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About the author: Stan Johnson pastors as the Parish Associate at Zionsville Presbyterian Church. He has been trained as a spiritual director and continues to have a heart for pastors who serve in impoverished setting with few or no resources. He has had a lifelong appreciation for the Scriptures, combined with a fifty-year appreciation for and use of New Testament Greek. He has been shaped by the writings of C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Calvin, Karl Barth (as well as by Jane Austin, Chaim Potok, and Shusaku Endo.) He has published The Great Opening: A Working Resource to Mark’s Gospel (Amazon, translated into Romanian and Lango); The Sent One: A Working Resource to John’s Gospel (Amazon, translated into Romanian). He hopes to finish and publish: The Legends of Anapua: Brine Inlet; Masada Ridge; Morah Falls; and The Narrows, as well as publish further working resources.

With his wife, Mary, his great friend and champion, and with their three grown children and spouses, they delight in their seven grandchildren.

As I think of Holy Week, as I ponder afresh the great highs and lows of Jesus’ last week of public ministry (e.g. his “triumphal” entry, his anointing by Mary, his wrangling with the religious leaders, and his foretelling the Temple’s destruction), I find myself drawn to a little phrase tucked away amid these moments of dramatic trauma. Although all four Gospel writers use the phrase similarly, Mark employed it in this way:
“And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went away to the High Priests …” (Mark 14:10); and, “Judas, one of the twelve, approached, and with him a crowd with swords …” (14:43).

Of course it is that little phrase, “one of the twelve,” that intrigues me. 

On the one hand, I am initially fascinated by this phrase; but on the other hand and finally, I am sobered. My fascination and appreciation are that the Early Church and the Gospel writers recognized and affirmed that Judas had been and remained “one of the twelve” (cf. Acts 1:17). Even though he was “the betrayer,” the other eleven, when Jesus announced that one of them would be betray him, asked (and I think with a goodly measure of sincerity): “Is it I?” Each of them recognized betrayal as a possibility—conceivably an action each might perpetrate. Moreover, they were soon to hear Jesus’ pronouncement: “All of you will be offended [by me] … [and] will be scattered” (14:27). And in fact, as Mark narrated the Gethsemane, garden scene, “And leaving him, all fled” (14:50), he noted they did scatter; they did desert him, leaving him alone. Theirs might not have been Judas’ betrayal, but a form of betrayal it nonetheless was.

I am grateful that those first believers did not seek to distance themselves from Judas, one of the twelve. I am grateful that they didn’t seek to write definitively regarding Judas and his end; rather they simply stated that he “turned aside to go to his own place” (Acts 1:25). That is, I believe they fully understood themselves in terms of Paul’s indictment: “No one is righteous, not one … all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:9ff.). Or stated otherwise, they understood that they too had denied their Lord through acts both great and small—and thus their continual need of forgiveness and repentance.

If I am not “one of the twelve,” nonetheless Holy Week reminds me that I have spoken and acted, planned and thought as did they; for I too ask, “Is it I?" knowing full well that the answer is: “Yes.”

Prayer:

In the living of this week, Gracious Lord, may I see myself in the words and actions of the first twelve disciples—including Judas. But rather than regretting what I have said and done, grant that, as I seek to confess and repent, I might live by your grace, that grace seen and experienced in your Cross and your Empty Tomb. In your Name I humbly ask.
Amen

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