ALIVE: Chapter 178, Peripheral Damage

As the entourage approached Caiaphas’s compound curious townsfolk latched on making it possible for Peter to join inconspicuously, and thus be near his Master. Once in the courtyard, he sat himself next to officers of the high priest in hopes that they would be told what was transpiring and he could overhear. As the hours passed, the night naturally became darker and colder, so several men built a fire in the courtyard for light and warmth. The drama of the arrest of Jesus, the miracle worker and blasphemer, was worth staying awake for, even all night long in the cold. The small crowd in the courtyard stayed for the dramatic value of the event. Only Peter was there as a friend of the accused. Never before had such a trial been held in the dead of night when most people were asleep and unaware of what was transpiring.

After a while of freezing, Peter stood up and went over to the fire to warm his numb fingers. A maid of Caiaphas, who had been staring at him finally mustered up the nerve to stand up and walk over to him, pointed and exclaimed loudly to the crowd, “You were with the Nazarene weren’t you?”

“No, not me!” replied Peter loudly, disappointed in his own cowardice. “You don’t know what you’re saying, lady.” Then he turned his back on her and walked over to the porch. The night sky gradually gave way to the light of a new day and a cock crowed in the distance. Peter returned to his seat near the officers.

The maid followed him. When she was near, she turned to the crowd again and announced, “This man is one of them! He’s a follower of the blasphemer!”

Peter retorted angrily, “Shut up lady! I told you that I am NOT one of them.”

A few curious people meandered over to stand beside Peter and get a better look and to hear him so they could tell from his accent where he was from.

One bold young man confirmed the suspicion. “Yes you are brother! It’s obvious that you are one of them; you are a Galilean, don’t lie!”

Peter grew furious, “Damn you! Shut-up! You don’t even know what you’re saying!”

On queue, the cock crowed again, leaving a trail of echoes through the cold air.

Peter listened to the holy rooster, which fulfilled Jesus’ prediction at supper the day before when Jesus washed his feet and gave him His body and blood as food and said, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

Peter was so ashamed of himself that he walked over to the fire and came as close as he could stand, feeling his face burn. He wanted the heat to dry his tear-drenched cheeks before anyone noticed and accuse him of lying again, which was true.

“Am I so weak?” thought Peter, “How did Jesus know me more than I know myself? How could Jesus love me and reveal Himself to me as much as He did if He knew that I am a coward? I hope and pray that none of my brothers or anyone else ever finds out that I denied knowing my Master. How am I different than Judas? What Judas must be going through! I don’t think he knew it would come to this.

While staring at the flames, a flashback entered Peter’s troubled heart. He was back in the upper room, fewer than 40 hours earlier. Jesus had just washed his feet, their feet, and Judas’ feet. He told the brothers to wash one another’s feet to be blessed. Then, He said something very troubling. He said that He wasn’t referring to all of them. He said he knew that one of them would lift up his heel against Him. He knew Judas would betray him! King David knew it!.” It was something of a relief to force himself to remember…. David, who had so many enemies, even his own son, who wrote, ‘Against me they devise my hurt. An evil disease, they say clings to him. And now that he lies down, he will rise no more. Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted (as Jesus trusted Judas with all our money). Who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.’ “Could that be me too?! Poor Judas.” Peter was torn between the agonizing thoughts that erupted from his heart like a spring of water and his need to protect himself from the fury and violence of the unrighteous. “After all, what would they really do to me if they knew that I am a disciple? Why should I care?”

Just then, Peter’s angel whispered in his heart, “Remember David, all the terrible things he did! He killed thousands, and worse, he sent Bathsheba’s husband to the war front, knowing he would be killed. He commited those horrible sins to hide his adultery and their pregnancy and have Bathsheba for himself. Piling sin upon sin!”

The angel paused to let that sink in.

Then whispered as quiet as a thought, “Yet God called David, writer of psalms and warrior, a man after His own heart. David, the great sinner was sorry and humbled himself over and again. The sin is not the end Peter. David  begged God to forgive him. If only he could humble and forgive himself.”

Displacing his torturous thoughts indeed helped a bit, enough to stop Peter from crying more while he waited for Jesus to emerge from Caiaphas’s, house. He sat in a place where he could stare at the door and wait. “What is taking them so long? What is going on in there?” Suddenly he saw Judas emerge from the door and run away!

Judas

Judas had also been in the evil entourage that accompanied Jesus to Annas and Caiaphas’s houses. Inside, he watched with horror as Jesus was being interrogated and then beaten, and he couldn’t escape. The sight of it all, and knowing that he was the cause of His capture shocked Judas.

When he saw that Jesus was finally condemned to death for saying that he would tear down the temple and rebuild it, he was horrified. When he watched his Master being beaten, Judas cringed, and thought that it should have been him being beaten instead. He felt every punch that was lobbed onto Jesus, but he wasn’t the one who was bleeding; Jesus was. He was the sinner, not Jesus who washed his feet and fed him. As soon as he was able to leave that tragic scene, Judas slyly found his way to the door and fled to the temple, quickly passing Peter in the courtyard. He had to try to undo his sin. He didn’t want that money any more!

