Two! Two! Two posts in one!

Day, that is.
So this is the sermon that I preached tonight, as promised. And while I'm at it, a thought.
The sermon turned out well, in that I liked the idea, and I felt like it went well (as opposed to me standing up there and talking ever faster to try to cover the fact that I was pretty sure I was spewing utter swill.) And the congregation liked it---a lot, as it turns out. But they also were kind of flabbergasted on my subject. The rector commented that he had never heard, in 30 some years of ministry, a positive sermon on Judas. So I was now kind of famous.
Really? I mean, as I think about it, he's right. I've never heard an out-and-out sermon on Judas either---mainly it's a throwaway reference to 'he's not in hell because no one is, so take heart' type thing. But it still surprised me. Because, we're Episcopalians (and Christians, besides, but that label isn't worth so much these days). Aren't we supposed to go to great (and occasionally absurdist) lengths to rehabilitate things everyone else has given up on? Wouldn't Judas be at the top of that list? How has no one gotten around to this yet?
Anyway, here's the sermon. Tell me what you think, please, and if you, too, were shocked by my lack of piety. Because I think I'm going to make this my new mission: one sermon on Judas per year!

Text(for reference. If you're a die-hard, you can look it up.): John 13:21-25

If Judas had a feast day, it would be today. Though, to be more precise, it’s not much of a feast--There’s too much darkness and silence for it to be a feast-- It’s more a day of remembrance for him, for what he did. For what happened to him and around him. Because he’s too important, has too much of an impact for this story to be told without him.
And truth be told, I’ve always gotten along well with Judas, in some way. Maybe even more consistently than I’ve gotten along with Jesus or any of the rest of his intrepid followers. (Judas, after all, never gets co-opted in the name of war, never gets blamed for tsunamis or buildings collapsing, and never tells me that ‘its all for the best’, and never wanders around confusedly, like Peter, James or John.) When I was 6 or 7, my parents gave me a bootleg taped copy of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, and I was utterly entranced. I literally wore it out—it was the first musical I ever fell in love with—and I rented the really retro 70’s movie from the video store every week, til I saved enough money for my own copy. I would spend hours with my brother, climbing around on our bunk beds, acting out the story. But as the oldest, I would pull rank---and make him be Jesus. And I would perch up on the top bunk and sing ‘Heaven on Their Minds’ for hours---All the anger, the fear and the frustration in that song was fascinating, aiming it at God was doubly so. Judas was so human.
And he is: there is a lot about Judas that is terrifying. After all, he sells out his leader, his master, the one person he gave up his life for, and that lurking betrayal is disturbing. But most terrifying of all, on some level, is that he’s human. Maybe more than the rest of the disciples in some way, Judas is a part of us.
Judas is that little voice who protests, who wants an explanation for the suffering and the pain, who refuses to be mollified by being told to wait. Judas wants it to get better now. All through the gospels, the things we’ve heard from Judas, he’s the one who argues back. He’s the one who protested when Mary spent all her money on perfume for Jesus’s feet. And couldn’t the money have been better spent on the poor? He argues? Judas is a zealot, a radical. Scholars look at his last name—Judas Iscariot—and think that this indicates he was a member of the Sacarii, a secret militia-type group that assassinated Roman military leaders of the occupation of Palestine. His life, prior to following Jesus was about freedom for Israel, with no master but God. Jesus is a shift from that, and probably a frustrating one, when all you can see around you is occupation and oppression, who wants to wait for a final, distant, transcendent Kingdom? The Kingdom needs to happen now. All the suffering, the poverty, the oppression needs to stop now.
Judas is the one who voices that. Speed it up, Jesus. People are dying. There are poor people, sick people, crippled people all around you, what are you waiting for? He’s that frustrated voice in all of us which raises our fists to the heavens in exasperation.
And through it all, Judas was right, in a way. Technically, yes. That perfume could have bought a lot of people a lot of food that day. Technically yes. Jesus as the Son of God could have kicked the Romans out of Palestine without breaking a sweat. He could have created an earthly utopia of peace, love and joy and installed himself as king, I suppose. He could have avoided all the martyrdoms of the disciples, the persecution of the early church, the excesses of the Crusades, all of the pain, all of the suffering. Technically, Judas is right. He was, after all, called to be a disciple in the first place. There’s something there that we need to hear.
But the thing about being a radical is that you get tunnel vision. Technically Judas is right, but that’s not quite the point. The point is larger than that. What Jesus does on the earth is larger than restoring the political Kingdom to political freedom. It’s larger than physical healings, and social commentary, though those are a vital part of it. Those things point the way to the larger framework of Jesus’s work, but Judas is consumed with everything else and doesn’t see it. Maybe the others do, or at least, they have more patience with trying to figure it out than Judas does.
And it’s the combination of these divergent voices that form us: the radical voice that protests, refuses to calm down, that stands in the desert hills and wails in frustration. That draws our attention to human suffering again and again. And the voice that urges us to wait, that reminds us that God isn’t done with the world yet, that more is going on than we know, and that looks for the glimpses of a suffering Savior in all the creation around us. That combination that works in the rag-tag band of disciples also works in us, and the push-pull keeps us walking forward on our journey, because running to far in one direction leads to disaster.
That’s what we remember tonight. Judas leaves. He leaves the balance of the other disciples who at least checked his impatience a little, and departs, into his own frustration and anger and terror that nothing would ever get better. So he isn’t there for the things that come after, for the trial, the death, and the resurrection. He’s not there for the Great Commandment, the beginning of the movement, or the coming of the Holy Spirit. He loses the community that kept him sane, and --Just as important-- they lose him. There’s no one sitting in the corner, reminding everyone about the poor, or the Romans anymore. His leaving is a tragedy, for him, and for those of us who stay, because ultimately, we need both of those little voices. John’s gospel describes it perfectly: he immediately went out. And it was night—for all of us. Amen