The Judas in all of Us

Throughout history Judas of Iscariot has been painted as the epitome of evil (how many times has he been mentioned in the same breath with notorious villains such as Adolf Hitler?)  It is easy to judge Judas (and many of the other "knuckleheads" of the bible) but as is often the case, a closer look reveals the fact that we are not much better than Judas.  A closer inspection of both Judas' and our lives might reveal that we all have  a little Judas in us.

Judas was a zealot, which means that Judas had expectations for what Jesus was going to be and do. I think we all can relate with that. Judas and most of Jesus followers believed that Jesus' being the messiah meant that he was going to liberate the people from Roman rule. One popular thought is that Judas was beginning to see that Jesus was taking a different path. It is said that Judas might have betrayed Jesus for the purpose of kick-starting the "revolution." Judas thought he could push Jesus into becoming the fighting liberator that Judas and so many others expected him to be.

If we follow this theory, we begin to see that we may, in fact, no better than Judas. Every time we try to make Jesus fit into our ideas of what he should be, we are betraying Him, just as Judas did. Every time we take matters into our own hands when God is not meeting our expectations we are "being Judas." So on this Maundy Thursday let us not only remember Jesus new command "to love one another," but let us also commit to "let God out of the box" so that he may move through our world as he wishes, regardless of our plans and expectations.