Monday, March 11, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Watching with Jesus
Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe. Then the royal official said to Jesus, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” And Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
A friend told me she sought to surround herself with others: the 3, the 12, the 70 and the 120. As Jesus did, so she strove to also do.
The 12. A jury of my peers. A dozen friends determined to drag me back to Jesus when I try to get away. The ones arranged around the table with Jesus in the Upper Room, and then again as they waited for the Holy Spirit to appear, as Jesus instructed them to do.
O Lord, you drew me clear and did not let my enemies rejoice over me. You brought me up from the netherworld and preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
Madeleine L’Engle imagined them waiting for Judas:
There is an old legend that after his death Judas found himself at the bottom of a deep and slimy pit. For thousands of years he wept his repentance, and when the tears were finally spent he looked up and saw a tiny glimmer of light.
After he had contemplated it for another thousand years or so, he began to try to climb up towards it. The walls of the pit were dank and slimy, and he kept slipping back down. Finally, after great effort, he neared the top, and then he slipped and fell all the way back down. It took him many years to recover, all the time weeping bitter tears of grief and repentance, and then he started to climb up again.
After many more falls and efforts and failures he reached the top and dragged himself into an upper room.
Twelve people were seated around a table.
What happens next? Doesn’t each disciple call out Judas from his own strongholds, from his own fiery self-righteousness or quiet compassion or thoughts of “there but for the grace of God, go I?” Will Jesus appear at the just the right moment and love Judas, not into submission or guilt, but into another moment of decision?
That’s what happened in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, and Jesus tore his shirt into a towel, took water and began to wash feet. Judas shrank into a corner, unwilling to be touched. Jesus approached him, as everyone else watched. Jesus took his shirt, soaked it, squeezed it out, and reached toward Judas’ feet. The stage goes black.
We don’t know what happens next. What would happen to me if I were in that corner? And Jesus won’t let me get away?
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth. The things of the past will not be remembered or come to mind. No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the sound of crying. No longer shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime.
(Isaiah 65, Psalm 30, Amos 5, John 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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