Betrayal and the Cost of Grace

Transcript

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[0:00] text today is from Matthew 26, and I'll say a few words of introduction before we read that. You may have noticed that today we call this Palm and Passion Sunday. So we start with palms, and of course they're all around us still, and that's traditionally how it was. That always how it was when I was a kid, that that was just Palm Sunday, but in later time now we also call it Passion Sunday, because from a week from now, if you were just to come to church today and all you did was celebrate the coming of the palms and the procession of Jesus into Jerusalem, and next week you came and all you heard about was the resurrection, you might have missed everything in between, which was the death, the betrayal, the trial, and the death of Jesus, which is really at the core of the Christian faith. And since people don't always have time now to come to a Good Friday service, we're kind of bringing a little bit of Good Friday to you today. So the latter half of this service is about the passion of Jesus, about his death, about his trial, about his betrayal, and today in particular it's about the betrayal of Jesus. And you'll notice as we, our second set of songs that we're going to have after the sermon are going to be more of a contemplative nature,

[1:15] more about the crucifixion, so you'll see. Now I want to note, I want you to note before we start reading that the words that describe time, and so time is going to be a theme today that I want you to pay attention to. Jesus says, my time is near in this passage. Also, Judas looks for what's called an opportune time to betray Jesus. He's looking for the right moment. These two words for time actually are linked in Greek. They both come from the same root, which is kairos, and Greek has two words, at least two words for time. One is chronos, which is like watch time, whatever time it is on your watch, a certain time of day when you're going to go do something. But kairos is kind of like a season or a moment that's significant. So there, Jesus says, my time, my important moment is near, and Judas is looking for an opportunity, an opportune, or I guess advantageous moment in which to betray Jesus. So there's two times happening here. It's very interesting. So the kairos is kind of like the season or the right time or something, the moment that something important happens. You're also going to see that there's a connection between the betrayal of Jesus and the Passover meal, because it's at the Passover meal that Jesus shares with

[2:38] his 12 disciples that he tells them that one of you is going to betray me. And indeed, right after the meal ends, they go out and they go up to the Garden of Gethsemane, and there eventually Jesus is arrested. And so there's a real linkage between the Passover, which is that festival that the Israelites celebrated for the very first time when they were in slavery in Egypt, and the angel of death came and rescued them because they had the blood of a lamb on their doorpost. You kind of get the idea here. So Matthew and other of our gospel writers are very keen to link the old feast of Passover with the death of Jesus Christ. And in essence, Jesus serves as the new Passover lamb, the lamb of the new Passover. So he's going to serve as the new Passover lamb, the Passover lamb that really fulfills what Passover has always been pointing to, that by his death, by the death of the Lamb of God, then the world is rescued from its bondage to slavery and to sin and to death and to the devil himself. So this is very exciting. So we're beginning to see here this connection between Passover and the betrayal and death of Jesus. And we're going to spend time here again on Thursday night, talking more about the Passover meal.

[3:55] Just that, about how Jesus started the practice of serving Holy Communion and how we link also Holy Communion somewhat to the Passover meal. Very interesting. So come on back. That's like kind of a commercial. Come on back Thursday night at seven. Really, come on back. Everyone. It's a joint worship service. Okay. So paying attention to all those things, let's go to our reading. It's Matthew 26, 14 through 21. And it begins with verse 14. Then one of the 12 who was called Judas Iscariot, who was the first to be born, was called Judas Iscariot, who was the first to be born, went to the chief priests and said, what will you give me if I betray him to you? They paid him 30 pieces of silver. And from that moment, he began to look for an opportunity or an opportune time to betray him. On the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, where do you want us to make the preparation for you to eat the Passover? He said, go into the city to a certain place and eat the Passover. And he said, go to the city to a certain place and eat the Passover. And he said, go to the city to a certain place and eat the Passover. And he said, go to the man and say to him, the teacher says, my time is near. I will keep the Passover at your house with

[5:04] my disciples. So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and they prepared the Passover meal. When it was evening, he took his place with the 12. And while they were eating, he said, truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you. For your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus name. Amen.

