Empathy for the Devil

by J R Forasteros

  God promises that only the person who sins is accountable for that sin. The person who follows the way of God will share in God’s life. This is very good news at the individual level: we are not held accountable for the sins of our parents (or their parents or their great-grandparents, and so on).

  But there is a gray area: while we are not held accountable for the sin we’re born into, that sin corrupts us. This atmosphere of sin warps us into beings for whom acting against God’s will feels natural. The insidious truth of sin is that it convinces us we are less than we were created to be.

  When we are saved, God makes us new creations. The Holy Spirit—the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead—makes us new. God enables us to live in the new reality that Jesus’ resurrection inaugurated, what the Scriptures call the kingdom of God.

  But we still live in that old world, corrupted by sin. Though we’re given new lungs, we still breathe that old, poisoned air. If we’re not diligent, we slide back into old patterns of sin without realizing it. Though we’ve been transformed into round pegs, we often find it easier to act like squares.

  A LEGACY OF LIFE

  My mother is a licensed family systems therapist. If you were to go to her for counseling, your whole first session would be spent drawing your family tree going back at least three generations and discussing how each person in the tree interacts with all the others. A significant component of the family systems therapist’s job is helping you understand how the attitudes and behaviors that brought you to therapy have been produced and encouraged by the family system you’re part of.

  As you begin to heal, the therapist’s job shifts to helping you prepare for how your family system will react to your healing, because our families are not typically happy when we begin to heal. Every system is conservative; it resists change. Healing is change, and whether we’re healing from psychological trauma or we’re being made new in Christ, the sinful systems that shaped us resist.

  Left to our own power, we’re all doomed to camp conversion syndrome. Fortunately, when the Spirit gives us new life, we are folded into the church, the body of Christ. Jesus tells us the church is a spiritual family, one that supersedes the families into which we were born.

  [Jesus’] mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:31-35)

  If Jesus’ words sound radical to you, they were even more so in the ancient world. But his words are good news for all of us who inherited sin from our families. Jesus invites us to follow him and to be reborn into a new family marked by the waters of baptism.

  The church is a new spiritual family. It is a new spiritual culture. It is a new spiritual institution. The church is the kingdom of God, the new reality inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection, bursting forth in the midst of our sinful, broken institutions, cultures, and families. The church brings together people from every walk of life. People of every shape, size, age, and color. People formed in any number of sinful institutions, cultures, and families, but who have all been made new by the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

  Together we learn how to be the people of God. We sing songs together that teach us the language of faith. We pray together. We read the Scriptures, exploring our new family heritage together. We approach the table and share in bread and wine that we might receive the grace to continue to work out our salvation together. We serve together, imitating the self-giving love of our king, the firstborn from among the dead.

  Along the way, we begin to see ourselves reflected in the lives of our spiritual brothers and sisters. Attitudes and behaviors that we never gave a second thought suddenly seem strange, problematic, even sinful. We learn that blowing up isn’t the only way to respond to conflict. We learn that we can share our thoughts without judgment. We learn how to love ourselves by experiencing the love of others. In the church, among the people of God, the Spirit grafts us into the body of Christ, into a new family, and we learn how to live into this new life Jesus has won for us.13

  The good news is that generational sin isn’t the end of the story. Even in Exodus, God promised, “But [I show] steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments” (20:6). Sin is not all we inherit from our parents. Both our spiritual and our biological families can form a strong legacy of faithfulness. Perhaps you learned from your parents a strong work ethic or a spirit of quiet, humble faithfulness. My parents taught me how to be welcoming and hospitable. They imparted to me a concern for outsiders that they inherited from their parents.

  The faithfulness we learn from the church is inherited too. Go back in my genealogy far enough, and you’ll find Michael Miksch, the man who brought the Moravian Brotherhood Church to North America. My great-grandfather, Paul Life, is the United Methodist pastor I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. I grew up hearing stories of the churches he pastored, including the one where we had our Thanksgiving family reunion and another where he accepted the pulpit after the previous pastor ran off with a sixteen-year-old parishioner. There is story after story of how he brought hope and healing to people no one else thought were worth their time.

  It’s not so surprising, then, that I pastor a church for people who haven’t found a place in traditional church settings. I come from a long line of people whose faith compelled them to the margins, to the disenchanted and disenfranchised. This legacy of faithfulness extends through my family tree for generation after generation.

  None of us comes from a perfect family. But the Spirit, through Jesus, invites us all to join the family of God. We can learn to see our sin and cultivate new habits of faithfulness that will echo down through the generations and into the halls of eternity.

  11

  Judas

  Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.

  MARK 14:10-11

  TUESDAY MIDNIGHT

  Judas escaped into the darkness, choosing his path as carefully as he could in the moonlight. He flinched at every breeze, sure the others had noticed his absence and discerned his intent. They would try to stop him. None of them would believe Jesus had lost faith.

