I Confess:
I Sold My Soul
Rev. Amy Butler
(Audio)
Everybody has a price.
That’s what Hemant Mehta figured, anyway, when he listed his soul for sale on Ebay.
In January of 2006, Mehta, a graduate student at DePaul University, created an auction on the online auction site Ebay explaining his position as an avowed atheist and offering to spend one hour per each $10 of the winning bid in whatever worship service the winner specified.
There are presumably lots of things auctioned on Ebay that never get sold (case in point the large collection of Pokeman cards recently listed by my 9 year old son—if you’re interested see me after worship), but the chance to save Mehta’s soul did sell. When the auction closed, after 41 bids, it had been won by Jim Henderson, a minister from Seattle, Washington, for $504.00.
After winning the auction Henderson and Mehta met and Henderson explained he did not want to try to convert Mehta after all . . . he just wanted to promote dialog. As a result Mehta attended several worship services and wrote about his experiences on Henderson’s website: www.off-the-map.org. Now, selling your soul is a scary prospect, but it’s not nearly as scary to this preacher as an anonymous critic writing about his experiences attending your church. Note Mehta’s first service, Catholic mass at Old St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, Mehta was asked to rate the sermon between one and ten, with one being utterly boring and ten amazing and off the charts. That poor priest got a 3! Now, that’s scary.
Yes, everybody has a price but my guess is there aren’t too many of us who think too much about selling our souls, on Ebay or otherwise. Selling your soul, after all—we would never do something like that, even if we did know in what forum we might market such a product. No, talking about selling your soul is serious business. It calls to mind images of desperation and hopelessness. It brings to mind people, well, people like the one we read about this morning during our time of silence.
Starting today and for the week ahead we are bombarded with scripture. The Gospel story of this week of passion is far too long to read while the congregation is standing (especially just in case there’s someone here rating the service) but, more than that, the story of this week looming ahead of us is heavy and dark, filled with betrayal and pain—a lot to stomach in one or even several sittings. So, we read the story in parts, and today I invite you to listen as I read the tale of a man who sold his soul: Judas Iscariot.
While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.’ At once he came up to Jesus and said, ‘Greetings, Rabbi!’ and kissed him. Jesus said to him, ‘Friend, do what you are here to do.’ Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him. At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, ‘Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But all this has taken place, so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.’ Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.
Matthew 26:47-50; 55-56
Judas, a disciple of Jesus entrusted with keeping the community purse, has gone down in history as one of the most vile characters we know, and not just those of us who go to church. Anybody who knows the story of Jesus knows who Judas is, the sorry disciple who sold his soul, who betrayed his friend Jesus, for 30 pieces of silver. He’s the bad guy, the one who appears in classical paintings with heavy-hooded eyes, dark shadows on his face and his cloak, pulled around him in a way we can only describe as . . . sinister.
Yes, he sold his soul, an act of betrayal, of selling out to someone or something that we know, at the heart of who we are, doesn’t reflect what we believe and turns us diametrically away from everything we claim to hold dear. Human societies don’t have much sympathy for people who sell out what they value. In fact, you only have to think of people like, Robert Hanssen, for example, FBI agent who traded United States intelligence secrets to leaders of the Soviet Union for over 15 years, to know that we punish behavior like that harshly. And, we usually make a movie about it, too.
We don’t like people like Judas, you see, because they are so radically and publicly untrue, and so it is that, in a week like this one, we have little sympathy for people like Judas. Or Robert Hanssen, for example. This week, when we’re just managing to keep our heads above water, when Jesus, the one we had placed all our hope in altogether, is faced with trial and persecution and death, when what we were just beginning again to hope for: that evil would not win the day is seemingly squelched beyond repair . . . oh, no. We have little sympathy for someone who would betray a friend, who would sell his soul for what seems, looking back, like absolutely nothing of value whatsoever.
30 pieces of silver? To betray his friend? Scholars are not sure exactly how much 30 pieces of silver was worth—best estimates say maybe 4 months’ salary for a skilled laborer. 30 pieces of silver? To send the universe into chaos, to betray even . . . God? We can’t abide the kind of person who would do something like that. Especially not this week, when there’s so much riding on the question of whether evil will win. Especially not this week.
But . . . we know it’s true: everybody has a price. Everybody has a price. And maybe it’s just that truth that sends us away shaking our heads with a disgust that only masks our fear, because it’s also true that the sin that’s most difficult to forgive in other people is, of course, the one we fear the most for ourselves.
