Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

In our Office Gospel today, Jesus deals with the fallout of his bold claim that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no life in us. Many of his disciples found the suggestion unseemly—many today still do! Yesterday in his Daily Bread reflection, Dr Appel treated all this with a lovely discussion of sacrament, sacramentality, and mystery: what it means to understand a symbol not as a stand-in for an absent thing, but a means of participation in a very real and present reality.

So I’ll not go into that this morning! What I want to talk about with you today is an aspect of the subsequent conversation Jesus has with his disciples. Jesus asks if they will leave him for daring to suggest that a real participation in his life and being is what ought to mean life to us. Peter says no: only Jesus has the words of eternal life, to whom else would he and the disciples turn? Jesus responds, in what appears to be an approving way, “Did I not choose you, the twelve?” And then he adds, “Yet one of you is a devil,” referring to Judas.

I think Jesus’ words here are worth pondering, not least because there seems to be something odd about them. Why would Jesus suggest that he’s chosen a devil?

First, I think it’s important to acknowledge that “devil” is probably not the best translation of “diabolos” in this context. Diabolos literally means, “One who throws through,” which is to say, someone who throws stones with the intention to destroy. It’s from this sense of the word that it comes to mean “Accuser” or “Slanderer.” And I think this is important to acknowledge because I don’t think Jesus is calling Judas evil incarnate (though John will later suggest that Judas is under the Accuser’s influence when he leaves the Last Supper to betray Jesus). No: Judas is a human being whom Jesus knows will make a terrible decision.

There are some folks who would suggest that Judas was a mere pawn in some cosmic/supernatural game between various powers he couldn’t possibly understand, and in the face of which he had neither agency nor any reasonable hope of a good outcome for himself. I’ll be honest, beloved Friend, I find that suggestion bizarre and not at all in keeping with the nature of the God whose very heart has been revealed to us as Love. Not only that, here's what we now from our Office Gospel today: Jesus chose Judas...and he didn’t choose him to be a slanderer much less to be a devil, he chose him to be a disciple. And I have to believe that in all of his interactions with Judas, Jesus yearned for him always to live into the identity of disciple that God had chosen for him, even as he knew that there were patterns and processes at work in Judas’ life that would (to put it mildly) complicate his discipleship. Still, in the face of these patterns and processes, Jesus continued to choose Judas. Jesus never stopped loving him, never stopped desiring good for him. Jesus did not choose him to be an accuser, he chose him to be a disciple.

Dear Friend, Scripture tells us that God loved us before we could even imagine loving God (I John 4:19); that God chose us before we could think of choosing God (Ephesians 1:4). And God continues to yearn for us to live the choice that God has made for us: “ ‘For surely I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11). Jesus has chosen us, Friend, sinners though we are, to be disciples. My prayer for us both today is that we will so live God’s choice for life in us that the patterns of sin and death at work in us may be undone by grace, that we may truly be the disciples God has called us to be…the disciples which the wounded world around us needs us to be.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+