03/16 (Wed Lent #2) – John 18:1-11 – Return from Betrayal

Grace and peace in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Imagine for a moment someone you trust deeply has betrayed you. Someone you considered a friend has turned on you. The details of the betrayal aren’t really all that important. Perhaps you told this person something in confidence, and it was shared with others. Maybe this person pretended to be a supporter, and it turned out they were manipulating you for personal reasons or gain.

I suspect many of you could recall an event that actually occurred to you. I’m guessing the prompt of my speculation brought to mind an actual betrayal. Something that hurt you deeply at the time, and perhaps still stings.

Our message today revolves around betrayal. We are working through a series this Lent based on God’s call to return to Him. We are looking at different events that occurred during Jesus’ Passion, or Jesus’ suffering, and thinking about the sins committed. My hope is: we will see the ways our own sins pull us away from God, and we will hear His call to return to Him because He offers reconciliation and forgiveness to those who repent.

In our Gospel, the betrayer is Judas from the town of Iscariot {iss-CARE-ee-ot}. He makes a deal with the chief priests and scribes to turn Jesus over to them, knowing full well their intention is to have Him killed. Judas’ actions are hard to comprehend. To walk with Jesus. To be cared for and care about and then to betray. His actions are dark, painful and self-serving. His conniving and scheming are finally clear to see. There is no difficulty in recognizing the sin in his actions. There is no difficulty is seeing the reason for the loathing he earned in the eyes of the other disciples.¹ It can be harder for us to see the sin in us when we betray Jesus through our actions. We’ll get back to that in a moment, but I want to set the tone by first looking at another betrayal, an older betrayal. That of King David by his own son Absalom and his trusted adviser Ahithophel {ah-HITH-oh-fell}.

This is an account of betrayal, but it is also an image of how one sin can give birth to many others, and how the consequences of sin ripple out, impacting many more than we might at first expect. It starts with the sordid affair between David and Bathsheba. You know how that went. He sees her bathing on the rooftop, initiates an inappropriate affair; she becomes pregnant; he tries to cover up the sinful liaison. His plan goes awry, so he ups the ante and makes arrangements to ensure her husband, Uriah {you-RYE-ah}, will be killed in battle. Later, David is called out for his sin. He repents, the baby dies, and a huge rift is created within David’s own family.

One of the major impacts of David and Bathsheba’s sin is that rift in the family. Absalom, one of David’s sons, rebels and undertakes a campaign to unseat his father and take over the throne. One of the people Absalom enlists in his plot is Ahithophel, a trusted adviser to David, who also happened to be… Bathsheba’s grandfather. What could possibly go wrong?!

As the activities unfold, Ahithophel outlines a plot to Absalom by which he would raise up an army of twelve thousand men to hunt down and kill David. Absalom likes the plan. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out the way it was planned, which is a little ironic because Ahithophel’s plan probably would have been successful. David, however, had planted a spy, Hushai {HOO-sh-eye}, who had a different plan involving a lot more men, and Absalom chose to go with that. Hushai had tipped David off to exactly what was coming, so it didn’t work out very well: Absalom died. Ahithophel died, David retained the throne.

That betrayal haunted David. It even came out in one of his psalms. In Psalm 41 David says:

Even my close friend
in whom I trusted,
who ate bread with me,
has lifted his heel against me.²

David is saddened over the fact a trusted friend has cruelly betrayed him, has turned against him and taken steps to try to take him out, to place someone else in his, God called and ordained,³ position. Betrayal is painful.

We understand the pain betrayal causes because we have all been subject to it at some point. It’s why I asked you earlier to imagine being betrayed by someone you took as a friend. Betrayal is always painful to us.

Which is why we don’t always consider the way our actions betray our Lord and our Savior. Ahithophel betrayed David to put someone else on the throne, and you’ve done exactly the same thing. You’ve betrayed Jesus to put yourself on the throne. You’ve denied His lordship before others. You’ve ignored God’s Commandments and dismissed God’s Word. You’ve held the precious Sacraments He has gifted to us in contempt by your word and deed. You have looked for ways, sinful ways, to get what you want. You’ve treated others thoughtlessly and elevated yourself over them, directly contradicting the Bibles statues to encouragement and to “count others more significant than yourselves.⁴”

What is the result of our betrayal? The Gospel’s message is dulled and deadened. The Good News is blocked. People don’t hear, and people don’t see the amazing love of Christ, because we have pushed Jesus back into a corner, and denied His importance in our own lives. Jesus said of such people: ‘They would be better off dead.⁵’ So serious is our sin.

God urges us to be bold in our proclamation of the Gospel. Jesus Himself said we were to “go and make disciples of all nations,⁶” and yet your actions result in exactly the opposite. These actions cause people to lose faith. Instead of receiving Jesus’ blessing we get this grave warning:

Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea…⁷

Jesus says such people would be better of dead. These betrayers stop discipling and stop the sharing of the Good News. They seeks to make Jesus secondary to their own ambitions and desires to sinfully elevate themselves and their own secret agenda. An agenda often couched in so-called good religious intentions.

This is not easy to hear for some. It’s like the Reading from Acts we heard, when Peter spoke in Solomon’s Portico (or Porch), and called the people to repent.

“You denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.⁸”

Peter’s words end, however, with encouragement:

Repent, and return, that your sins may be forgiven.⁹

It repeats the invitation we heard on Ash Wednesday from the prophet Joel:

Return to the Lord your God,
for He is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love;
and He relents over disaster.¹⁰

What is striking is: Jesus knew all of this in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew about Judas’ betrayal. He also knew about yours. He knew you would fail. He knew you would betray Him. He knew He alone had the solution.

Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given Me?¹¹

God says, ‘Return to Me! I want you to be true to Me. Even when you fail, I have already stepped in to provide a blessing.’ He offers forgiveness. He offers peace. He offers the strength to turn back and receive His grace. It all comes from the Table of the Lord which He sets before us, and which He gave us on the night in which He was betrayed.

When we return to the Lord we receive all He has promised. We are washed in the Blood of the Lamb,and our sins are taken away.¹² We are strengthened by His Holy Communion and in His Holy Word, which offers us comfort and gives us words to speak and accounts to tell to others so they also may return to the Lord. In Him all is made right. In Him all is made clean. In Him all is reconciled.

May you be encouraged to share the Gospel, to turn from your betrayal of our Lord, and to return to the Lord. May you be blessed and strengthened in all that you do, that it may bring Him glory.

Amen.

=======

NOTES