  The signs were there, if anyone was paying attention. That no one was paying attention was exactly why Judas fled toward Jerusalem under cover of darkness. They would say he had lost faith. But Judas, son of Simon, had not lost faith. He knew beyond question that Jesus was the promised Messiah. This was the rock on which he had built his hopes. He would not lose faith—even if Jesus himself had.

  SUNDAY

  The week had been tumultuous, to say the least, overstuffed with harbingers of the approaching Day, if—like Judas—one were inclined to read signs and portents into events. Not that one has to be a magician, Judas reflected. Subtlety has never been Jesus’ strength, and he has abandoned all pretense on the road to Jerusalem.

  On the day he knew Pilate would march into Jerusalem from the west, Jesus entered from the east. The Roman parade was all cavalry and soldiers, banners and imperial standards, a show of power to remind the pilgrims celebrating the Passover that Caesar was no pharaoh tossed so easily into the sea. Jesus’ parade was all Galilean peasants waving palm branches and singing triumphal hymns. Pilate entered on a white stallion; Jesus rode a donkey. If Rome took note at all, it saw no threat. But the Galileans and Judeans all knew the words of Zechariah: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.” In one fell swoop, Jesus galvanized his Galilean supporters, declared his messiahship to Jerusalem, and mo
cked Rome. Judas had always marveled at Jesus’ brilliance, but that parade was a masterstroke.

  Following along behind Jesus, clapping and singing with the crowds, Judas marched into history. Only a few days earlier, the Twelve had argued who would be granted to sit at Jesus’ right and left. The Sons of Thunder had actually requested it. But as they followed their king into the Holy City, the argument seemed trite to Judas. They all marched behind their messiah. A thousand years from now, he thought, our descendants will tell stories of their great-great-great-grandfathers who marched into Jerusalem and into glory, who defeated Rome and established the kingdom of heaven on earth. And who would be named among us? Me!

  Perhaps delirium has blinded the other disciples to the signs, Judas thought. He noted how quiet Jesus was in the midst of the celebration. When they visited the temple that day, Jesus had looked around the Court of the Gentiles, carefully taking inventory of the layout. His silence on the road back to Bethany that night had been uncharacteristic. The others laughed and joked, unable to see through the haze of anticipated glory. But Judas saw.

  MONDAY

  The fig tree caught them all off guard. Jesus seemed inexplicably irritated that he hadn’t found any figs. After he cursed the tree, Andrew approached him. “Lord, what’s wrong? You know it’s not the season for figs.”

  Jesus sighed heavily. “Yes, Andrew. But some things should always be in season.” The Twelve were used to cryptic responses from him, so they nodded and exchanged the usual hapless looks. They assumed—rightly, as it turned out—that Jesus would explain it to them later.

  As they crested the Mount of Olives, they paused, as they did each time, to marvel at the temple. Judas’s heart quickened at the sight of the temple sitting atop Mount Zion, glowing in the sunlight. From that vantage point, it was obvious the beautiful, enormous structure was the very footstool of the Lord.

  They descended to Jerusalem through the East Gate at the foot of the Temple Mount then entered the Court of the Gentiles, already packed with pilgrims preparing for the Passover. Jerusalem, a huge city on any day, was never so full as at Passover, and the temple was the hub of the Passover activity. Thousands pressed within the walls, changing Roman denarii for Jewish coins, buying and selling animals.

  One moment, Judas was lost in the sights, sounds, and smells of the crowd. The next, he heard shouting, and after scanning the throngs of people, found Jesus turning over tables and quoting prophets. He shook open cages to release doves, untied and whipped lambs, swept piles of carefully stacked coins from tables into the crowds of pilgrims. The merchants were shouting as well, some attempting to argue with him, others calling for the temple guard.

  Several priests pushed through the crowd, and no sooner had they broken through to confront Jesus than he stopped and turned to them. He shouted, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of robbers.”

  Jesus refused to allow the merchants to gather their animals, though several tried to pry their coins from the hands of pilgrims who had scooped them up. The priests whispered among themselves and finally sent for instructions from their superiors. Word spread quickly throughout the temple complex that the rabbi from the Galilee was there.

  Before anyone could figure out what to do with Jesus, the Court of the Gentiles was flooded with the blind and lame. As he always did, Jesus began healing. Men who had been unable to enter the temple for years were brought to him and healed. They immediately ran to the priests to be declared clean. An air of celebration began to spread throughout the courtyard as more and more people found healing. Someone—probably Philip or Bartholomew—began singing the same messianic psalms they had sung as they entered the city.

