Holy Week with Judas – Holy Saturday – All are Waiting Except the Son

Greetings Dear Reader,

We wait. I have found faith in Christ through long struggle and pain so deep that after 43 years I still feel it fresh and new. Other pains, some of my own doing haunt me every time I set fingers to the keyboard. My failures have their own price. The ways in which I have pushed God to do things my way at times are multitude. The cost of those failures is higher than I can carry at times and were I now bound to Christ I would take the same path Judas chose. Fortunately Christ is willing to carry me.

On this lonely waiting Saturday I look at the cost of my betrayal of my faith in Christ and wonder about my brother Judas. I have failed in two marriages. My beloved Sons will not attend church with me. The little difference I make is still far below my potential. I have gifts I do not use to their full extent. My heart is fractured into so many pieces that I fear it damaged beyond repair. I have been both a betrayer and been betrayed. Unlike Christ I sinned on both sides of the issue. Unlike Judas it took me much longer to see my own sin and seek out forgiveness. Am I truly any better than Judas?

The waiting is easy because I know the outcome. The waiting will end and someday Christ will return all things to the Shalom that he intends. This life, however, is void of the things dearest to my heart. Every Sunday in church, a very good church is painful and I have no one to blame but myself. Most Sundays I weep for the absence of my Sons. Every night when I go to my bed I miss the companionship and love of a spouse. Some have been hurt for a lifetime by my sins.

In contrast, Judas pushed Christ toward the cross. He moved wrongly but out of faith in what he hoped Christ would do for his people. He was greedy and impatient. This was the fracture in his faith. He did not believe that God could turn death into a fighting chance to live. It was also what God knew would happen and God planned accordingly.

I love Judas. Once long ago I judged him so harshly. Then a student, seeking hope, asked me about him and I took an honest look at who he had been. If I am to love the Lord with all my heart, then I must love Judas as well. I cannot hold him in judgment if I am to escape judgment for my own vast sins. I am far worse than him because I have his and so many other examples of what not to do.

So I wait. I wait for the next resurrection and hope to hold Judas to my breast as a brother and thank him for his faith and bless him for his courage. He did wrong but then is that not what the death and resurrection of Christ is all about?

I anticipate tomorrow and the celebration of the resurrection of Christ and I anticipate that day down the path when we are all gathered into a redeemed world where my sin and that of Judas are far in the past and forgotten by God.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a home owner. He brings new and old things out of his treasure store."