Two Great Betrayals of God; Two Very Different Outcomes.

The consequences of this union of human and divine in Jesus are too great for us to fully understand, yet God does give us insights into this mystery. In His incarnation, Jesus united His divine nature with our human nature, which was made in the divine image. It was a union destined before the creation of Man. It was a marriage made in Heaven.

We know that through His Incarnation Jesus rescued and redeemed every instant of human life, making it a means of holiness and union with Him. He did this by living every possible moment of human existence to the full. Even when He existed as a human person consisting of two united cells, Jesus was experiencing our humanity and thus redeeming it and making it holy. Of course, He also experienced death because that is also a reality of human life. In His death, Jesus experienced all of the agony possible to mankind. There is nothing that can happen to us that has not already been made holy by the Incarnation.

From this perspective Deacon Michael considered the betrayal of Judas, and the reality of Jesus making everything in human life an opportunity for holiness. Remember that, unlike Adam and Eve who introduced evil, God who is all-good can only bring good things into the world.

It is an unexpected analysis.

by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

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In the Gospel we have something else. We have Jesus making a very strong proclamation that He is "I Am". He is God.

But we have something else, too. He is talking about Judas Iscariot.

One thing that always puzzles me: why Judas Iscariot? Why did one of the apostles have to betray him?

It would have been comparatively simple if the Sanhedrin said, "Okay, Robert, we'll pay you. We want you to follow Jesus, get in His group, and when you can find a place where He is going to be, we'll come in and arrest Him. Forget about thirty pieces [of silver]. We'll put you in the payroll for the next month and a half or so." Why didn't they do it that way?

Why was it one of the disciples? Why wasn't it the man who had the house where Jesus went to? Why weren't they following Him? Why was it Judas Iscariot, the apostle?

I don't know the answer to that. But I think that it is something that I have talked about before, and will probably talk about many times again.

That is the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ is the reversal, the reversal of the Original Sin in the Garden of Eden. We have a situation where Jesus is betrayed by one of the people closest to Him.

What happened in the Garden of Eden? Think about that. Adam and Eve are sitting there. God made them. God's walking around in the Garden of Eden. They talk about this. They hear Him walking around the Garden of Eden. He obviously thinks a whole lot of Adam and Eve. They are the only people. They are His creation. He put them where God lives.

Yet they betrayed Him. They betrayed Him...

I'll stop pointing at you two…

The Original Sin: that He put His trust in them and they violated what He told them to do.

And what is the consequence? Read Genesis. The consequence of the Original Sin is severe, including death. Death is a consequence of Original Sin. Pain and suffering, all of this.

So we have Judas Iscariot. We have Jesus. Son of God, wholly human, wholly divine. He surrounds Himself with the chosen twelve, the apostles. And one of them, the very closest of the group, betrays Him.

And what flows from that? What flows from the betrayal of God by Judas Iscariot? Because he had been with Jesus. He had seen all the miracles. He had heard all the teaching. He was one of the twelve. He went out and he preached. He was the betrayer.

Just as Adam and Eve betrayed God, Judas betrayed Jesus. Adam and Eve…

I'm sorry John, I don't meant to keep pointing at you, but you're just in the wrong place...

they betrayed God and consequences flowed from that betrayal.

Judas betrayed God, betrayed Jesus, and what are the consequences that flowed from that? The promise of eternal life. Salvation. A new world. A new covenant. All that is good flow from that.

And so we see the necessity, or, if you look at the reversal of Genesis, and the Fall, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, it was essential that Jesus be betrayed by one who was closest to Him. Just as Adam and Eve betrayed God in the Garden of Eden, Judas Iscariot was close to Jesus and betrayed Him.

"The one who ate My food has raised his heel against Me." Eating food was a very important thing. In that point in time it established a relationship of trust and of love. And Judas betrayed Him.

So what we see is a reversal. Adam and Eve bring death and suffering and pain into the world by their betrayal. Judas, by his betrayal, brings salvation, brings the Resurrection, brings the promise of eternal life, brings the salvation and the love that comes to the world through Jesus Christ. That's the reversal.

And so we see a culmination, a fulfillment of all of Jewish history in Jesus Christ. Starting from the very beginning at creation. In the first reading today we basically started it at Abraham. The salvation of history. But the salvation history of the world comes to a culmination in Jesus Christ. And with His betrayal by Judas, His death and resurrection there is a new world.

All of these things that we hear: a new covenant, a new world, the promise of eternal life are something new and different. There is a culmination of what God wants for us through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

And in that sense, to understand the true reversal that occurs, the true change, the clear revolutionary death of Jesus in a logical sense, in a logical structure, and that's all I'm talking about, the reversal, it’s a logical structure, it was necessary for Jesus to be betrayed by one of the closest people to Him just as the people closest to God betrayed Him by committing the Original Sin.

The penultimate sin is Judas Iscariot and from that flowed the death of Jesus Christ.

And when you read the book of Revelation which is also by John, you will see that same motif carrying forward. And all of these things coming from Jesus Christ that are in the culmination of the book of Revelation, with Heaven and everything, flow, yes, from the Death and Resurrection of Christ, but they also flow from the betrayal of Christ by Judas Iscariot.

It's not an excuse for Judas Iscariot, but it shows his place, and our place in our individual lives, of the betrayal, and what the consequences are. And what the consequences are to us through Our Lord Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ can take that very betrayal itself and the process of sin and forgive it through Confession, and give us the means to sin no more, and give us the means, His Body and Blood, to make it through our lives so that we can spend all eternity with Him, where, to go back the the image of Heaven and Genesis, the Garden of Eden.

May 16, 2019 2