For a world of finger-pointing, the day is ripe with opportunity. Today is “Spy Wednesday,” an old and uncommon name for the Wednesday of Holy Week, so-named because it marks the agreement of Judas to betray Jesus. As told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Judas approaches the chief priests and asks what they would be willing to give him for turning Jesus over to them. They agree on a sum, and from then on Judas looks for opportunity to hand him over.(1)
Some commemorate the involvement of Judas in the story of Holy Week by collecting thirty pieces of silver, the exact amount Judas was given to betray Jesus, and later returns to the chief priests in regret. Typically, children gather the coins and present them as gifts to the church for the community. In a less congenial commemoration, tradition once involved children throwing an effigy of Judas from the church steeple, then dragging it around the town while pounding him with sticks. For whatever part of us that might want a person to blame for the events that led to the betrayal, death, and crucifixion of Jesus, Judas makes an easy target.
But nothing about Holy Week is easy, and the gospels leave us wondering if guilt might in fact hit closer to home. It is noted in Mark’s Gospel, in particular, that the moral failures of the week are not handed to any one person, but described in all of the actors equally: Yes, to Judas the betrayer. But also to weak disciples, sleeping and running and fumbling. To Peter, cowardly and denying. To scheming priests, indifferent soldiers, angry mobs, and the conceited Pilate. Mark brings us face to face with human indecency, such that it is not a stretch to imagine our own in the mix.
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 