though it overrides and cancels out every other aspect of their personhood or our relationship to them.
Even though there was more to Judas than his act of betrayal, we never hear of it. All the humans in the story, the future church, and even Judas himself, cancel him. Betrayal becomes the whole of his identity forever. InDante’s Inferno he appears in the deepest chasm of hell with Julius Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius. He’s the unforgiven who did the unforgiveable. He’s the “Judas.”
And generally, we all kind of agree with that assessment.
But not Jesus. Jesus chose Judas to be one of his closest, most trusted followers. Jesus shared life and ministry with him. He knew Judas was going to betray him, and still he washed his feet, shared his meal, saw him as beloved.
This begs the question, which is a more powerful - God’s act of choosing, or a human act of betrayal?
Our shame and hurt might give one answer, but our scripture gives another.
Betrayal and shame brought Peter to despair, drove Judas to hang himself, led Adam and Eve to hide themselves from their Creator, made Cain bury his brother’s body and not come out when God called. Betrayal and shame leads fathers to leave their families, and sisters to hide in drugs, and mothers to layer on bitterness and hardness. Betrayal and shame leads friends to cut off from one another permanently, and all us to avert our eyes from the suffering of those around us. We feel justified to define someone by their mistakes, dismiss them with no chance for redemption. Because, let’s face it, we don’t really believe in redemption. When betrayal happens and regret takes hold, and shame descends, we think there is no turning back.
But that is not how God sees things.
All throughout scripture, God recognizes the human beings beneath their shame and meets them there with forgiveness. When Adam and Eve betray God in the garden and hide in shame, God covers them – God takes away their flimsy layer of leaves and robes them with skins. When Peter betrays Jesus, Jesus not only forgives, not only restores him to the relationship, Jesus calls him back to ministry. I want YOU to feed my sheep. This one who disowned me in my darkest moment - upon THIS rock I will build my church. God’s story of redemption and hope moves through every human act of failure throughout scripture – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the people of Israel, David, the disciples and on and on. God keeps on trusting and partnering with those who know what it is to be utterly lost. Those who have felt the depths of disloyalty of which they are capable become part of God’s redemption story for others.
So the unequivocal answer to our question is: God’s choosing is greater than our betrayal. God’s love is deeper than our failure. God’s purpose for us transcends our faults. God’s claim on us outlasts our rejection of God.
God’s grace is not conditional; it’s the pre-existing condition of our very lives. Our humanity as persons made in God’s image is not up for grabs. That means our identity is not defined by our worst deeds, and our stories are not ultimately told by those who disqualify us, even if those people are we ourselves. Our story is written by the God who made us, who claims us, who loves us.
Christ’s choosing of us is unconditional, and our destiny is decided by Christ’s love for us. When Jesus chose Judas to be his follower, he now belonged to the purposes of God. God’s intention for us is greater than our betrayal.
Even the limits of time and space do not limit God’s grace. If Resurrection changes everything – it changes it for Judas too. Paul tells us that through the resurrection of Christ, the grace of God has been extended beyond death. We are told in John that there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, and in 1 John that “Even if our own hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (1 John 3:20).
Resurrection always begins with death, the death of who we thought we were, the death of relationships and belonging. Where shame and regret have calcified our sin and cut us off from one another and God. It is into those places of impossibility that resurrection will come. Christ came into this life, made our pain his pain, our loss and suffering his own, so our pain could be healed by the unending love and faithfulness of God’s own being. Ray writes, “In the quietness and peace of God’s own divine soul, the troubled and tormented human soul rests and finds its healing.”
Judas thought his story was over, and history has agreed with him.
As a figure he bears not only the weight of his own shame and betrayal, but also the weight of all of ours, by representing for all of Western culture the unforgiveable betrayal we’d like to pin on others and keep at arms length.
But the final word is always life. It is always redemption. It is always love. And nobody is beyond the scope of God’s grace.
Right now, in this weird, fragile trust that we are all in this together, it’s super easy to feel betrayed when people give up, or act selfishly, or violently, or disregard the needs or humanity of others, and put themselves first. We feel so justified in judging and dismissing each other, for things large and small. We’re so quick to condemn – others and ourselves.
Our imaginations for redemption and hope are limited.
But we are all more than our betrayals, more than our selfishness, more than our judgments. We are beloved children of God. Not one of us is without sin; not one of us is beyond redemption.
In this tender time, may we have grace for each other, and grace for ourselves.
And when we can’t, God still has grace for us.
Amen.
(Here are the sermons from Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here, Cleopas, and Peter.)
CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:
God, this life is strange.
I'm weary and afraid; I'm bored and confused.
I want to live into the future,
but don't know what that future is yet.
We miss each other, O Lord,
I miss the ones I love.
My imagination is limited.
I can't picture what you might do,
But these things are true, whether I feel them or not, believe them or not:
No death, no matter how big or small, gets to define who we are and where all this is going.
In Christ Jesus, we are forgiven, connected and made whole.
The earth and everything in it - this whole story from beginning to end - belongs to God.
So I will rest.
I will trust you with my life.
I will entrust to you all those I love.
In sleep, feed and grow my imagination,
so I awaken more to hope tomorrow.
Fill me with love,
so I awaken to our hope in you.
Amen.
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara
Blessings today as we remember the family connections and bonds that hold us, amidst the poignancy and pain of distance.
(I will be taking much of the week off, so will not be sharing daily reflections online).
We are in Easter Season – noticing how resurrection happens to people when they meet the resurrected Jesus. We've been with Mary when Jesus met her in her grief and offered her hope, Thomas, when Jesus met him in his doubt and offered him assurance, Cleopas, when Jesus met him in the familiar and offered him insight and connection, and Peter, when Jesus met him in his shame and regret and offered him forgiveness and love.
We almost chose for our day, Matthias, because in our scripture today he’s the one they pick to replace Jesus among the twelve. But what stuck out to us most in this text was not their funny decision process or the one who comes in afterwards, it was the one they’ve written off, the hole they have to fill, the gap where Judas used to be.
So today’s resurrection story is Judas’.
Acts 1:1-26
I had a seminary professor (Ray Anderson) who once saw scrawled on the wall of a men’s room in a bar, “Judas, come home. All is forgiven.”
It eventually led him to write a book called, The Gospel According to Judas, imagining a post-death encounter between Judas and Jesus, Judas’ own resurrection story.
In the story as we have it, Judas betrays Jesus to the religious authorities for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus knows this is coming, and brings it up at the last supper, and tells Judas to go do what he is going to do. Then, when Jesus is praying in the garden, Judas shows up, and gives the soldiers the sign, kissing Jesus and calling him “rabbi.” And Jesus is arrested.
Afterwards, Judas is so filled with remorse that he tries to give the money back. The leaders refuse to accept it and he throws it on the temple floor and flees. Steeped in shame and regret, Judas hangs himself. The plot of land where he dies is bought with his blood money and used as a pauper’s grave. It comes to be known as, “The Field of Blood.”
Last week we were with Peter in his betrayal of Jesus. We saw the Risen Jesus forgive him and call him back to love. It’s easy to have compassion for Peter – we can relate to having a scared, bad moment, and hurting someone we love. We can imagine what it is to live with such terrible remorse.
But interestingly, we never have that kind of imagination for Judas. We never try to think what he must have been feeling, why he did what he did, what was going on for him afterwards. We never wonder about who he was, or what his life was beyond this terrible act of betraying Jesus.
And, frankly, neither did the disciples or gospel writers. He gets a “heads up” nearly every time he’s mentioned in any of the gospels – Judas - the one who would betray Jesus. He’s called a thief, the devil, and painted as crooked and evil from the beginning.
Betrayal is a particularly egregious sin. It always happens within the context of a relationship of trust and loyalty. If it had been a stranger who pointed out Jesus to the authorities, would the disciples even have remembered their name? But it wasn’t a stranger; it was one of their own. Judas betrayed not just Jesus, but them too.
Love is a risky and vulnerable business. It holds within itself the possibility of betrayal. Betrayal feels like the unforgiveable sin because besides the act, it’s a violation of the relationship itself. It feels impossible to ever trust again.
So we’re justified in cutting off the betrayer. We feel right to define them from then on only by their terrible act, as though it overrides and cancels out every other aspect of their personhood or our relationship to them.
Even though there was more to Judas than his act of betrayal, we never hear of it. All the humans in the story, the future church, and even Judas himself, cancel him. Betrayal becomes the whole of his identity forever. InDante’s Inferno he appears in the deepest chasm of hell with Julius Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius. He’s the unforgiven who did the unforgiveable. He’s the “Judas.”
And generally, we all kind of agree with that assessment.
But not Jesus. Jesus chose Judas to be one of his closest, most trusted followers. Jesus shared life and ministry with him. He knew Judas was going to betray him, and still he washed his feet, shared his meal, saw him as beloved.
This begs the question, which is a more powerful - God’s act of choosing, or a human act of betrayal?
