Luke 22:1-6

Transcript

00:00:00:12 – 00:00:26:15
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for closing out the week with us as we continue through the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Today, we’ve kind of ended the section that we’ve been talking about. Those kind of apocalyptic had a lot of stuff about the coming day of the Lord that those kind of themes and now Luke really shifts gears and we move specifically into kind of that last part of the earthly story of Jesus life.

00:00:26:15 – 00:00:49:23
Clint Loveall
Today we see a set up for the betrayal. We see kind of the tension that has been in the background now really coming to the forefront as Luke dials in the focus on it. So let me read a few verses here from the opening of Chapter 22, and then we’ll come back and talk through them. The festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near.

00:00:49:28 – 00:01:23:17
Clint Loveall
The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people. Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the 12. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and the officers of the Temple police about how he might betray him to them. They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money, so he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present.

00:01:23:22 – 00:01:55:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah, we stop there. So this is I think if you have been in the church, if you’ve been a Bible reader or are you you’re familiar with the Easter Holy Week kind of stories. This, I would assume, contains no surprises for you. We right away get told the chief priest, the scribes. We’ve we’ve seen this language before. They are on the lookout for a way to get Jesus in the legal process, to get their hands on him, to bring charges against him.

00:01:55:28 – 00:02:27:09
Clint Loveall
And hopefully even in there, there in their minds to execute him. And then here Judas approaches them. So we get this line. Verse three Satan entered into Judas. This language is present in some of the gospels. In other cases, Judas really bears this on his own. Not that he is not responsible for his actions in Luke and say, the Gospel of John.

00:02:27:14 – 00:03:00:02
Clint Loveall
But here Luke is giving us this as a reminder. I think that that there’s more going on here than some people who are mad at another person that this tension, that this thing that’s happening has prolific spiritual overtones, that it is part of a larger battle of good versus evil. And so Satan is now involved in it. And leading Judas to do what he does doesn’t mean Judas isn’t responsible for it.

00:03:00:07 – 00:03:09:40
Clint Loveall
It’s just I think Luke’s way of making sure we understand that this isn’t just an earthly human conflict. There’s far more to it than that.

00:03:09:45 – 00:03:38:33
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I don’t have much to add here. Other than to say that it would be easy to read past something like verse two here. The chief priests, the scribes who are looking for a way to put Jesus to death up. I think what’s notable in that is a reminder that the inflow influential, powerful people of Jesus’s day, the people who occupied the highest seats of power in the Jewish community, they are now firmly set against Jesus.

00:03:38:33 – 00:04:20:51
Michael Gewecke
Jesus has angered people before. At the very beginning of this book, Jesus angered the people who were his family and friends from his hometown. They sought to throw him off of a cliff. But here today, we’ve encountered another level of the increasing sort of escalation of the conflict in the Book of Luke. And here the people who are seeking to kill Jesus are the most well connected, well tooled, capable people that are going to be found in the Jewish community and and Luke wants it to be clear to us, the reader, that it’s at this point, Jesus has angered the very highest rungs of the religious leadership.

00:04:20:51 – 00:04:49:21
Michael Gewecke
And so in many ways, this is kind of the highest points of Jesus’s point of conflict, because one could even argue the Romans don’t see a significant amount of conflict in the pages to come. There’s not that there’s not a significant amount of them being upset at Jesus’s teachings in particular. They’re very much going to now be responding to the prompting of these chief priests and scribes.

00:04:49:21 – 00:05:14:53
Michael Gewecke
So for us, maybe this because we do know the story, this may seem like a throwaway kind of turn in the narrative, but but in Luke’s telling of the gospel and in Jesus’s own life, Clint I mean, this matters. This is the height of the conflict with these leaders and everything now from here on out is going to be sort of the way that that spreads or that denouncement that comes from that that conflict, that that choice they’ve made to have him killed.

00:05:14:58 – 00:05:41:13
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And there are a couple of other interesting things about this text. One, work backwards here. If we start in verse three, you know, it’s it’s very interesting that we have so many questions about Judas and his motivation, his role. There is a little bit of explanation given in some of the other gospels. He was greedy, but Luke just drops that in.

