Betrayal

What comes to your mind when you think of Judas? Traitor - right? He betrayed Jesus for 30 silver coins. What else do you know about him? He was not mentally ill, that we know of, nor did he secretly bear a grudge and insatiable desire for insurrection.

He was a friend of Jesus. A friend. An intimate. A confidante. He was the guy who held the money for Jesus' ministry team. He was at the wedding in Cana and saw Jesus turn water into wine; he say the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. He watched the blind healed and Lazarus raised from the dead. He let Jesus wash his feet. He was a good guy. And no one would have guessed that this is the guy who would betray Jesus.

Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss but it was not long before everyone else tucked tail and ran too. Jesus had far more to fear from his team than he did from outsiders. Outsiders were an expected threat.

Judas was the guy who most wanted Jesus to lead with a sword. When it became clear that Jesus was not going to lead through traditional means - intimidation and force - surely Judas himself felt as if Jesus had betrayed him!

And how does Jesus respond? He feeds Judas; he washes his feet; Judas is never excluded from the circle. Jesus knew who the betrayer was but he also was clear on who He was - the guy who loses to win. He is the guy who feeds the hungry and gives water to the thirsty. Jesus loved Judas even when Judas could not love him back. Even our betrayal is not enough to crush the love of God.

Practicing Unconditional Love

You must love in order to be loved. You must be inclusive in order to feel yourself among the include. You must give in order to receive.

Cheryl Strayed

I am so surprised by the universal feeling of being odd, uncool, set apart. I scroll through Facebook and see all these perfect families having their amazing adventures and I think - “Wow, they must be a really put together family.” Maybe there are some of those out there.

When I get to know families, even the ones with the perfect family photos and the amazing destination adventures, I have not yet met a perfectly put together family. Hope springs eternal I guess, but I wonder, especially during this time of chaos and upheaval and crisis, if there might be another perspective to consider.

If Jesus and his community had the internet, there was a young man who surely would have been an instagram influencer. In Mark 10, this influencer shows up and asks Jesus, quite dramatically on fallen knee, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus takes some offense to being called “good” by this young man and reminds him of the ten commandments. Which, according to this young ruler, he has kept since he was a boy. Maybe I’m reading something into the text that isn’t here but I hesitantly observe that Jesus has easily welcomed women and children, the demon possessed, and a woman my mother would refer to as a hussy. But this young man? What happens to him? This guy with his sense of righteousness and wealth? What does Jesus do with him.

He loves him. Jesus also suggests he sell all his possessions and give them to the poor! Head bent in sadness, the young man walks away. In fairness, we do not know what the young ruler chose to do. Maybe he eventually did just as Jesus asked. We do not know.

But what we do know is that Jesus was an inclusive kind of guy. He loved the rich and poor, the slaves and free, the Greeks and Jews, the naughty and the nice.

What if we decided to follow that example and love one another all willy nilly? We could stop fretting over who agreed with us or who loved us back and we could just love people. We could love them whether or not they pose on Facebook or shun Facebook. We could love our friends and our enemies. There might need to be some follow up conversations as to how that will look, but wow - I imagine they would be far more interesting then some of the conversations we are engaging in as of late!

Ideals versus realities

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It may be time to “let go and let God.”

Relationships are conditional.  Love can be unconditional – especially if we are standing close to God and receiving his love as a gift that we can pass along to others.  But relationships are conditional. 

People teach us that their best still puts us at risk at times and we have to distance ourselves for the sake of our own recovery journey.  Perhaps we come face-to-face with the cold, hard truth that our best has not been enough to create a healthy relationship with others.  Maybe our own behaviors cost us relationships too.

As we prepare for the new year, can we acknowledge this?  Maybe get some support to help us unearth what is ours to admit, acknowledge and repair?  This is always a good place to start and finish a daily examen.

May we find the support we need to continue our journey!  And may we be the support others need as they travel their respective roads to recovery too.