Judas’s face was red with passion and fury. The temple was just waking up for morning services and people were filing in. Judas looked around and decided to march through the curtain and right into the sanctuary where he noticed many of the priests and elders who had been at Annas’s house.

Inside the sanctuary he reached into his satchel, pulled out the pieces of silver and for the first time in his life he was desperate to give the money back, “Here! Take this. I have sinned; I betrayed innocent blood!” Judas eyes were flaming as they pierced their victims.

Satisfied that they had achieved their purpose, the priests and elders were not affected in the least by Judas’s emotional change of mind.

A hairy muscular priest replied, “What is that to us? It’s your money and your problem.”

Hearing that he threw the coins down on the floor. The metallic sound of them cut through the air quickly, and then Judas rushed out the door, passing the canter who was worshipping God with his chanting.

Outside, Judas was beside himself. He looked to the left and right at the city streets. Children playing, women hanging laundry, young and old men walking with intention and busy minds left and right. He spotted a rope lying on the steps of a house; stole it and stuffed it into his satchel. Then Judas headed for the place of the arrest. Every step was accompanied by mental torture. Of course he couldn’t even pray although he desperately wished he could have someone to go for solace. He hated himself, he deplored himself. “How could I have been so greedy? What did I expect they would do to Him?” Judas came to a tree with thick strong limbs. He looked up and around, sizing it up. He saw in it a natural ladder inviting him to climb. Instead of looking to the heavens for forgiveness and understanding he looked for a way to destroy himself. He didn’t deserve to live.

Judas had been obedient to Satan for too long. His allegiance was to the one who wanted to destroy him and not to save him.

Judas reached for the lowest horizontal limb and hoisted himself up; using his feet and arms like a monkey he proceeded to climb the tree. He slipped a couple of times, but pulled himself back up. The place was deserted. Being as close to Jesus as any human could be, Judas was as far from Him as any human could be. Tragic. His master, Satan, ordered Judas to keep climbing. The tree, the wood, hands and feet, climbing with sheer will because he wasn’t a monkey, Judas struggled to find footing; he was determined climb. The lower branches were stable and ushered him up to the next and the next as he circumnavigated the tree of death. Driven to destroy himself as punishment for betraying the son of God, Judas was heaping sin upon sin, as people will do.

Once he figured he was high enough, he sat on the limb and pulled the rope out of his satchel, then dropped the satchel to the ground. He couldn’t stand another minute with his thoughts. He was unable to imagine what his existence in hades would be like. He just needed to end this life here and hoped he would only find an empty sleep-like death. He didn’t deserve to live. He tied a noose and flung it over his head and then tied the other end to the branch he was siting on. His anguish grew and grew as he prepared to stop his thoughts with death. Then, Judas took a deep breath, followed by an earth shattering scream in attempt to expel his feelings and jumped. Silence.

…

Hours later two boys running through the woods spotted the dead man hanging. One boy couldn’t take his eyes off the gory scene, while the other tugged at him, “Let’s go tell someone! Come on!”

Meanwhile, back in the temple, a priest picked up the coins from the floor and place it on the table of sacrifice. He said, “What will we do with this?”

Another priest replied, “You know that it isn’t lawful to put blood money into the treasury.”

“I know, let’s use it to buy some land to bury strangers in.”

“Okay, good idea. We can call it the field of blood.” The two men chuckled. It wasn’t funny, but they chuckled at having found a perfect solution. First they paid for Judas’ sin, and now with the same money, they could pay for burial places for the ungodly. What a bargain. Two solutions for the price of one.

Little did these poor perverted priests know that centuries before, the prophet Jeremiah (Zechariah 11:12) had seen into the future to that very day and wrote, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was priced, whom certain of the children of Israel did price and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.”

Poor Judas, if he had only appealed to the mercy of God, as did David, as did Peter, accept his weakness and fall on his face. But poor Judas could not go beyond his focus on himself, and so committed the ultimate sin, which was to take his life, not his own to take, but a gift from God who knitted him while in his mother’s womb.

Being made in the image and likeness of the living and life-giving God, no human can die as in forever asleep. After the hanging and at the second and final judgement, Judas was and will be judged by God, and let’s neither you nor I predict what his judgment is.

Jesus had orchestrated His own path to the cross. It was His goal to reach Hades, and to once and for all destroy death. Overturning the tables of the money changers, defying the Pharisees’, scribes’, and priests’ interpretation of the law. Woah to landless Levi. Woah to corruption, ignorance, and evil. Jesus used the greedy heart of Judas in His mission to release Adam and Eve and all of humankind from the curse of death. The most heinous betrayal for the most magnificent purpose.

…

While Judas’ body stiffened as it hung on the tree, back in the courtyard of Caiaphas bloody and bruised Jesus, with hands tied and closely guarded, emerged from the building to be sent to Pontias Pilate.

Peter immediately stood and stared. Seeing Jesus bloody and beaten, wearing a crown of thorns, Peter quickly turned away. He couldn’t see this. It was too tragic. “Where are they taking Him?”The guards were taking Jesus to the Roman occupier to carry out the wishes of His enemies.

King David knew more about enemies than anyone who lived, and with God’s help prevailed over them, but Jesus, the son of David, the son of Man, sought instead to let the world think it won.