[5:33] Well, I want you to think right now about how this passage starts. Think about who betrays Jesus. The way this passage starts in verse 14 is it says one of the 12. So that's the inner circle. This is the closest people that Jesus really has to him, except for his maybe his immediate family. And there was a time when Jesus had a lot of followers. If you read in John's gospel, chapter six, Jesus starts saying some really controversial things. You should look it up. It's very interesting. He starts saying a bunch of controversial things. Some people think he's saying some very unusual things. And he talks about his body and his blood. It's really interesting stuff. Go read it at home. Read chapter six of the gospel of John. But it says at the end of that, that many people fell away. And so Jesus was his followers. As he got closer to Jerusalem, the number of people following actually shrank because Jesus was saying things that required a lot of discipleship, that required a lot of faith, and not everybody was willing to do it. And also Jesus wasn't living up to what many people hoped a Messiah would be. They thought he was the Messiah, but they thought that meant something more nationalistic. They thought that meant here he's going to come in with, he's going

[6:54] to raise an army. He's going to come in with a army. He's going to come in with a army. He's going to clean our, he's going to, you know, make our country great again, basically, and just clean everything out. And we're going to have a new start. And he didn't do any of that. He didn't do it in the way that they thought. He did it in a much more subversive way. He said, I'm going to change you one heart at a time. I'm going to give you a new life. I'm going to free you, not from the Romans, but I'm going to free you from sin, death, and the devil himself. And that's not what they were looking for. They were looking for something that could touch a little bit more.

[7:23] And so Judas, is one of the twelve, and that makes, that's his closest ally, his closest friend. That makes the, that makes the betrayal that much more intense. Now, one thing we should ask ourselves, and nobody knows, but this is just a good thought experiment. What were Judas's motives? Why did Judas betray Jesus? Weren't they friends? Weren't they close? The gospel of John tells us that Satan himself entered into Judas and took control of him. And so Judas, he's going to be a good friend to him. He's going to take control of him. That's one possible answer, right? Others, that he was greedy, and he wanted money. And so he saw an opportunity, as we see in our passage, to earn money from betraying Jesus. He got 30 pieces of silver, which was probably a lot of money.

[8:11] Or, again, similar, that Jesus himself was not living up to the expectations that Judas had for him. So Jesus wasn't acting like the Messiah that everybody was hoping for. And so either Judas was disappointed in Jesus, or he was disappointed in Jesus. And so Judas was disappointed in Jesus. And so Judas was disappointed in Jesus, and just wanted him to go away. Or Judas was hoping to precipitate a crisis, and Jesus would then reveal himself fully, and start the process that Judas wanted him to start. Does that make sense? Right? Judas wants this big thing to happen. He wants to help it along by betraying Jesus. So those are three choices. We don't know. When we get to heaven, we can ask God, why did Judas do this? But I think all three of those can work in one way or another. We don't know. But God, here's the thing though, God uses that. Jesus needed to be betrayed for this whole motion to go forward that God had planned. And so Judas is looking for the opportune time to betray Jesus. That's the Kairos moment, right? And Luke tells us it would be when there's no crowds to see it done, or to protect Jesus, deeds of evil are planned for when nobody is watching. You know, a lot of wars start in the middle of the night, like the war in

[9:28] Ukraine. It started at 2 a.m. Of course, everybody was watching because the world has video cameras now, but all sorts of evil happens when nobody's watching. And I think for us, it's really good to think about how vulnerable you are when you are alone and you don't have another person to hold you accountable. Then there's more temptation. But Jesus is also aware of the right time. He says, my time is near. My kairos moment is near. And this concept of Jesus knowing the right time is something that pervades all of scripture, okay? Saint Paul tells us that it is all God's plan to rescue the world. In Romans 5, 6, he says, For while we were still weak, at the right time, kairos, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. When Jesus did his first miracle at Cana, do you remember what he said? His mother said, you need to make some wine. You need to fix this problem. She didn't say how to do it. She said, you need to fix this problem. And he said, my time has not come yet. But she said, you're going to do it anyways because I'm your mom. And he's like, okay, I'm going to do it. So we have a video. Somebody has reenacted this. We're going to show that video now. And we need OBS on so that people in the crowd can hear it.

