Peter, Judas, Me--Fools All

It's April Fool's Day and I am pondering being a fool, at the same time that I am pondering Wednesday in Holy Week.

Catholic priest and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen reflected that Holy Week always give us a choice between being Peter and Judas.  Human as we are and sinners as we are, we all betray Jesus in various ways.  1) in ignoring his commandments: love God and love our neighbor 2) go into the world and preach the Gospel  3) in choosing to waste our lives  4) in ignoring his call  5) worst of all is when we do it knowing full well that we are doing it.

There is no help for it.  As long as we are human, we give in to self interest, laziness, anger—all those things we used to call “vices” or “deadly sins”.  Most destructive of all is the sin to which Judas succumbed: despair.  Peter betrays Jesus but he recognizes it, and weeping repents.  He turns again back to life.  He may not have done exactly the same sort of betrayal before or after, but Scripture gives us a picture of a fairly cantankerous fellow, and he was probably not perfect even after Christ’s death and resurrection. 

Judas, on the other hand, when he realized what he had done, hanged himself.  Whether it was because he was too proud to ask for forgiveness, or he became a victim of a doubt in God’s kindness and mercy—considered himself to be so evil God could never forgive him—he did not turn back to God.  Sometimes, we give up on ourselves, even when God hasn’t.  The likelihood is that if he had turned back, he, too, would have been forgiven, as had so many of the sinners that Jesus spent time with.


We often think of Judas as the most evil person who ever lived.  He was a thief.  He was a snitch.  A turncoat.  But plenty of other people have done those deeds—all the informers who worked for the Nazis in World War Two, or for the KGB in Russia, for instance.  Judas was not rare—he had a run-of-the-mill sort of wickedness.  But because it was Jesus he betrayed, rather than his grandmother, we particularly remember him. 

Like Peter and Judas, we sin and must repent and be forgiven over and over.  If we are willing to listen, daily we can hear God’s words of love and forgiveness.  It’s not a one-time over-and-done thing.  It's harmful fantasy to think that because we are Christians, we can keep from sinning.  But we need not to be discouraged.  Christ’s love is so endless and boundless that he will never send us away.  He has made us, knows us for what we are, and *EVEN SO* loved us enough to die for us.  It is a subtle kind of pride for us to take God’s job on ourselves and assume that we are beyond God’s reach.  That is true only if WE put a fence saying "God, keep out" around ourselves.

So which flavor of fools will we be?  The despairing fools who believe God is too weak to forgive even a great sin?  The proud fools who won't admit to sin and ask for forgiveness?  Or the fools who recognize their own foolish fallibility, and don't hesitate to follow the King of the Fools--the One who foolishly laid down his life for all the rest of us?

(Source of painting unknown)