When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus in order to bring about his death. They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate the governor. When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ But they said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.’ After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason, that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.’ Matthew 27:1-10
We can easily condemn Judas, believing we would never behave like him and betray his teacher. Yet, all too often, we can find ourselves in situations where the right and wrong are not clear. Judas had been painted with an evil brush, yet within each of us, there is the capacity to use a situation to our own advantage. Taking a big salary and keeping quiet, taking a role that destroys someone else, stealing a friend away from another. We have all been tempted and most of us have given in. We all have fields of blood that we can't pass by or think on. May we today be encouraged to live humbly, with integrity and honor, something our world isn't demonstrating particularly well right now.
Wondrous Creator, you give us free will and choice
we give us a verdant world we can enjoy in our lives
and give us power to share the wealth or to dominate.
We condemn the Judas acts as we participate in them
we are selfish, desire and demand the very best for us
and take away from the weak and the needy every day.
Help us Lord to live honestly and humbly today
putting others' needs before us and sharing what we can
so the world might know you rose again so we might all live. Amen.
