Read Matthew 26:51-52 & Matthew 27:3-5

⁵¹ With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

⁵² “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

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³ When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. ⁴ “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”

⁵ So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

Let’s Pray.

Alright, so let’s just go ahead and address the elephant in the room… this is some heavy scripture, and as much as we want to just talk about God being the all loving, all knowing, all caring, all fixing God, we also need to address some of the heavier stuff in the Bible and some of the heavier topics in our lives as well, and today we’re talking about worthiness.

But before we dive into that any further, I feel like I need to address the other elephant in the room… my hair. If this is my first time meeting you, no I don’t normally do my hair like this, it’s typically much more conservative so please don’t think too much into it. It is like this this morning because yesterday at his baseball game, Cullen hit another home run and last night Sam was messing with my hair and gave me a mohawk and Cullen thought it was so funny that he said that for his reward, he wanted a root beer float – my man! – and he wanted me to preach looking like this today. Don’t ask me why, kids are funny. But he was so pumped yesterday that I couldn’t help but go ahead and do it this morning because these moments are short, and I want to have these kind of funny and fun memories that will last a lot longer than I probably think they will. I want Cullen to be seen and recognized when he does something good because… well… we all love that, don’t we? Being recognized when we do something well. We want to feel our “worth”. Our “value”.

Which brings us back to our subject for today. Being worthy or feeling completely and utterly unworthy. When we encounter God, when we encounter situations, and when we encounter this world we can really feel our worth at times. Those moments can be great, or they can be absolutely some of the worst possible memories of our lives. But thinking about our “worth” is kind of a hard thing to put into words.

I think it’s easier to think of understanding what I mean when I talk about our worth by thinking about it in terms of experiences, because I admit that it is a bit of an odd wording and can so I want us to make sure we’re on the same page before we really dive into today’s discussion.

We really feel our worth when we contribute on a team towards the team’s success. In fact, this was one of the big things, early on, about working with millennials in the workspace. We wanted to feel like we were contributing and making a difference in the company we work for. But, even outside of work, we’ve all felt that moment of knowing we contributed. Maybe its scoring a goal, making a good play on a team or, maybe, even hitting a homerun in a coach-pitch little league game. But its that feeling where you know you helped the team win. It makes you feel worthy to have a place on that team.

Or maybe it’s just as simple as being told “good job” on something. Somebody letting you know that they were impressed or appreciated the effort you’ve put forth and that it wasn’t in vain. Maybe it’s being recognized at work, being brought flowers after a long day, or it could be as simple as somebody texting you and telling you “happy birthday” when it’s your special day.

These little moments where we that we’re valued in this world, where we’ve earned that love from somebody else because they’ve recognized us and loved us back. These moments are wonderful, and they are what drive me to make sure somebody who’s helping me hears me say “thank you!”. They’re what drive me to wear my hair in silly ways for my kids to show them that I’ll make them feel special and that I’m their biggest fan, because while these moments are wonderful, we’ve all been on the opposite side of these moments as well.

We’ve been in that place where you feel completely unnoticed. Where you wonder if your work really matters. Whether anybody is going to notice whether or not I clean the baseboards or fold that next load of laundry.

We’ve all had those thoughts where we wonder if anybody would notice if we just didn’t go to work today. Didn’t get that work done. Didn’t show up when we were supposed to. Some of us have even had those moments where we wonder if anybody would notice or care if we just… disappeared altogether. Those are raw moments and raw feelings.

And sometimes if can be a complete toss up if these feelings are better or worse than if you did show up and completely fail altogether. Instead of being the one who caught the touchdown pass, you’re the one who missed the crucial block that cost you the game. The one who didn’t quite pull their weight on a team project and let the team down, the one who screwed up at home and you just don’t know how to fix it. Yeah… we’ve all been there as well.

Both of these things are just two different sides of the same coin. Feeling worthy, and not feeling worthy of anything.

And as much as we think of these worldly things in worldly terms, we have to admit that it can be even more scary when we are confronted with not just a peer or a relative, but a supreme being with these feelings. When we feel like we aren’t ever going to be able to shake the habit of sin, whether we’re worthy of the cross. Or when we feel so emboldened by it and so worthy that nobody else seems worthy of it instead.

