In memoriam: A Meditation
Sometimes when I come ‘cross an especially bitter passage of scripture, I want to put it under oath and treat it like a hostile witness in a courtroom: “You don’t really belong in the bible, do you? Defend yourself! What good have you done?” I am not the only one who has felt this way, particularly about Mark 14:21 where Jesus announces that one of the disciples will betray him and it would’ve been better if that one had not been born. Perhaps it would be possible to read these words objectively if we were not in the midst of a harrowing mental health crisis and a deadly wave of antisemitism. But we are. And the words Mark puts in Jesus’ mouth are potentially lethal today in a way they may not have been at certain points in the past. I see this as a text that should not be preached. Unless. Unless its purpose is to serve as a mirror.
Over centuries, Christians have fashioned knives out of this text and other Judas stories, so much so that these passages cannot be read apart from the horror of pogroms, Kristallnacht, the Holocaust, and present-day attacks on Jews. Sadly, there is a religion calling itself Christianity that finds Jesus’ life and teachings inadequate without a scapegoat or pariah who absorbs the hatred of “Christian” avengers. These avengers willfully refuse to see the complexity of Judas’ story—the fact that all four gospel writers struggle with the impossible task of weighing his culpability. His actions are in some sense necessary if not providential. Too often, when Christians don’t know how to hold the jagged edges of scripture, we opt for distorted interpretations. Blowing Judas into a larger-than-life figure who represents contemporary Jews is one tragic example of this reflex.
During a recent trip to the Netherlands, I joined the stream of tourists at the homes of Anne Frank and Corrie ten Boom, walking up the tight, ladder-like staircases and peering into the airshafts and nooks where Jews crammed themselves to hide from Nazis. Seeing these hiding places impressed on me the unique vileness of antisemitism. And I couldn’t help thinking about the 9x7x3-foot crawl space where Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman, hid for seven years from a Christian doctor whose family owned her. And of Henry Box Brown stuffing himself into a crate and shipping himself from Richmond to Philadelphia. And of the many more subtle ways Black women learn to hide talent and ambition to avoid becoming a magnet for hatred. The thing about pariahs is that usually there comes a point where the thirst for one kind of blood increases and any pariah will do—Jewish, Black, queer, disabled…
Our sacred texts have effects beyond us. We can’t bask in the solace the Passion narrative brings without thinking about the misuse of the story and the effect of that misuse on other lives. Any practice of Christianity that is absorbed with its own catharsis, self-congratulation, or even self-flagellation without being attentive to its external impact is dangerous.
When Jesus says, “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born” (Mark 14:21), his words should be read with the knowledge that all the disciples scattered and failed him in some way (Mark 14:50). Yes, Judas’ actions set off a dreadful sequence of events, but the betrayal does not stand alone; it stands alongside the actions of Romans who taunted, stripped, and tortured Jesus though the names of those individuals are cloaked in anonymity. Similarly, Jesus’ words in Mark 14:21 should be read alongside “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34) and “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Ultimately, like Phyllis Trible’s “texts of terror,” Mark 14:21 ought to be read in memoriam, remembering the horror of the past, the evil done today in the name of Christianity, and the many lives lost by Jews and other people who internalized the idea that they shouldn’t have been born due to the weaponization of scripture. So, if compelled to find something wholesome in the text, I’d stress its potential to spur self-examination, which thankfully, is a central aim of Lent.
Most Black women and girls over the age of five know something about betrayal. We’ve been betrayed by friends, relatives, lovers, classmates, and by policies, institutions, governments, and churches. And we know that in the moment of betrayal one has the capacity to see double: the person you love and the person who hurt you, the future you had and the future disrupted, the person you were before and the person you are now. I just believe Jesus had this same capacity, that despite how livid and crushed he was, he was still capable of seeing Judas’ humanity.
Jesus looked into Judas’ face and saw another Jewish brother like himself living under the weight of a hostile empire that crucified Jews, a man who shared his own brother’s name, a man with whom he’d eaten, prayed, and discussed Torah. I think he saw a familiar face that was suddenly unfamiliar, the way we look at close friends or family members whose actions shock and anger us. But I still believe Jesus looked into Judas’ face and wanted him to live. Not die by suicide or a nasty fall or in any other violent way. And surely Jesus didn’t want Judas to continue in infamy as a figure whose story warrants violence against other Jews. Jesus wanted Judas to live and find, like so many of us, that there is life after failure and disappointment. We don’t have to be defined by the worst episodes of our lives. Caring pastors and counselors can help us along the path of recovery.
I interpret Jesus’ words to Judas as words of grief that foreshadowed the anguish that was to come—a psychic anguish similar to what our ancestors sang about in the spiritual, “Lord, How Come Me Here” with its haunting refrain, “I wish I never was born.” The spiritual was sung as testimony, as prayer, and as a means of summoning the strength to survive. And it was sung in memoriam for those who died by the hands of people who refused to look in the mirror of scripture.
How do we hold the sharp edges of scripture? How do we heal the harm done in Jesus’ name?
______________
[1] Anna Carter Florence, “Put Away Your Sword!” in What’s the Matter with Preaching Today?, ed. Mike Graves (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 93–97.
[2] Three insightful texts on this relationship are A.M.H. Saari’s The Many Deaths of Judas Iscariot: A Meditation on Suicide, Hyam Maccoby’s Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil, and Anthony Cane’s The Place of Judas Iscariot in Christology.
[3] All scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.
[4] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 2–3.
Donyelle McCray serves as Associate Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School. A teacher, writer, and Episcopal layperson, her scholarship focuses on ways African American women and lay people use the sermon to play, remember, invent, and disrupt. Her current research projects include a volume on sermon genre and an examination of the preaching and spirituality of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Before becoming a homiletics professor, Donyelle served as an attorney focusing on wills, trusts, and estates. This work raised existential questions that led her to seminary and then into ministry as a hospice chaplain. Human finitude, compassion, and interdependence remain central theological concerns in her scholarship.