00:05:41:13 – 00:06:15:21
Clint Loveall
I’m trying to think. Michael I don’t remember that we’ve had much in the way of explanation or or even foreshadowing of this. We just we get this and the question of why Judas does what he does. You know, those of us who grow up in the faith, we know Judas from from the jump. We we understand. So it’s I think it’s hard for us to really be shocked by this and to feel the weight of a phrase like Judas, who was one of the 12.

00:06:15:25 – 00:06:44:31
Clint Loveall
I think there’s no way for us to get our minds around the kind of difficulty and shock that would have provided to those earliest disciples, say the other 11, who, if they saw it coming, We have no awareness of it. You know, there’s no indication of that. And people have been fascinated by the Judas character. Is he simply greedy?

00:06:44:36 – 00:07:03:43
Clint Loveall
There’s been some theories that he thought he was doing a good thing, that he’s trying to force a conflict because he believes Jesus is going to take over. There’s really no evidence of that in the Gospels. The gospels are pretty unanimous on why he does what he does, because he follows evil instead of good, or because he’s greedy.

00:07:03:43 – 00:07:29:19
Clint Loveall
But there’s no there’s no sort of good motive that’s listed. He’s simply the one by whom the priests are going to get their hands on Jesus, and that I we’re so familiar with that. I don’t I don’t think it’s problematic. I don’t think it’s painful to us, certainly not in the way it would have been in the first readings.

00:07:29:24 – 00:07:58:03
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, we do. I think by distance of time, probably we miss sort of the force and power of the betrayer, the one who’s been in the circle the whole time, the one who’s been a trusted partner and companion. Because for all of the lack of language about Judas and his motivation in the betrayal, there’s just as much even maybe more so, lack of language in terms of his participation with the 12 throughout the rest of the gospel account.

00:07:58:03 – 00:08:19:37
Michael Gewecke
So here we are missing so much of this back story of who he was of of what made him tick, of the motivations that were underneath the surface. For him, it’s natural then, that we as humans try to fill in the blanks. We try to give explanation. Why would someone who was a member of that trusted view, why would they be captivated by the idea of money?

00:08:19:42 – 00:08:48:45
Michael Gewecke
And I think to their credit, the gospel writers, their response to that is because he gave into his his spirit, He gave in to the evil that was besetting him. And that is both the source of historic Christian contempt for Judas. You know, if you know anything about history, you know that for generations, Christians have been very hard on Judas, the character as well as Judas, the idea.

00:08:48:50 – 00:09:15:34
Michael Gewecke
But I think some of that is because we’re all uncomfortable with the reality that we too are tempted by things other than Jesus Christ. And that’s a present reality and temptation in our lives that if we give in to May in many cases result in the betrayal of our deepest values. So is a hard character. Clint Hard because we don’t know a lot hard because the implication isn’t really positive even when we hold it against ourselves.

00:09:15:39 – 00:09:24:09
Michael Gewecke
And so amidst all of those things, I think most of us would prefer to just read past this text and sort of push on to the next thing. Yeah.

00:09:24:09 – 00:09:53:54
Clint Loveall
And whether he’s disenchanted, whether he’s frustrated, whether he sees what’s coming, and he needs a way out for himself personally, or whether he’s just greedy Judas will always be remembered as long as the gospel is told, as the one who trades his allegiance to Jesus for money, for for something earthly, for something crass and common, that he he’s he’s bought off.

00:09:53:54 – 00:10:28:22
Clint Loveall
In fact, in Luke, he sells himself. He’s not even tempted by money. He goes and tells them, I’ll betray him. You pay me for it. And you know, at this point, rightly or wrongly, that’s the role Jesus, Judas plays in the Jesus story. And it’s I it it is helpful. I think if we can try to enter the story deeply enough to be troubled by that, because again, I think we get kind of immune to the fact that this is one of his own.

00:10:28:22 – 00:10:55:53
Clint Loveall
This is one who has been with him. His in the inner circle has seen the miracles, has seen the exorcisms, has heard the sermons, has watched him walk on water. Judas has been there for all of the key moments. And yet in the final analysis, pick something like coins, money, security, or what he perceives to be security over faithfulness.

