“Silent witness: Thirty silver coins”
Matthew 26:14-15
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Six years ago, back in 2015, in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, the Library of Congress, together with the Chicago History Museum, the National Park Service, and the National Museum of American History, brought together a collection of artifacts that hadn’t been together since that one, fateful night so long ago. They called it, Silent Witnesses.
As you can imagine, it was an incredibly difficult thing to do. Security was tight and every artifact was not only extremely fragile, but absolutely priceless.
So what items did they bring together? There was the carriage in which he and his wife, Mary, rode to Ford’s Theatre. There was the violin and drumsticks on which musicians played, Hail to the Chief. There was a swatch of Mary’s dress, as well as one from Major Rathbone’s black velvet, blood-stained cloak. There was a cuff worn by lead actress, Laura Keene, that bears his blood.
Even more, there were the items Lincoln himself was carrying in his pockets that night, like two pairs of eyeglasses, a knife, eight newspaper clippings that spoke of him and his policies, a linen handkerchief, a brown, leather wallet, and a Confederate five-dollar bill.
Those items, most likely, won’t come together again for another fifty years.
Silent witnesses. Each one means so much, and each one tells a story.
The season of Lent, more than any other, has its share of silent witnesses too. Think of the crown of thorns that soldiers once pressed down onto Jesus’ head. Think of the nails that held His hands and feet to the cross. Think of the dice with which men gambled for His clothes. Think of the spear that pierced His side.
And today, we’ll think of thirty silver coins.
Listen to the words of Matthew chapter 26: “Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What will you give me if I deliver Him over to you?’ And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray Him” (Matthew 26:14-16).
For a long time, the chief priests had looked for some way to ruin Jesus, some way to discredit Him, to make Him look like a fool in front of the people.
The reason was simple. Not only did they hate Him and the things He said and did, they wanted Him dead.
Besides, think of how bold Jesus had become. On Sunday, He marched triumphantly into Jerusalem, riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey. How the people shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Glory to God in the highest!” The Pharisees said, “Teacher, tell Your disciples to be quiet.” Jesus replied, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out!”
Then of all things, on Monday, Jesus came to the temple itself. As usual, moneychangers were sitting at their tables, exchanging money. There were the sights and sounds and smells(!), of animals prepared for sacrifice. And what did He do? He made a whip out of cords, overturned their tables, and chased them out of the temple grounds. “How dare you turn My Father’s house into a market!” He cried.
“‘My Father?!’” He said? “Who does He think He is?!”
And that was the last straw. Jesus had become too powerful and too popular, and something had to be done quietly and quickly, before it was too late.
So what could they do? They had to capture Him, arrest Him, and convict Him. And just as soon as He was dead and out of the way, they could get back to business, and life could carry on.
But who would betray Him? Who would turn Him in?
Surely not one of His disciples. They loved Him. They were enamored with Him.
When all of a sudden, out of the blue, who showed up? Wonder of wonders, it was Judas, one of the Twelve, one of His very own!
But Judas, why? What was your reason? What made you do it?
Were you afraid of Jesus? Did He know you had pilfered from the treasury and did you think He would embarrass you and expose you before the rest? Or were you mad that He refused to declare Himself a political Messiah who would free Israel from Roman control?
Maybe you thought He was a false prophet. Or maybe by some masterpiece of strategy, you thought you could force His hand? He had already eluded arrest before. Now He could do it in a great public show that would convince everyone, once and for all, that He was the Messiah, the One God promised would come.
Or maybe it was something as simple as greed. After all, you did demand payment for your information, and thirty pieces of silver was the agreed upon price, enough to buy a slave, or a field, or a brand, new set of expensive clothes.
But however innocent or evil his intentions might have been, things didn’t turn out at all the way he planned. Suddenly, his hopes were shattered. His dreams of power and success were disappointed. And when he saw Jesus arrested, tried, condemned, and on His way to be crucified, the Bible says, “He was filled, he was seized, with remorse” (Matthew 27:3).
And as he sat alone in the darkness, flipping those coins back and forth, memories kept flashing through his mind, like the smile on Jairus’ face when Jesus raised his daughter from the dead, or the look on Peter’s face when he walked on water, or the twelve basketfuls of food left over after He fed the five thousand, or Zacchaeus sitting up so high in that tree.
Or think of the stories He told of a good Samaritan or a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son.
