When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27: 3-5).
I was surprised, when I reread this passage, to find that Judas is a tragic figure, tragic in a very Greek sense of the word. Not a tragic figure like Oedipus, brought down by a fatal flaw, pride, and not a tragic figure like Antigone, doomed to make an impossible choice between her family and homeland. Instead he is like Ajax, the man who, for me, represents the very essence of tragedy.
His story goes like this. Ajax was enormous, the strongest Greek who sailed to Troy. He was known as the “bulwark of the [Greeks],” meaning he was less a man than a wall. Seemingly invincible, he is never harmed in battle and never needs help from the gods.
After the war, though, he and wily Odysseus both lay claim to a magical set of armor. Their claims are equally strong, but Odysseus wins the armor by making an eloquent speech to the Greek leaders. Ajax is enraged, and he vows to kill every one of them. One night he sets out to do just that, but before he can find them Athena, the goddess who protects Odysseus, sends madness upon Ajax, confusing his sight. In his delirium he mistakes a flock of sheep and goats for his enemies and slaughters them, tearing them apart as he laughs and taunts the men he thinks they are. It’s a horrible scene to imagine—the panicked bleating animals, the cracking bones, the laughing madman—but what happens next haunts me even more.
Here’s how Sophocles, the great tragedian, describes the moment when Ajax comes to his senses and realizes what he has done:
Gazing round on the room filled with havoc,
He struck his head and cried out; then amidst
The wrecks of slaughtered sheep a wreck he fell,
And sat clutching his hair with tight-clenched nails.
There first for a long while he crouched speechless;
…
But uttering no shrill cries, he would express
His grief in low groans, as of a moaning bull.
Here lies a man who seemed invincible; no spear or sword could have brought him down, reduced him to the moaning wreck now before us. But it’s hard to say what, exactly, has wrecked him. Yes, he knows he will be a laughingstock, ridiculous in the eyes of friends and enemies (brave Ajax, mighty Ajax, who fought with sheep!), and yes, he knows that his father will be ashamed of him for doing something so ignoble.
But these seem like effects of a deeper cause, which, put simply, I think is this: what he has done, he can never undo. Ajax is guilty of this crime, and he will be no less guilty tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. What he has done is now a part of who he is, part of his history and character, and he can no more escape his guilt than he can escape his body. As it turns out, the only way he can escape his guilt is to escape his body. So he falls a second time, this time on his sword.
The essence of tragedy, as Ajax teaches us, is so simple and so obvious it escapes our attention, or perhaps it’s so unpleasant that we avoid thinking about it. The essence of tragedy is this: what we have done is done, and although there is no undoing it, we find ourselves responsible for it anyway.
Not everything we do ends in tragedy, of course, but it seems to me that the possibility of tragedy is always with us. It is the possibility that what we say and do flies from us, that words and actions escape our control and intentions, but at the same time they rebound on us, define us in the eyes of others and in our own eyes as well.
Tragedy doesn’t have to be as dramatic as it is in Greek plays, either. It can be so trivial: an unkind word, a thoughtless action, eyes off the road for just a moment, and then it’s too late, over before we even realize it, and there is no taking it back. Tragedy is what we wish with all our hearts we could take back, but never can. Again, sometimes it’s enough to apologize, weep, beg for forgiveness, sometimes it’s possible to repair the damage, heal the wounds, but there are other times when we find ourselves like Ajax kneeling among the slaughtered sheep, unable to undo what’s done.
So it is with Judas. The betrayal is over. It had been so easy, really, accomplished under the cover of darkness and with nothing more than a word (“Rabbi”) and a kiss.
Now the night is gone, and in the clear dawn light he wakes up in his bed and knows, all at once but far too late to take it back, that he is responsible for the imminent death of an innocent lamb.
His guilt is not an idea. He feels it like an icy nausea in his stomach, a feeling very much like falling very fast. So he falls to the floor, clutching his hair and groaning as he repents of his role in the arrest. It changes nothing. He cannot discharge his guilt. He springs to his feet and he grabs the thirty pieces of silver and he runs across Jerusalem and into the temple and falls (a second time) before the chief priests and elders and confesses his sin. If he cannot expel his guilt, surely at least he can share it.
But as he lifts up his churning face, their faces remain impassive. What is his guilt to them? (Here Judas discovers the irony of guilt, that only basically decent people ever suffer from it.) In a panic he flings the silver coins at their feet, but as he flees from the temple and runs again through the streets of Jerusalem without any destination or plan in mind, just desperate to escape this horrible feeling, he discovers that no matter how fast he runs or how quickly he turns around corners or darts down alleyways, whether he flies over the cobblestone streets or stumbles on them, his guilt and grief keep pace with him. His words and deeds are not silver coins, possessions he can throw away; he owns them, but this is not the kind of ownership he can disavow. What he has done inheres in him. He has betrayed his friend, and there is no changing that. Innocent blood will be shed, whether he feels sorry or not, whether he makes money off of it or not. Judas is responsible and helpless: in other words, a tragic figure.
Exhausted and afraid, tired of running and afraid of the life that stretches out before him, he despairs. Like Ajax he can think of only one way to escape, so he falls a third and final time.
The Christian story is ultimately a comedy rather than a tragedy, and like a good comedy it ends, someday, with a wedding, of the church to its bridegroom, Christ. But tonight we look with fear and pity on a tragedy. On the crucifixion, to be sure, but also on the tragedy of Judas, a man condemned by his own words, who saw no hope of accounting for them. I hope otherwise, for him and myself, and I offer in closing a prayer for Judas, or better yet a prayer he has taught me, a tragedian’s prayer: “Father, forgive us, not only when we know not what we do but also, and perhaps especially, when we know exactly what we have done. Amen.”
Preached at St. Paul’s Memorial Church, Good Friday, 2015