a Maundy Thursday meditation

Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

After [Judas] had received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. John 13:27

 After he received the bread. After Jesus washed his feet. After following and listening and being with Jesus.

Maybe that’s the problem. He was never with Jesus but always on the edge. Clinging to the common purse, harboring old thoughts, feeling threatened by a potential change in the system to which he was accustomed. Judas didn’t even know his defenses were there until the Spirit of Jesus entered into him through the full commitment of his love and service. Then he suddenly could not tolerate the purity. Judas could not confess nor even entertain the crack in his defenses, the light against his darkness. He could not come to himself and be welcomed home. In his resistance, all Judas could do was destroy the beauty that threatened his false sense of security.

 And Jesus? Jesus was wholly “caught up in the kind of enlarged consciousness or expanded awareness that is triggered by the commitment that his life becomes important only in terms that fulfill the inscrutable demands of the commitment.”[1] Unwavering. So deep within himself he could come up in Judas’ humanity, beneath all the barriers Judas hid behind. So deep within himself he could face the hours ahead without bitterness or retaliation, or running away. So deep within himself that though he would prefer this cup to be removed, he could do nothing else but drink it… Shedding his blood that he might share the essence of life with any who will go deep beneath their defenses. 

 Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts willing to receive. 

[1] Howard Thurman, “The Luminous Darkness,” (Harper and Rowe, 1965), 58.