by Tom Stuckey.
“He went and hanged himself.” (Matt 27:5)
This is not a very promising text. It would not be wise to conclude your sermon with the words of Jesus, “Go and do likewise”. There were 6,069 suicides in England and Wales last year; the highest since 1999. That is about 19 a day. These suicides cover persons of every social/democratic category. Of course a few hit the headlines. In January 2023 Ruth Perry, the headmistress of a Caversham School died by suicide after a destructive OFSTED Report. Then there were the three celebrities who ended their lives following the experience of participating in the popular TV ‘Love Island’. Going further back there were the tragic deaths of Amy Whitehouse and Whitney Houston.[1] Were these two so severely damaged by fame, fortune and the expectations of others that an untimely death was inevitable? Sometimes reasons are obvious but not always so.
Judas, the disciple, is an enduring enigma. As far as we can ascertain he was high up in our Lord’s affections. He was probably lying next to Jesus at the last supper. How else could Jesus have acknowledged him as the betrayer without the other disciples hearing (Matt.26:25)? It has been suggested that Jesus not only gave him the choicest morsel of food but may even have placed it in his mouth (John 13:30). It was love’s last appeal, but tragically Judas had drunk so much darkness into his soul that this token of love was received as wrath. None of the other disciples suspected his dark designs as he left the upper room on the night of betrayal. He was a trusted companion, sent on a special mission by Jesus (John13:29-30). Alan Mann thinks that many today unconsciously take Judas as their role model. ‘He typifies the post-industrial self . . . the intimacy Judas craves is purely for his own satisfaction and that others are expendable.’[2]
Both Jesus and Judas die “hanging on a tree” (Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29). In the eyes of the law both are cursed. The contrast between Jesus and Judas could not have been greater. The life and death of Judas demonstrates the “down-side” of God’s justice, enacted in wrath. The death of Jesus demonstrates the “up-side” of God’s justice, enacted in love.
Judas is the antithesis of Jesus.[3] While the Jesus narrative is one of coherence, his is a narrative of incoherence. Judas slips into the “nothingness” of isolation because he cannot maintain relationships. Jesus takes “nothingness” away from people, absorbing it into his own relational identity with the Father. Judas dies because he has based his whole life on an illusion and, losing all sense of self worth, suffers from chronic shame. He cannot confess, because confession would sink him further into shame. He cannot pray, because self-absorption has robbed him of the capacity to know anyone other than himself. He has distanced himself from the corporate world of relationships to such an extent that, when Jesus offers him a token of love, he turns away. The life and death of Judas is a negation of at-one-ment. He kills himself because he knows he is already dead. His suicide is the ultimate act of self-harming in a desperate attempt to feel something. Jesus and Judas represent two polarities; one walks the path to heaven, the other the path to hell! We have the same choice.
In Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy there is this inscription over the doorway of hell.
Justice it was that moved my great creator. Divine omnipotence created me and highest wisdom joined with primal love.[4]
Is Dante suggesting that divine justice, power, wisdom, and love have created hell? Jesus and Judas illustrate the inseparable relationship between light and its shadow. Some argue that Dante’s inscription points to the choices people make since love gives us the independence to freely decide on either path. I believe God is more directly involved in that because of his love for the world, he makes himself accountable for the “nothingness”—which is the hell of his “non-creating”. Judas chose the path of “non-creating”. In his quest for absolute affirmation he copied the fall of the angels and dies on a tree. Jesus chose the path of creating. In his quest for justice he is obedient unto death and dies on a tree.
Jesus does not climb the tree like Judas; he is lifted up. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is not only lifted up on the cross, but he is raised up in resurrection. His cross becomes the new tree of life—not a tree of death. Thus Wesley can sing, ‘Thy love on the tree display unto me, and the servant of sin in a moment is free’.[5]
[1] Amy Winehouse was found dead on 23 July 2011, and Whitney Houston on 11 February 2012.
[2] Alan Mann, Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society. Paternoster, 2005, p125.
[3] I am greatly indebted to Alan Mann’s reflections on these respective narratives of coherence and incoherence. (Mann, 107-131).
[4] Wilson, Dante in Love, Atlantic,2011, p.209.
[5] MHB 200
Theology Everywhere 
Thanks Tom that is worthwhile mulling over in the coming weeks. It would have been helpful to have the actual reference in Dante’s great work. It is early on in the first book, Inferno, Canto 3:4-6, and 3:9 has the famous saying, ‘Abandon hope all ye that enter in.’ There is a lot of dire stuff over the next 4000+ lines and Virgil and Dante encounter Judas [along with Brutus and Cassius] not long before they emerge from hell and see the stars again. Stars come at the end of all three books of The Divine Comedy and are tied to the love of God with the wonderful conclusion ‘At this point high imagination failed, but already my desire and will were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, by the love which moves the sun and other stars.’ Paradiso 33:142-145.
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Early in the 2nd edition of the cited Alan Mann’s “Atonement for a Sinless Society”, there appears this quote from Laughlin’s “Jesus and the Cross”: “It must be strongly asserted that it is not possible to simply repeat the words of the Bible, Fathers or Reformers and expect to gain a hearing within our own contemporary context. …. The old light is both familiar and comforting but as time goes on it does struggle to illuminate the far corners of the present.” You have only to watch a street evangelist shouting bible quotations through a megaphone at the crowds streaming towards a football ground and to watch the reactions on the fans’ faces to see the truth of that.
In 2000, the Evangelical Alliance published “The Nature of Hell”, in which we find: “Traditionally, evangelical Christians have understood the Bible to teach that hell is a place of unending physical and psychological punishment, and that with the possible exemption of children who die in infancy, the mentally disabled and those who never hear the gospel, it awaits all who die without faith in Jesus Christ.” There was concern at the time that some evangelicals were moving away from this belief towards the idea that non-Christians were simply annihilated at death, because these kind-hearted people could not equate belief in a loving God with belief in eternal torture for most of the people who have ever lived.
I was told recently that it was obvious that there must be a Hell, because a just God could not allow a Hitler or a Stalin to go unpunished. But this is to ignore a vital teaching of Christianity. If any of those who were condemned at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity had repented in their death cells and turned to Christ, then they would have received forgiveness and gone to Heaven. “The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.” It appears from traditional doctrine that judgement has nothing to do with what good or evil we might have done in this life but is purely a question of whether or not we are a Christian in good standing at the time of our death. It is a very strange concept of justice that a young Muslim teenager who wins a community award for her kindness to others before being raped and murdered will be condemned to Hell but the perpetrator will go to Heaven if he later repents and says the sinners’ prayer.
I have some sympathy for Judas. Did he have any choice or was it always God’s plan that he was selected to betray Jesus? Did Jesus know that when he asked Judas to become his disciple? An alternative view of the betrayal by Judas is that he shared the expectations of the Messiah that most Jews had and was frustrated that Jesus was not fulfilling his destiny. He thought Jesus needed to be put in a position where he would have to show his power. He was heartbroken when this misfired and Jesus submitted unresistingly to his condemnation and execution.
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My friend, thank you, a lot to reflect on… I am surprised at the number of only 19 suicides a day, maybe our aversion to the idea of suicide leads to misrepresentations of “cause of death”.
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