A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. One of the 12 who was called Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and said to them, what will you give me if I deliver him to you? And they paid Judas 30 pieces of silver. From that moment, Judas sought an opportunity to betray Jesus. Now on the first day of the unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?
Jesus said, go into the city to such and such a one and say to him, the teacher says, my time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples. The disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. Now when it was evening, Jesus set a table with the 12 disciples. And as they were eating, Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.
At that, the disciples were very sorrowful and began to say to Jesus one after the other, Lord, is it I? Jesus answered, he who has dipped his hand into the dish with me, he will betray me. A son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would it would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Judas, who betrayed Jesus, said, master, is it I?
And Jesus said to him, you have said so. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. There's one sentence here that's very striking to me. When they asked Jesus, who's going to betray you?
Our lord answered, he who has dipped his hand in the dish with me, he will betray me. And that's the way it has been down the centuries. That is the way it has been with Christ's church. Those, for the most part, who have most betrayed the church of Jesus Christ have come from the ranks of his special disciples, not merely from within the church, but from the echelon of his officers, in a sense of those who have every right to think of themselves and to be thought of as an elite. They are in a very special way members of Jesus Christ in the hierarchical priesthood.
And yet it is exactly from that from those ranks that the greatest enemies of Christ's church have come. It has come from the men who have dipped their hand into the dish with Jesus. Now dipping your hand into the dish has tremendous significance in this context. It means you have been invited to partake of a meal. It means you are enjoying the hospitality of someone, and this was an indisputable mark of loyalty, of friendship, of allegiance.
And yet it just as it happened at with our blessed lord, so has it been with his church. Those who have most betrayed Jesus have been those who came from the bosom of his church, who dipped their hands into the dish with it. You can think of the names as well as I can. But do you we think, of course, of Luther or maybe Henry the eighth who's a very controversial figure or of a Cranmer or of a Calvin. But you go back way back.
Go back to the fifth century. Go back even before that to the third century. Go back indeed to the very evening of the lord's supper. One of the 12 one twelfth of his chosen the men Christ chose with his own hand from the very bosom of his family, one of them betrayed him. Now I I I'm not condemning Judas.
I'm really that's something else. As I say, I can make a good case out for Judas, but I'm saying he did betray Jesus. He did betray him. I can make a good case out for anybody. There is nobody.
There is no one who's ever walked God's Earth, no matter how criminal he was, that was all bad, that you couldn't find some qualification, something to be said in the man or the woman's favor. I know that. I'm not I'm really dealing now with facts, not with the persons. In the in the sense, I'm merely dealing with what they did, what their conduct was, and it's an indisputable fact. I mean, there's absolutely no question about it in the least that those who have who have done most to destroy Christ's church came from his bosom of that church.
And that's true right in our own time. Right in our own time. Take in the last fifteen years. Many of the men who rose up in opposition to the holy sea and were priests, where are they now? A large number of them are no longer in the priesthood of Jesus Christ.
They have departed. Now this isn't casting stones. This is merely stating a fact of history. You can't be a heretic without once belonging to the orthodox. Just remember that.
You can't sin unless there's a thing called virtue. But we have to think of this in in our in terms of our own selves. We dip our hands into the dish with Jesus Christ. How often do we betray him? Now remember, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus three times.
So when you think of the betrayal of a Judas, remember there was another one of those disciples who is very who's running a very close second to Judas as far as betrayal goes. But in consequences, they are worlds apart. One went out and hanged himself after he betrayed his lord. The other, Peter, who had bitter tears of repentance that he had denied Jesus. Now we have a choice here.
It isn't a matter of whether we have sinned or not. There aren't many of us who can stand up before god and say, I am sinless. We may stand up before ourselves or we may stand up before the public, but who can stand up before God and say, Lord, look at me. I am sinless. So we're all we're all in that same batch.
We are all a bunch of sinners, more or less degree. So there we're we are we are with Judas and we are with Peter. Now the great question and the great decision which is in my hands for the most part is whether what what direction will I take? Go out, hang myself, and remember what Saint John says, and and it was night. Or shall I join Peter and recognize my fault and cast myself at the feet of the forgiving Jesus?
That's our choice. In one case, despair, and in the other case, boundless hope and confidence. That's our choice. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.