[10:58] It doesn't matter what comes. Not my time yet. Right now is good. Nothing gets to you. Staying fresh, staying cool. With Mentos, fresh and full of life. Fresh goes better. Mentos fresh goes better. Fresh goes better with Mentos fresh and full of life. Mentos, the fresh maker. You get it. Thank you. Do we want to see it again? Was that just too fast? No, we don't need to see it again? Oh, okay. All right. Isn't that funny? I just love Mother Mary's look. She's like, he's like, okay, now it's good. Now it's good. That's basically what happened at Cana. He's like, I'm not going to do this. It's not my time. It's not my time to start revealing my power. And she says to the steward, do whatever, you know, do whatever he tells you to do. And he's like, I guess I'm doing it because it's my mom. You can't say no to your mom. Better fill out the potluck sign up.

[11:56] Get that done. So that's a callback. All right. So I have to figure out where I am now. So Jesus knows about time. Now that at Cana, the time wasn't ready for him to start revealing his power. Here in Matthew. The time is near and that time is for him to go to the cross. Everything is pushing towards this moment. He's been moving towards Jerusalem. He set his face towards Jerusalem. Everything is coming to this time, this Kairos moment where he goes to the cross to rescue the world as the new Passover lamb. Now I want us to think about this for a second so that God is using this but he's not making it happen. God doesn't make Judas betray Jesus. Let's be clear about that. But God maybe knows that Judas is going to betray Jesus. And God says, this is part of the plan. Not that I make it happen, but we're going to use that it happens.

[13:00] My cousin, I have a cousin in Norway. He's a professor at a place called Meniketsfakultet, which is the seminary. And he was, I was in one of his classes. I studied in Norway for a year at their seminary. And there was a lot of international students there. A lot of students from Africa. And he was lecturing on evil. And one of the African students said, Professor, do you believe in the devil?

[13:26] Because they sure did, right? You know, they wanted to know if he was orthodox enough to say he believes in the devil. And he says, I don't believe in the devil, but I count on him. Do you get the difference? This is how maybe he should have said it. He should have said, I don't believe in the devil, I believe in God, or I put faith in God, but I count on the devil to do his worst. Right? So we believe in God. We don't believe in the devil, but we know the devil's at work and we count on the devil. And I think that what we can say is that God is, what God is up to here is that he's counting on the devil. He knows the devil's passions and ways and he knows what the devil's gonna do. And he knows he's going to tempt Judas. And he knows that Jesus is gonna go to the cross. Some theologians through the ages have fun, but they never thought that at the cross, God was fooling Satan, was trapping him in essence. In fact, there's some old artwork that has somebody, there's a, there's a fish hook. Good. Satan is portrayed as a fish. Satan in some old, like a Leviathan or a fish. It's like sort of the sea monster. And there's this hook coming down and it's getting Satan right there. But the hook is shaped like a cross at the top.

[14:45] You get that? So this hook is pulling Satan up and out and into the frying pan in essence. So God is using subterfuge to trap Satan. So who's smarter? So you think Satan thinks he really got away with something there. I put the Son of God to death, but the resurrection of course is just around the corner. So if you read Chronicles of Narnia, it kind of has that flavor of it, right? The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.

[15:09] So Jesus is betrayed at the right time. It's a time that reveals things. It's about everybody. It shows off everybody's true passions. It shows off everybody's, everybody's, you know, motives and projects, what they want to have done. And that's what crisis does. There's this moment of crisis and it reveals the true nature of things and what they are underneath. And so what does Jesus, what does Judas reveal about himself? He wants money. He wants something from the betrayal of Jesus. You could say that the cross. pays him something. But it also starts revealing something about Jesus. Which is He. He in a essence is looking towards the cross to pay something. And his time is near. He knows that he's close. He's beginning to really give himself over to the reality that he's going to die on the cross. And He goes to the cross.

