Not So Out of Body
One doesn't need to look far – on this Thursday of Holy Week – to find the antithesis to the Gospel of Judas.
Last week the National Geographic Society announced that it was publishing the Gospel of Judas, an ancient Egyptian manuscript. In the year A.D. 180 Iraneaus, the Christian bishop of Lyon, discredited the document as false and heretical. After hearing details about some of the contents, I can see why.
First, the Gospel of Judas disagrees with the Bible’s gospels about the role that Judas played in the arrest, trials, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Throughout the reliably authentic gospels in the Bible, Judas is the sinister betrayer whose petty greed opens the door for the devil’s greater temptations to turn on Jesus. This is validated by Jesus’ frequent and merciful efforts to call Judas to see the danger of his sin and turn back from the dark side.
However, the Gospel of Judas portrays Judas as the only disciple who really understands Jesus, and he is following Jesus’ orders to betray him. It presents the ultimate mission of Jesus as the desire to be killed – not so that sinners could be freed – but so that Jesus’ spirit could be freed from his body. That’s because Jesus’ spirit was trapped in the flesh of his body, and true salvation comes only when one’s spirit escapes the materialistic prison of the body. Jesus would do this by his death, according to the document and its teachings reflecting an antichristian teaching of that time (and today in similar forms) known as Gnosticism.
So then, according to the Gospel of Judas, what is material in Jesus is bad. His body is useless, actually a hindrance to his mission. To benefit anyone, he needs to get rid of his body. “You will exceed all of [the other disciples],” he tells Judas in this document, “for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me.”
One doesn’t need to look far – on this Thursday of Holy Week – to find the antithesis to such Gnostic heresy. On this day that Christians call “Maundy Thursday,” we find comfort, forgiveness, inspiration, and strength from the very material of Jesus that the Gospel of Judas claims he didn’t want or need. His body. It is given to us in Holy Communion!
“This is my body given for you,” Jesus tells believers, “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
Jesus wasn’t looking to free his spirit trapped in a materialistically evil body, he was looking to free troubled spirits and burdened souls like ours from the trap of sin and guilt. He assures repentant sinners that such is the case by instituting Holy Communion for us, so that we can take his very body and when we eat it find his holiness, his power, his everlasting life.
PRAYER: Thank you, dear Jesus, for taking on human flesh and living in our world as a brother to us. Comfort us in our temptations with the remembrance that you were tempted with fleshly cravings too. On this Maundy Thursday, we share in your body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Grant that we receive this miraculous gift of your grace with faith, so that it renews our trust in you and our love for one another. Amen.