Our shame and hurt might give one answer, but our scripture gives another.
Betrayal and shame brought Peter to despair, drove Judas to hang himself, led Adam and Eve to hide themselves from their Creator, made Cain bury his brother’s body and not come out when God called. Betrayal and shame leads fathers to leave their families, and sisters to hide in drugs, and mothers to layer on bitterness and hardness. Betrayal and shame leads friends to cut off from one another permanently, and all us to avert our eyes from the suffering of those around us. We feel justified to define someone by their mistakes, dismiss them with no chance for redemption. Because, let’s face it, we don’t really believe in redemption. When betrayal happens and regret takes hold, and shame descends, we think there is no turning back.
But that is not how God sees things.
All throughout scripture, God recognizes the human beings beneath their shame and meets them there with forgiveness. When Adam and Eve betray God in the garden and hide in shame, God covers them – God takes away their flimsy layer of leaves and robes them with skins. When Peter betrays Jesus, Jesus not only forgives, not only restores him to the relationship, Jesus calls him back to ministry. I want YOU to feed my sheep. This one who disowned me in my darkest moment - upon THIS rock I will build my church. God’s story of redemption and hope moves through every human act of failure throughout scripture – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the people of Israel, David, the disciples and on and on. God keeps on trusting and partnering with those who know what it is to be utterly lost. Those who have felt the depths of disloyalty of which they are capable become part of God’s redemption story for others.
So the unequivocal answer to our question is: God’s choosing is greater than our betrayal. God’s love is deeper than our failure. God’s purpose for us transcends our faults. God’s claim on us outlasts our rejection of God.
God’s grace is not conditional; it’s the pre-existing condition of our very lives. Our humanity as persons made in God’s image is not up for grabs. That means our identity is not defined by our worst deeds, and our stories are not ultimately told by those who disqualify us, even if those people are we ourselves. Our story is written by the God who made us, who claims us, who loves us.
Christ’s choosing of us is unconditional, and our destiny is decided by Christ’s love for us. When Jesus chose Judas to be his follower, he now belonged to the purposes of God. God’s intention for us is greater than our betrayal.
Even the limits of time and space do not limit God’s grace. If Resurrection changes everything – it changes it for Judas too. Paul tells us that through the resurrection of Christ, the grace of God has been extended beyond death. We are told in John that there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, and in 1 John that “Even if our own hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (1 John 3:20).
Resurrection always begins with death, the death of who we thought we were, the death of relationships and belonging. Where shame and regret have calcified our sin and cut us off from one another and God. It is into those places of impossibility that resurrection will come. Christ came into this life, made our pain his pain, our loss and suffering his own, so our pain could be healed by the unending love and faithfulness of God’s own being. Ray writes, “In the quietness and peace of God’s own divine soul, the troubled and tormented human soul rests and finds its healing.”
Judas thought his story was over, and history has agreed with him.
As a figure he bears not only the weight of his own shame and betrayal, but also the weight of all of ours, by representing for all of Western culture the unforgiveable betrayal we’d like to pin on others and keep at arms length.
But the final word is always life. It is always redemption. It is always love. And nobody is beyond the scope of God’s grace.
Right now, in this weird, fragile trust that we are all in this together, it’s super easy to feel betrayed when people give up, or act selfishly, or violently, or disregard the needs or humanity of others, and put themselves first. We feel so justified in judging and dismissing each other, for things large and small. We’re so quick to condemn – others and ourselves.
Our imaginations for redemption and hope are limited.
But we are all more than our betrayals, more than our selfishness, more than our judgments. We are beloved children of God. Not one of us is without sin; not one of us is beyond redemption.
In this tender time, may we have grace for each other, and grace for ourselves.
And when we can’t, God still has grace for us.
Amen.
(Here are the sermons from Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here, Cleopas, and Peter.)
CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:
God, this life is strange.
I'm weary and afraid; I'm bored and confused.
I want to live into the future,
but don't know what that future is yet.
We miss each other, O Lord,
I miss the ones I love.
My imagination is limited.
I can't picture what you might do,
But these things are true, whether I feel them or not, believe them or not:
No death, no matter how big or small, gets to define who we are and where all this is going.
In Christ Jesus, we are forgiven, connected and made whole.
The earth and everything in it - this whole story from beginning to end - belongs to God.
So I will rest.
I will trust you with my life.
I will entrust to you all those I love.
In sleep, feed and grow my imagination,
so I awaken more to hope tomorrow.
Fill me with love,
so I awaken to our hope in you.
Amen.
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