Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: John 12:1-11

If yesterday we looked into the mirror of the religious authorities to examine our own hearts and lives, today we will have to look into the mirror of Judas and his behaviour in this passage.

I find myself reflecting on the reason he picked on Mary for her beautiful offering, when Martha, or even Lazarus, would seem to have been just as obvious a choice. If Judas’ conviction was truly that everything given to Jesus should rather be given to the poor, then surely he should also have been deeply concerned by the apparent “waste” of food being served to a large group of people whom he obviously did not regard as “the poor”. Yet, not once did he complain that the food should rather have been given to the poor. Why not? Well, evidently, because he had also just eaten his fill of Martha’s delicious offering. He stood there pontificating about the hungry poor while his own belly was full. His true motive was not care for the poor – it was purely self-centred.

John was indeed correct when he pointed out that Judas’ irritation with Mary’s offering was not that he actually cared about the poor, but purely that he saw his own potential profits soaking into the dusty floor of Martha’s home. This he cared about because, if the perfume had been sold for its true value he, Judas, would have had access to an extra year’s wages of cold hard cash as the group’s “treasurer”, and he would have been able to skim a hefty portion off the top. He cared about himself, not actually about the poor.

As was the case yesterday, however, the Holy Spirit’s point in including these verses about Judas’ wrongdoing in Scripture, is not to lead us into the temptation to stand in judgment of Judas. Instead it is to get us thinking about how deceptive our own hearts can be.

So, today, I wonder how aware Judas even was of his own hypocrisy. Did he realise how the spotlight shone on him when he chose to stand so loudly and publicly on what he considered to look like the ‘moral high ground’? Did he even see the darkness of his own heart and intentions, or did something within him honestly feel that he was justified? But as I wonder these things, I dare not point the finger at Judas … instead I find the Holy Spirit inviting me to turn inward and begin to inspect my own heart for signs of the darkness of selfishness, hypocrisy, greed, pride, and any of the multitude of sins of which I readily tend to accuse Judas.

Lord, have mercy on me. Help me to search my heart, to confess honestly the darkness I discover there, and then to receive not only the gracious cleansing of Your forgiveness, but also the power to be transformed from the inside out. Amen.