Worthiness is a tough topic, but I think we can get a better understanding of it be looking at the three characters in these two stories today. Both of them are heavy and both of them have a warning and a gospel message in them for us all the same.

The first character is Peter. Well, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke we just read that it was a disciple, but John goes ahead and outs Peter in his Gospel as being the one who struck the guard. If y’all remember Peter, he is certainly one of the more interesting and spirited disciples of the bunch. Peter is a big personality. He tries to stand up for Jesus multiple times, he’s typically sticking his size 11 shoe in his mouth, and he has a bit of an ego about where he tends to have this aura in the witnesses of being the self-proclaimed 2nd in command to Jesus’s authority. Needless to say, Peter feels his worth. He feels like the other disciples look to him, like he can prove himself to Jesus, in front of Jesus, and all of this because he gets to be with Jesus.

In all honesty, you can look at this description of Peter and read the scripture that says “on this rock I will build my church” and think to yourself, “loud, judgmental, and boastful” … yeah, I know some congregations like that or some people in congregations like that, or – better yet – yep, I’ve done that in church before. I’ve boasted about my ability to love or I’ve looked down on somebody else for not volunteering or signing up. I’ve heard that person sing in the pews. I’ve seen that person seeking attention waving their hands and dancing during worship….

See, like Peter, we have a tendency to, when we feel like we’re on the right side of things – on Jesus’s side – throw a little shade or make a little judgment of others. We almost feel like there are eyes on us when we’re on the side of Christ that makes us – like Peter – want to defend him by looking down upon others’ actions. By judging ourselves against the actions of others to find our own worthiness. And, in the moment, it can make us verify or justify our own sense of worthiness. But, in the end, we don’t ever really feel good about it.

Peter was in an extreme variation of the same situation in this scripture. He just watched Judas betray Christ and these guards are going to take them, and in Luke it says that a disciple – I’m going to assume Peter here again – asked Jesus, “What do we do?”. And, without waiting for Jesus to give him an answer, he struck out with his sword and cut the ear off of the guard to which Jesus immediately replied urging them to put away their swords or they’ll die by the sword. He rebukes Peter in this moment of judgment when it feels pretty darn justified, right!? We can look at it now and think, well it was fulfilling scripture, but at the time it was just raw emotion and a backstreet brawl kind of moment that could have gone very sour. Peter let his ability to think he was in the right get him onto the side of wrong with one swift, moment of judgment. He felt the eyes of the disciples on him and he felt the eyes of the guards – his enemies – on him, but he failed to see the eyes of the one that mattered upon him. It was all too much, and Peter chose the wrong thing.

The other main character in this story is Judas Iscariot. Now, Judas is the quintessential and ultimate bad guy for most of the world. His name is synonymous with evil or betrayal. But, we have to remember that Judas was still just a boy. The disciples weren’t 40 year old men, they were mere teenagers or – maybe – in their 20s at the oldest as all but Peter were still unmarried. Kids make mistakes. Kids make big mistakes. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle what Judas did here or make him sound like a misunderstood character. I say these things so that we can connect with this disciple who most of Christianity loathes a little bit more as a human and not as, well, Judas. But have you ever wondered WHY Judas might have done what he did. We aren’t given any motive in any of the four gospels so we are left to try and create a scenario in our own heads. Judas isn’t mentioned much at all in the Gospels other than being listed a few times until the moments before his betrayal, the betrayal itself, and the scripture we read today where Judas, overcome with remorse, chose to take his own life.

