Sermon for Tuesday in Holy Week
“Judas, betrayest thou the son of man with a kiss?”
Jesus’ question to Judas underscores the various forms of betrayal that are on display in Holy Week. In The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark, it is the betrayal of justice and human dignity that is most apparent.
The chief priests, in consultation “with the elders and scribes and the whole council”, have Jesus bound and delivered to Pilate – the Roman authority. In a way, it is a betrayal of Jewish law and Jewish identity, a betrayal of, what we might call, religious, or ecclesiastical, justice. For it is about getting the Roman authorities to do what the religious authorities were not prepared to do themselves. In short, it is underhanded and gives rise to an even more explicit form of the betrayal of, what we might call, civil justice.
Jesus is hauled before Pontius Pilate and is accused by the chief priests of many things to which charges he answers nothing. Then there follows a complete miscarriage of justice in the releasing of the murderer, Barabbas, while condemning Jesus to be crucified. Pilate has the ultimate earthly authority here and yet he defers to the crowd about releasing the one and condemning the other, the innocent other. He knows, Mark suggests, “that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.” And yet he goes along with this charade of justice and gives in to the popular will of the people, the will of the mob incited by the envy of the chief priests. As Mark puts it ever so succinctly and yet so tellingly, “Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.” He is the classic example of a leader who follows the people. Justice is betrayed and perverted. He is “willing to content the people” but at the expense of law and justice and conscience. It is a betrayal of justice and truth.
