Hero and Villain

“I’m King of the Hill! I’m the hero! My team wins!” Judas shouted. He stood on top of a dirt mound with three of his friends around him. The hot midday sun beat down on the sweaty boys. The other four boys glared at him. They hated it when he won, because he gloated so much. 

“Judas, I need you!” his mother called. He ran to his home. “Judas, please take this to Zacharias’s house.” She handed him a small package. His mother was a short woman who bustled from task to task with energy. She had long black hair and dark eyes. Today she wore light-colored clothes. For two years after her husband’s death, she had worn black clothes, and her eyes had often been red from crying all night. Now that she had come to terms with his death, she wore brighter garments.

“Yes, mother,” he said. Judas looked much like father, tall, with a muscular build and fierce dark eyes. He intended to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a hero. He carried the package across the street–a dirt path–and down it for half a mile and stopped at Zacharias’s house. Zacharias was not home, of course, in the middle of the day. He worked at Kerioth’s oversight board while his wife stayed at home with their seven unruly children. Judas’s mother often eased her days by sending packages with bread and fruit to her.

Judas knocked on the door. When Sarah answered, he handed her the package. “Thank you. Your mother is a dear heart,” she said. “Come in and sit a minute.”

Judas took a seat at her table. 

“You must be ten years old now,” she said. “Handsome as your father. You’re the best-looking boy in Kerioth.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m nine, going on ten, and I will fight like my father did. He fought for freedom against the Romans. The Romans don’t belong here and we’ve got to push them out.”

“Be careful who you say that to,” she said. “Some of our brethren might tell the Romans.”

“I know I can trust you,” he said. “My parents named me after Judas Maccabeeus. He fought the Greeks and he won. I want to fight and win and be a hero to my people, the Jews, like he was.”

“Very good. Look toward Galilee. Not long ago a baby was born in Bethlehem accompanied by signs from heaven. He may be the promised Messiah who will drive the Romans out and give us back our land.” She molded bread dough in a bowl.

Judas glowed with excitement. “I want to meet him when he’s older.”

“You can do it, Judas. Now, please take this small gift to your mother and tell her thank you for the package.” She handed him a necklace she had made.

When Judas returned home, his mother said, “While you were gone, your friend Tobias came by. He claimed that you stole some money from the group fund.”

Judas handed her the gift from Sarah and said, “Tobias lies from morning to night. I don’t know why you listen to him.”

She donned the gift necklace and said, “Samuel said much the same thing last month about you.”

“They lie because I beat them so often in our games. Ignore them, mother.”

“Now is your time to read the Torah.”

“Yes, mother.” He took the scroll in hand and sat and read it for hours on end. At night, he pulled out a hidden bag and counted the coins in it, coins he had stolen from the other boys.

A year later, his mother married a second time, and a year after that, she bore a child, a son named Berel. Judas never liked his stepbrother. He didn’t like the new husband either. 

Later, when he was 15 years old, he met outside the town each night with his old friends and other young men. They practiced military drills and sword-fighting. Berel begged to go with the group. Judas told him he was too young. Berel continued to beg so much that their mother encouraged Judas to take him. 

One day Judas took the group, including Berel, up Mount Amasa on a hot morning. By noon the heat became unbearable. The group had no water. Sweat poured down their faces. Judas ordered his men and the boy to run down the mountain to a rock formation, a landmark he had selected. Halfway down, Berel, who was last, stumbled and fell face first into the hot hard dirt. When one of the men turned around and climbed up to him, he asked for water. No one had any water, so the man carried Berel to the foot of the mountain and set him down in some shade. Berel had passed out. A man came and splashed water on him, but he did not revive. The young men shook him. Judas came and looked at his stepbrother. “He’s dead,” one of the men said.

Judas mourned the loss for half an hour. His mother blamed him for his stepbrother’s death, and they barely spoke after it.

Judas worked with his group until he was 25, when he made his way to Galilee, where he met a number of fishermen. He went out on the Sea of Galilee with Peter, one of the fisherman, who showed him where the best fishing spots were, how to prepare a fish for cooking, and how to mend the nets and fix the boats. They often talked about the redemption of Israel.