And in that awful, heart-wrenching moment, he realized that betraying Jesus could never have been worth the price. No matter how much they shined and glittered, those coins weren’t so important to him anymore. Though they should have made him richer, he was suddenly, infinitely poorer. And that bag that was once so attractive, now burned like fire in his hands. Not knowing what else to do, he went back to the temple.
What happened when he got there? As those chief priests looked down their noses at him, they turned their backs on him, and said, “What is that to us? That’s your responsibility.”
So he threw the money into the temple, and left.
Born in September of 1923, Hank Williams was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Over his twenty-nine short years of life, he wrote and performed quite a lot of songs, including Your Cheatin’ Heart, I Saw the Light, and I’m So Lonesome, I Could Cry.
But one song for which he isn’t so well known is one called, Thirty Pieces of Silver. It goes like this: “‘Tis a sad, but true story/From the Bible it came/And it tells us how Judas/Sold the Savior in shame./He planned with the council/Of high priests that day/30 pieces of silver/Was the price they would pay./30 pieces of silver/30 shackles of shame/Was the price paid for Jesus/On the cross He was slain./Betrayed and forsaken/Unloved and unclaimed./In anger they pierced Him/But He died not in vain.”
“Thirty pieces of silver,” he said. “Thirty shackles of shame.”
And not knowing what else to do to stop that incessant buzzing in his brain, he took that same rope that secured the money bag around his wait, then slung it over the bough of a tree. And in that moment, one of the saddest tragedies in all the Passion story was done.
You know the worst part of it all is that Judas Iscariot could have been Saint Judas Iscariot. If only he had realized there was forgiveness for his sin. If only he could have known that the solution the chief priests gave, “You see to it. It’s your responsibility,” wasn’t the only solution for sin.
For within just a short running distance from the place where Judas ended his life, Jesus gave His life. Jesus was judged and condemned so he, and we, could be declared, “Not guilty.” He died so that we may live. He lived so that we would never die.
As Isaiah once put it: “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
In his book, Sophia House, author Michael O’Brien tells the story of a famous young artist, back in the Middle Ages, who was hired to paint a mural high above the altar of a large church in Paris. The subject was the life of Christ. After working on it for a number of years, it became known as the marvel of its time.
Yet it wasn’t complete. As hard as he tried, he just could not paint two of the faces--the Christ Child and Judas Iscariot. And whenever he tried to fill in those empty spaces, the results just didn’t fit in with the rest of his work.
Then one day while he was walking the streets of the city, he came across some children playing. Among them was a boy who had the face of an angel. With his parents’ permission, he invited him to be the subject of his painting.
Still, since he couldn’t find a model for the face of Iscariot, his masterpiece wasn’t quite done.
Over time, the story of the artist’s quandary spread far and wide throughout the country, and many of those with deformed and wicked faces offered to pose as the betrayer. But none of them seemed quite right for the part. Instead, he said, he wanted a face so twisted that all who looked at it would see sin incarnate.
Years later, as he sat in church one afternoon, a beggar staggered down the aisle, then knelt at the steps of the altar. His clothes hung in rags. His body stunk. Though he wasn’t an old man, he was hunched over, as if he was weighed down by the burden of dark memories.
When the artist saw him, he knew he was the one he’d been looking for.
He took the broken man home with him, fed him, washed him, clothed him, and treated him as if he were a friend. His wife prepared meals for him. His children treated him with kindness and respect. He agreed to sit as the artist’s model.
But as the days went by and the work progressed, the beggar looked from time to time at the image of himself materializing on the canvas. That’s when a sudden grief began to fill his eyes.
When the artist saw his model’s distress, he laid down his brush and said, “My friend, your heart is troubled. What is it?”
And as the man buried his face in his hands, he said, “Don’t you remember me? Years ago, I was the model for the Christ Child.”
Do this for me. Start where Judas started. Come to a clear understanding of what your sin has done. It was because of you that Jesus was crucified.
But don’t end where Judas ended, not even the worst of us or the guiltiest of us. For our story doesn’t end in the Kidron valley, but on Calvary’s cross. It doesn’t end on a rope. It ends with a cross.
As Luther once made so clear: “I believe that Jesus Christ...has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood.”
We could never thank You enough, dear Father, for all that You have done. Grant that we may praise You not only in time, but for all of eternity, for Jesus’ sake. Amen