Judas' Mother, April 01, 2012

Rev. Kathryn Ransdell

"Judas' mother"

April 1, 2012

Palm Sunday

Holy Week 2012.

Because the marketplace has not really taken-up the cause of Easter, we don't feel commercially fatigued the week before the big event.  We are not tired of carols that have been playing for more than a month.  We haven't carved out a corner of our living room and filled it with plastic decorations, and if no allergies, a cut-down tree.  We don't have a shopping list that demands one more trip to the mall and five more gifts to wrap.

Because the marketplace has not really taken-up the cause of Easter, it is easy for it to be missed by society, and sometimes, by Christians themselves. 

It's the week before Easter, and because the marketplace has not taken-up the cause of Easter, we can fully sink in to this experience...and that is what this is.  Year after year, the church has lived again this week, from entry into Jerusalem, to Good Friday, to Easter Sunday morning.  And for this small portion of time that is called our life, we are invited each year to experience this week. 

Is there a Holy Week that is particularly memorable for you?  Perhaps an Easter that holds significance? 

I had a Holy Week stare me in the face the year that I moved here to Vancouver...but it was 2 months before I even had an inkling that I would  move to another country.  I had the chance to attend a presentation featuring Sister Mary Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, and Jake Heggie, who composed an opera based on the book.

Heggie spoke of what it was like to adapt the characters to an opera, and in so doing, he brought singers to the stage to present pieces of how he captured the persona.  He brought the convicted inmate's mother to the stage, who sings the night that her son is to be executed.

I have to be honest, after the first line or two, I was in complete tears. 

The Convicts Mother mother sang about the little boy whose diapers she changed.  The kindergartner she walked to the bus and kissed his cheek and told him to be brave as he stepped on to the school bus.  The small boy whose cuts needed band-aids and bad tumbles needed her hugs.

She sang about the sparkle in his eyes, the feeling of him snuggling against her chest when he woke sick in the middle of the night.

Ethan was 11-months-old.

This was my first Holy Week and Easter as a mother.  And for some reason, it was the story of Judas' mother that jumped off the page to me.

It's not the first time I've felt a connection to Judas.  When I was a young child, our pastor sent us home on Ash Wednesday with a velvet pouch, and we carefully collected 30 quarters and returned the offering to Maundy Thursday worship...and it was such a Honor and special place.  I had no idea until I became an adult -- what was that minister thinking?  "Let's let the kids play little Judas-es?"  

We feel sorry for Mary as Mother, but she lived with a legacy of her son being a Savior.

Pity to the woman whose child grows up to commit horrible atrocities.  Because like it or not, in our day and age, when someone does something bad, we look to see what their mother or father did or did not do. 

We feel pity for Judas' mother-whoever she was, unnamed, a myth to consider--because she lived with a legacy of her son betraying the Savior of the World.

And for what reason did Judas' do this?  The money?  The power?   Jealousy?  Even the Scriptures contradict each other.  Matthew tells us he returned the money and the Sadduccees used the money to buy the field.  The Acts of the Apostles, composed by the same person of the Gospel of Luke, says Judas bought the field and committed suicide.   

Most likely, "Judas" was invented.  It's a little too convenient, don't you think.  It's a little too b-movie-ish.  And it's a little too "scape-goatish."

Maybe there is a way to explore this story of Judas and instead of memorising for accuracy, stepping back to meander through allegory. 

Imagine Judas as an archetype. The one who betrays. The Saboteur. We tend to think of the Betrayer as bad, and that's true, when it is operating in its shadow side. At the very heart of the Saboteur is this idea of sabotage. But Saboteur as archetype means we need to look inside and ask ourselves some deep questions.

Yet the purpose of this archetype is not to sabotage you, but to help you learn the many ways in which you undermine yourself. How often do you set new plans in motion, only to end up standing in your own way because of the fears that undermine those optimistic plans. Or you begin a new relationship and then destroy it because you begin to imagine a painful outcome. You begin a working relationship with another person and find yourself once again in a power struggle that could be settled peacefully -- but you fall into the same destructive pattern because you fear the other person.

The Saboteur's fears and issues are all related to low self-esteem that causes you to make choices that block your own empowerment and success. (You must face this powerful archetype.) When you do, you will find that it calls your attention to situations in which you are in danger of being sabotaged, or of sabotaging yourself. Once you are comfortable with the Saboteur, you learn to hear and heed these warnings, saving yourself untold grief from making the same mistakes over and over. Ignore it, and the shadow of the Saboteur will manifest in the form of self-destructive behaviour or the desire to undermine others.

To learn how to become aware of the action of the Saboteur within, ask yourself these questions:

• What fears have the most authority over me? List 3
• What happens when a fear overtakes me? Does it make me silent?
• Do I allow people to speak for me?
• Do I agree to some things out of fear that I otherwise would not agree to?
• Have I let creative opportunities pass me by?
• How conscious am I in the moment I am sabotaging myself?
• Am I able to recognise the Saboteur in others?
• Would I be able to offer others advice about how to challenge ones Saboteur? If so, what would it be?

But this isn't individual therapy. This is the Church. And Sunday is a-comin. And perhaps we as the church need to ask this question of ourselves: How often are we undermining ourselves? Letting our fears undermine our optimistic plans.

If Easter is about anything, it is about the fundamental belief that death no longer holds victory.

That something new can come out of something that has died.

That ultimately, in the heart of all humanity, is a desire to be in incredibly deep peace with ourselves, one another, and God.

But we get in our own way.

And Holy Week is all about staring in the face.

Not feeling pity.

But feeling a deep Love.

A Mother's Love.

Because a Mother's love is not supposed to fail. I know there are some human moms who do fail. But in the heart of the mother is a love that runs so deep that no matter what your child does, you have the capacity to look at them and remember the child who was before the brokenness began...

We are called to look at this world and remember what it was before the brokenness began.. and then we are called to do everything we can to do what mother's do:

Heal

Comfort

Make whole.

We must remember that there is a mother's love for all of us. We must know that nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ. Not height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities can separate us from the Love of God in Christ.

Amen