00:10:55:53 – 00:11:06:36
Clint Loveall
And there’s a warning in that for all of us. And maybe that’s why it makes us uncomfortable. But it it is a troubling and and deeply important part of the story.

00:11:06:41 – 00:11:32:47
Michael Gewecke
Well, one thing Clint to hear is make note of the fact Luke has gone out of his way multiple times. Take, for instance, and averse to why are they seeking for to put Jesus to death? Well, because they’re afraid of the people they’re afraid of. The crowd will look here at the end of verse six, you began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus to them, the religious leaders, when no crowd was present.

00:11:32:47 – 00:11:59:38
Michael Gewecke
I think that this is a fascinating in detail the idea that maybe there’s almost a sense in which now Jesus’s role, Jesus’s public visage has become so high that this is the only way that Jesus could actually be brought down by the religious leaders, that there’s actually a sense in which at this moment Judas is the necessary crutch that’s going to turn the story.

00:11:59:38 – 00:12:22:33
Michael Gewecke
If they don’t have a person on the inside, they can’t just grab Jesus from the temple because he’s become so notable in that time and place, which if we, you know, if we all didn’t know the story so well, that would just be layer upon layer of the complexity, right? That Jesus is so popular as to be untouchable, but yet it’s the person within the inner circle who’s going to give him up.

00:12:22:46 – 00:12:44:04
Michael Gewecke
And then the people he’s going to give them up to, they’re not capable of of taking that the whole way to execution. So then there’s going to be political intrigue. Beyond that, this story is it’s not nearly as rote as it can be if you grow up with it. It’s a shocking turn of events. We’ve not had really any setup for this betrayal.

00:12:44:04 – 00:12:58:22
Michael Gewecke
And yet here it comes. And it’s it’s both a shocking account of what happened. And I think to your point, Clint wisely said a shocking maybe glimpse into what the human spirit is capable of. And I think that makes every one of us uncomfortable. Or it should.

00:12:58:22 – 00:13:35:31
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And the last thing I want to say is that the content most of this matters, and we’ll probably deal more with this when we get into other passages, perhaps even starting next Monday. But don’t miss verse one here. The festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near that there is such rich symbolism. If you’re interested in this and you have a chance to do some reading this weekend on the Seder supper or the Passover meal, the and we’ll do our best to unpack some of this for you when we get specifically to that text.

00:13:35:36 – 00:14:34:08
Clint Loveall
But things like blood and the sacrifice of a lamb and the idea of being delivered, this is rich religious vocabulary for the Jewish people. And and the idea that what happens to Jesus happens during Passover is deeply significant. I don’t think you can overstate how important it is that that language of the unblemished lamb and and the blood of the lamb that provides release from the Angel of Death, all of that story that is carried forward in that holiday and in that that celebrated meal, that remembrance meal that Jesus is going to eat with his disciples, even as in the coming hours He’s going to enact it in a new way that Christians found deeply

00:14:34:08 – 00:14:51:34
Clint Loveall
important. So we’ll come back to that. But don’t simply read over. it must have been a big day for them that when Luke tells us it was the Passover, you need to understand something of what that means. If you’re going to come to terms with the depth of the story. He’s about to tell us.

00:14:51:39 – 00:15:19:28
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, that’s a great place to end and I think it’s really a prompt. We’d love to have you continue along with this study because this is not just a story of long ago. It’s not just a rote retelling of history. It’s actually we’re about to discover that this is a set up to Christian practices that every Christian tradition uses or participates in or returns to even today.

00:15:19:28 – 00:15:41:40
Michael Gewecke
So this is some part history and it’s some part a living practice which will continue. And you’re going to see more of that as we continue this day, next week. I hope that you found something in this video helpful. Give the like if it house helps others find it. Subscribe to stick along with us as we continue and certainly hope that you’ll join us as we continue again next week, Monday.

00:15:41:43 – 00:15:42:48
Clint Loveall
Have a great weekend, everybody.