Surely, Not I!

Have you ever wondered what kind of man Judas was? Have you ever wondered what he looked like, who his friends were, what his personality was like? He has been pictured, mostly as a wiry, beady-eyed, sinister-looking fellow, distant from the other Apostles — isolated. Did you ever wonder if the real Judas actually fit this familiar stereotype? The popular author, Max Lucado, has written a book in which he wonders about all this. “That stereotype,” he says, “I wonder if that is so true”…

We have no evidence (except Judas’s silence) that would suggest that he was isolated. At the Last Supper, when Jesus said that His betrayer sat at the table, we don’t find the Apostles immediately turning to Judas as the logical traitor. Matthew tells us that when Jesus told the Apostles that one of them would betray Him, ” they were greatly distressed and started asking Him in turn, ‘Not I, Lord, surely.'”

Maybe we’ve got Judas pegged wrong. Instead…