Perhaps it is strange to be thinking of Judas and the Easter story during Advent. The hope, peace, love and joy we feel at the birth of the baby is always, for me, dampened by the reality of where the story eventually leads. It’s a bit like the first time I watched Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, seeing the young boy Anakin on the screen and feeling such sorrow about where his life would take him. We know what happens to the baby, and it tugs at me each Christmas, not just because of what happens to Jesus, but also because of what happens to Judas.
I wonder who put those thoughts in Judas’ head
Contrary to what he had seen with his eyes
And felt with his heart
As he walked alongside Jesus on dusty roads
Offering peace and hope and love.
What lies disturbed the soft territory between them
The bond of trust forged from shared passion
Who disrupted that sacred space?
Someone so vile that his companions named the devil
The only possible explanation for a betrayal so bizarre
So upsetting
So unbelievable
That it must have been outside of his control.
Ordained from the beginning
A path to redemption.
But I wonder now about that simple answer
And how Judas might feel about it
Because I know better than to blame demons
For a world that is filled with good people who get twisted up
By misinformation
And how those half truths take hold of you
And start to put thoughts in your head
That look a lot like silver coins.
And so I wonder about Judas
The thoughts in his head as he approached the garden
As Jesus was taken away
As the money changed hands
As he watched the results of his choices.
And when it was over, did he know who had lied to him?
I lost my father-in-law during the advent season in 2023. His absence from our life is still poignant. There are times when my husband and I look at one another and say “I wish Ron was still alive.” A man like my father-in-law leaves a huge hole when he is gone, one that is hard to smooth over, like the places across the Western Front of the First World War, where even now, a century later, you can still see the old lines of the trenches and the where the shells fell. And so this advent, as I think of hope, peace, joy and love, I can’t help put them beside grief. Grief, after all, is just love with nowhere to go.
They will tell you that it will never hurt less
It will only hurt less often.
That one day you will stop seeing them everywhere
And your life will grow bigger around the hole they left
So that the hole will seem smaller
Less maw-like when it yawns at unexpected times.
And perhaps they are correct
The well wishers who have no clue
And the travelled stained who already walked the road
And your own mother who still keeps living
Despite not having her mother for the last two decades.
Yes, it will hurt less often
But when it hurts it will still come like a fire
All the love you have and all the words still left to say
The Quick and the Dead 