[16:08] And it cost Jesus something. Obviously it cost Him his life. And the rest of the disciples. All of the other eleven. even though they ran away like cowards, because they actually, they were cowards, they were cowards and they ran away. In the end, it cost them all as well for Jesus to go to the cross because each of them in their own way had to suffer afterwards to follow him. On the back of your bulletin today, I wrote an excerpt from a book called The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And he of all people would know the cost of discipleship because he was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for being part of the plot to overthrow Hitler. But he wrote this book called The Cost of Discipleship. And we've got two copies here in the church. We have one in the library that I'll put in the library later. You could take it home. And I have a personal copy. It has my name on it. So if you want to borrow it, you can borrow it. But for Bonhoeffer, he starts off this book called The Cost of Discipleship, which is really a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount. He talks about cheap grace, and costly grace. Cheap grace is when we only see what we can get from the cross, like Judas. Judas could get 30 pieces of silver. But costly grace is what the cross will cost us. And I'm

[17:21] going to read just a little bit of, not the whole thing that's on the back page of that, but I'm going to read a little bit of it. This is what Bonhoeffer writes. He writes this, Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

[17:37] Cheap grace means grace that is not for the poor. Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Grace sold on the market like cheap jacks wears. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sins, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church's inexhaustible treasury from which she showers blessings with generous hands without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price. Grace without cost. The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance and because it's been paid everything can be had for nothing. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Now here's the question for us today on Passion Sunday. Are we collecting our 30 pieces of silver and hoarding them in our 401k or whatever else you

[18:59] think you're going to get from Jesus? Or are we moving ourselves towards the cross, the place of costly grace? Can God count on us in this moment in human history to direct us to the cross, to direct us to sacrifice, to costly discipleship? This is what Jesus says. He says, I tell you one of you will betray me. And I think it's more than one in twelve actually. If we look at the world the way it is and the church the way it is. The one who sees in me only his gain is the betrayer. The one who is greedy. the one who wants to connect his political and nationalistic ambitions to me and my name, the one who operates in the darkness of night and is susceptible to the temptations of the devil himself. That one will betray me." And I don't think Christians are immune because one of Jesus' closest followers fell into this hole. Jesus is still being betrayed. Let's be honest, the church is in a tatters right now, the large church in this world. He's being betrayed for money, for ambition, and for evil itself. And so the question is, do we gain from the cross or what do we gain from the cross? Of course we gain from the cross because it's a place of grace. The forgiveness of God comes showering down on us from there. But does the cross cost us something? Does the cross cost us?

[20:29] Let's read some more from Bonhoeffer. This is what he says, A man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his son. You were bought at a price. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our life. But deliverance is a price that God has not delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.

[21:39] Isn't that powerful? Thank God for Bonhoeffer. This week is the week of the cross until Saturday evening and after that is resurrection which is all great. But this is the week I want you to focus on the cross and move towards the cross. Ask yourself what does it cost me? Have I betrayed Jesus for my own agenda? Now is the opportune time, just the right moment for Jesus to come to you this week.

[22:14] And I want you to imagine for a moment if you're willing to, close your eyes and imagine with me. Close your eyes, go ahead. Imagine that you're walking along a road. And as you look to your side, there Jesus is walking next to you.

[22:32] And you say, Lord where are you going? And he points up to a hill in the distance that's covered in dark clouds and doom and he says, I am going there to the place where I will die. I'm going to the cross. I'm going to a place of suffering and evil. And he says, will you come with me?

[23:01] Will you walk to this place with me? And you say, Lord, I'm afraid. There's so much I don't want to give up. I have so many projects that I haven't finished, but so much to do. And Jesus says, but really what are you really afraid of?

[23:23] And I say, I don't want the pain. I don't want to lose what I have. It's not time for me yet. And Jesus says, I know you're afraid. I know I'm asking a lot, but now is the time. I can only offer you this, that we will be together as we go. And we say, Lord, that is enough. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for this week where we can focus on the cross of Jesus Christ, the place where humanity is rescued from sin and death. Put us in mind this week to ask ourselves what pushes us away from the cross or what we can gain from the cross, and instead ask ourselves how we can drive even closer towards the cross to go with Jesus to the place of costly discipleship. In your name.