But his name does give us a bit of an indication as to who he might have been. The name Iscariot was also his father’s name given to us in the gospel of John, and it meant that they were most likely part of a radical Jewish faction called the Sicarii that were known for committing terrorism against Rome and carrying out assassinations. It also means that Judas was most likely from a very different background and a very different place than the rest of the disciples who were mostly from around Galilee. So, we can imagine he would have felt as if he was a little bit of an outsider, he probably still carried that radical identity to an extent, and he may have even felt – much like the Pharisees – a sense of persecution or fear from what Jesus was teaching. All of that may have led him to make the awful decision he made, but after he made it we only have this one interaction documented in Matthew that tells us what happened next. He went to get his 30 pieces of silver and, feeling nothing but remorse because he realized what he had done, he was overcome with guilt and tried to return the money but was told no. He did exactly what Jesus told him he was going to do. He let down the entire team. He let down Jesus himself and now he was, most likely, going to be the cause of his Master’s death. That is a lot to process… That is a yoke that many would find all too heavy. Judas could probably see all of this, he could see the faces of the disciples, feel their eyes on him the next time he saw them in public. He could probably sense the judgment from others as much as anything. Like the other disciples, he didn’t know what was going to happen! He didn’t know that there was a happy end to the story. He thought that the story ended where he got paid 30 pieces of silver for the life of a deity, and it was all just… too much. He felt all of those eyes, but he couldn’t remember the eyes that looked him in the face the night before while he washed his feet. He couldn’t feel the warmth of the eyes that handed him the cup and the bread that would offer him redemption. It was all too much.

And finally, we have our third member of the story: Jesus himself. See, this is the true lesson – as it most of the time is – in the story. I know that Easter is only a few weeks away and we’re going to be talking about all of this soon, but Jesus is the one who looked both Peter and Judas in the face and told them that they would betray him. Jesus is the one who looked them both in the eyes as he washed their feet. He is the one that smiled at them and relaxed with them in the Upper Room as the dawn of his death approached. He is the one who offered the first offering of the new covenant of bread and wine, body and blood, for their redemption. And even though Jesus says very little across both of these stories, we can infer quite a bit by who Jesus was.

With Peter, with us, when we go to judge others from a place of worthiness where we, like Peter, feel vindicated in our judgment, there was the moment before Peter did anything where he asked Jesus, “What should we do?”. And the next line says that he acted on his own. I think what Jesus would have told Peter is that before he made any decision, before he made any judgment, before he thinks about all of the eyes that are on him, that he look to Christ. That he would look to how Jesus would handle the situation. How he would do it with love, patience, and a verbal and tonal delicacy that reveals to us the nature of our new creation. I think, if Jesus could have said anything to Peter it might have been something along the lines of, “Stop thinking about all of the eyes on you, and put your eyes on me.” Because when we put our eyes on him we see how he treated Zacchaeus, Matthew, the Pharisees, and so many others who challenged him with his incredible ability to provide edification and accountability through the lens of love for his neighbor. Not out of violence, judgment, or spite as Peter did, as we all do.

And I think his message would have been the same to Judas. As Judas spiraled into his final moments and was overwhelmed by what he had done. As his own unworthiness washed over him not just from his own deeds but from the words of the High Priest as well – That is blood money and it’s not good to us here – his worthiness wasn’t found anywhere. He felt like the eyes of God were boring into him, the eyes of the Pharisees were boring into him, and he might have even known that the eyes of the world would eventually bore into him and it was all to much. But Jesus… Jesus would have said the same thing to Judas that he said to Peter: put your eyes on me. Don’t look at yourself, don’t look at yourself through your broken, human lens. Instead, look at me. Look at how I see you. I see you as somebody whose feet I would wash. Look to me and know that I am somebody who desires that you come to me as you are. We don’t have to fix ourselves to come to Jesus. The gospel message is that we come to him broken and he will fix us himself.

The gospel message is that he never takes his eyes off of us and they aren’t the eyes of judgment. They aren’t the eyes of somebody who is going to force you to live to a standard. They are the eyes of somebody who would wash your feet. They are the eyes of somebody who would relax at dinner with you even if it was the last dinner of his life because he desires you. Just you.

So let us take our eyes off of this world. Let us take our eyes off of ourselves. Let us not look to the world or even the silly hair styles of our parents to find our worth and worthiness. Let us look into the eyes of Christ and find the source of our love and the source of our salvation. Let us here those words again and again from him over the course of this week, “Eyes on me.”

Let’s Pray.