That last night, right before the passage we read while the disciples were having dinner together, and Jesus told the twelve one would betray him, do you remember what they said? “Not me! It’s not me, is it? Surely . . . not me, right?” They were scared. They were scared because they knew of their own ability to betray, of the very real possibility that they could be unfaithful.
And how about us?
We run in fear from the possibility of what we know is true: it’s very likely that we will, like the disciples, sell our souls and betray that God we claim to serve. Oh yes, it’s true: we become betrayers, betrayers just like Judas, when we sell our souls to the influences that pull at us all the time.
We betray when we compartmentalize our lives because it’s too inconvenient to be a Christian at work. We betray when we allow our anger to hurt those around us. We betray when we over consume. We betray when we cannot keep the sacred commitments we’ve made. We betray by our indifference to those hurting around us. We betray when we refuse to forgive. In all these ways we sell our souls and betray the God who has befriended us.
Just like Judas.
Just like Judas, and Peter, come to think of it . . . and all the others, too. Holy week is a week that starts, after all, with crowds and crowds of people, lining the streets and shouting with excitement, throwing their cloaks on the ground and singing with anticipation because there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for this one who has come to save them.
And it ends . . . just a few days later . . . where? With darkness falling like a thick shroud over Galilee, with all hope gone, with Jesus struggling to take his last breaths, and . . . with the foot of his cross surrounded, not by the disciples who had pledged and promised, they’d give up everything to follow . . . but by just a few women, folks from the margin, crying. Everyone else, gone.
Everyone lets him down. Everyone betrays. Everyone sells his soul.
It was their biggest fear—our biggest fear—lived out in full color. They couldn’t stick it out. They couldn’t be true. They sold their souls, just like you and I do. All the time.
This Sunday as we look out over the week ahead of us we have the knowledge of Judas’ and the other disciples’ betrayal hanging over our heads . . . and we know the breath-stealing fear of our own tendency, well, likelihood, really, to sell out.
As we wave our palms and shout our “Hosannas!” we recognize that fear, the fear of what we know to be true about ourselves: that we often sell our souls and, in the process, become people who betray what we love. Betray even our God. Yes, it’s that gut-sinking fear from which we run because we confess: we sell our souls.
Judas realized he’d done it, too, and the fearful realization of what he had done sent him running back. If you read further into the story for the week you’ll see he went right back to the chief priests to whom he’d sold out his friend, desperate to return the money and make it right. The chief priests wouldn’t take the money back, of course. What was done was done, and that was it. Judas had sold his soul and there was no buying it back.
The sad story of Judas, the disciple who had shown so much promise that he was appointed to keep the treasury of Jesus’ group, well, his story ended with the hopelessness that comes when you sell your soul. Judas ran from the court of the high priests and, though reports are varied, apparently somehow ended his own life. He was bereft and destroyed. He’d become the thing he feared the most. He’d become the betrayer.
And, of course we musn’t forget . . . so too the other disciples. Peter, the one who denied Jesus three times in public . . . Thomas, who couldn’t believe . . . James and John, who fell asleep when Jesus needed them most . . . all them abandoning Jesus, selling out to social status, political power, personal well-being.
Just. Like. Us.
I wish Judas had stuck around for a little while longer. I wish he had not given in to the horror of his own betrayal. I wish he had asked for another chance. If he had, he would have heard the word of hope that we hear today, this Sunday before the darkest week of the Christian year. That word is found in the lives of the other betrayers in the story who, upon realizing what they’d done, turned, not to despair . . . but to the one who welcomed them right back. Jesus, their friend and teacher; Jesus, son of God; Jesus, bread of the world: he opened his arms and forgave them their betrayal.
And Jesus forgives us.
Jesus forgives us.
Judas: you didn’t need to end it all. Judas: you could have joined the rest of the gang, all of us, who all betray Jesus, too. Judas: Jesus would have welcomed you back. Again and again and again. He would have. He would have because he is the one who, in the end and facing even the cross, did not betray. He’s the one who, with his final breath said: “Father, forgive them . . . “. I wish Judas could have heard that forgiveness. And I wish that we can hear it, too.
And so it is that we enter the week ahead with the assurance that Judas never found but that we still might: there is a savior ready to welcome you and me back into relationship, no matter how far we’ve strayed . . . no matter to whom we have sold our souls. I tell you: Jesus wants us back.
We’ve already joined the ranks of those who betray—over and over we sell our souls for what doesn’t matter in the end. Today Jesus offers us an invitation to join the ranks of the forgiven, and to bring our souls back where they belong.
Amen