  It was hard not to get swept up in the euphoria. The Messiah had ridden into Jerusalem, and there he was, in the Lord’s own house, acting out the Jubilee year. Judas felt swept along in the riptide of history in the making. No one seemed to note the fear in the eyes of the merchants and the priests. No one saw the leaders of the Pharisees and the Herodians whispering together at the edges of the courtyard. No one except Judas—and Jesus, of course, who saw everything.

  TUESDAY

  The next morning, on their way into the city, they noticed the fig tree withered and dead, its leaves a crown of death spread on the ground. The Twelve began whispering to one another as they noticed it, but it was Peter who spoke up. “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”

  Jesus slowed and turned to them. Only once before—when Jesus had learned that his cousin John had been executed—had Judas seen such weariness in his rabbi’s face. He looked as though he were Samson carrying the gates of Gaza up Hebron, but without Samson’s great strength.

  “You must have faith in God.” He looked down toward the temple sitting atop Mount Zion. “Believe me, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be raised up and thrown into the sea,’ and you do not doubt for one moment, but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you.” He turned back to the Twelve. “Prayer, children. Prayer. Whatever you ask in prayer, believe and it will be yours.”

  As they descended toward Jerusalem, Judas reflected on his rabbi’s opaque, troubling words. Why would anyone want to cast Zion into the sea? Babylon destroyed Solomon’s Temple but cannot destroy Mount Zion. Even Rome cannot destroy Zion. A scrap of song leaped into Judas’s mind, and it seemed particularly appropriate in that historic week.

  Judas elbowed Peter, walking next to him, and muttered just loud enough for Peter to hear, “God is our refuge and strength.”

  Peter smiled, and a song erupted from his lips, characteristically booming and off-key:

  A very present help in trouble.

  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,

  though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

  though its waters roar and foam,

  though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

  Peter’s mirth spread, and soon the rest of the Twelve joined in. But Judas quickly trailed off. Does no one else notice that Jesus is not singing with us?

  They returned to the temple, and Judas was not surprised to see they were awaited; several prominent Pharisees huddled at the edge of the courtyard. When they saw Jesus, they began speaking hurriedly together. Judas saw them conspiring with another group of men he recognized as Herodians. Only days before, seeing those two groups conspiring would have filled Judas with righteous pity. The enemy of their enemy makes them friends, but what hope have the enemies of the Messiah? Today, however, Judas couldn’t ignore the subtle shadow of dread cast by Jesus’ increasingly strange behavior.

  Judas was so focused on the conspirators he didn’t see the envoy emerge from the temple. But as the murmuring around him swelled, he turned to see the crowd parting and a large group of priests and scribes coming directly toward Jesus and the Twelve. It seemed as though everyone but the high priest Caiaphas himself was marching toward them. Jesus’ eyes were hard, and the weariness from earlier was gone or at least hidden from view.

  One of the chief priests stepped forward. “Hear now, you troublemaker. You may not just march in here and disrupt the Passover proceedings.”

  Jesus smiled thinly. “I see you received my message.” He looked around the courtyard. “I also see you have yet to drive the thieves out from my father’s house.”

  “Yes, yes. You’re a prophet. We’re all deeply impressed, I assure you.” The priest’s sarcasm was thick, and several of his company chuckled their agreement. “Tell me, prophet, by whose authority are you doing these things? Who gave you the authority to walk in here and start tossing tables?”

  Judas recognized the trap. If Jesus claimed divine authority there before the leaders of the temple, they could have him arrested. Judas cursed himself as a fool. We should have been prepared for this. This might be the moment Jesus declares himself! And we did not bring swords; we did not coordinate with the men who came down from Galilee with us.


  Before Judas could do more than panic, Jesus said to the chief priest, “Answer a question for me, and I will answer yours. Was John’s baptism of heaven, or was it only a human invention?”

  The chief priest frowned, and after thinking for a moment, he turned to consult his friends. Judas noted suddenly that many in the Court of the Gentiles were watching this showdown, and he had no doubt many of them had received John’s baptism. Judas marveled again at Jesus’ quick reply. If they denied John was a true prophet, they would lose credibility with the crowd. But if they admitted John was of heaven, Jesus could ask why they had refused his call to repentance. Either way, they weakened their position as leaders of the temple.

  Finally the priest turned again to Jesus, “We don’t know.”

  Jesus smiled. “You couldn’t discern the truth of John’s ministry? No wonder you struggle with mine.”

  Judas watched their faces turn red. Several pulled on their beards and whispered angrily to one another. But none dared challenge him publicly again. Jesus began to teach the crowds, telling his signature parables, but this time painting the religious leaders in Jerusalem as dangerous, corrupt, and ungodly. It wasn’t long before half the courtyard was listening to him—including many of the scribes and priests, as well as some Sadducees, Pharisees, and Herodians. Again and again, they asked him questions, posing as friendly, but each question was a carefully laid trap that sought to discredit him. Again and again, Jesus danced among their traps and left them ensnared instead.