One day, as Peter stood on the shore, mending a net, a Rabbi named Jesus called to him and said, “Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” At once Peter went with Jesus. Judas stood by, dumbfounded that Peter would leave the tools of his livelihood on the shore to follow a man who had not promised him a new job. So Judas took over Peter’s fishing business and shared some of the profits with Peter’s wife. 

One day, Peter stopped by to visit his wife and he spoke to Judas about Jesus. Peter said that Jesus would bring about the redemption of Israel, that he was the promised Messiah who would lead Israel to freedom, as the prophets had written.

Judas spent hours pacing the shore, under the sun and under the moon, while he pondered the points that Peter had made. The waves washed against his feet and toes in his sandals. They cleansed him. That is what I want to do, Judas thought. I want to cleanse this land of the Romans. I’ll be a hero, like Judas Maccabeus.

Then Jesus returned to the same shore another day, and he asked Judas to follow him. Judas recalled that this same man was the same as the baby who had signs from heaven about him when he was born. He joined Jesus and the eleven other disciples as they walked around the countryside and Jesus performed miracles.

To James and John, the Sons of Thunder, Judas said, “Since Jesus can perform miracles, surely he can perform the miracle of driving the Romans out of Israel.”

James said, “I wish he would throw down fire on the Romans!” His brother John agreed.

The group received money from women who followed them as well as from villagers, and they had a money bag. They decided that Judas would keep the money bag. He would often help himself to the money and spend it on items he wanted, such as a pair of sandals and extra food.

Jesus continued to speak about the Kingdom of God. Judas was sure that He would usher in a Kingdom where the Romans were either dead or gone from Israel. Yet, when asked about the Kingdom of God, Jesus said it was not of this world. 

Judas became concerned that Jesus would fail in his mission to overthrow the Romans, so he went to the priests and elders and said, “I know that you want to arrest this man Jesus. “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” They counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. He left, excited that they paid him to be a hero. Once they arrested Jesus, he told himself, He would perform a miracle and set Israel free.

Shortly after that, Jesus presided over a supper in an upper room with his disciples.

Judas chatted with the other disciples, ate the dinner, and drank the wine. As they were eating, Jesus said that one of the disciples would betray him.

The disciples were sad to hear that. Each of them started to say to Jesus, “Lord, is it I?”

He answered, “He who dipped his hand with me in the dish will betray me. The Son of Man indeed goes as it is written of Him, but how sad for that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”

Then Judas, who was betraying Him, asked, “Rabbi, is it I?”

Jesus said to Judas, “You have said it.” He told Judas to do what he had to do.

Judas left the supper and went to the priests. He told them he knew where Jesus would be in the next hour or two, because Jesus often went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. The priests had him lead soldiers to the Garden of Gethsemane. The darkness made it hard to distinguish one person from another. Judas had prearranged a signal with the priests: He would kiss Jesus. 

Judas led soldiers and a crowd into the garden. The people wielded swords, clubs, and torches. Judas kissed Jesus. The soldiers arrested Him and led Him away.

Judas roamed around the area while Jesus was taken to Pontius Pilate, to Herod, then back to Pilate. When Judas learned that Pilate had ordered that Jesus be flogged and crucified, he returned to the high priests and elders. Seized with remorse, he threw the thirty pieces of silver at their feet and said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”

The priests discussed the matter among themselves. They decided that they could not put the thirty pieces of silver into the Temple treasury because it was blood money, so they decided to buy a field, and they called it the “Field of Blood.”

Then one of the priests found Judas and gave him the deed to the land. “Now You own the Field of Blood,” he said.

“This is out in nowhere. It’s bushes and weed and two trees,,” Judas said. 

“What’s that to me?” the priest said, and he left.

Judas’s conscience tormented him. He had betrayed Jesus to His death. He had wanted to be a hero and he had become a villain.

He wandered over the field, repeating to himself that he was a sinner and a villain. “It would have been better if I had never been born,” he told himself.

When he kicked some bushes aside, he spotted a rope lying on the ground. He picked it up and ran it through his hands. He pulled on it and twisted it. He tied it to a tree trunk and pulled on it with all his weight. It held strong, though parts of it were frayed. “This will do,” he told himself.

He climbed a tree and wrapped the rope around a suitable branch, then he wrapped the rope around his neck with a knot. “The hero is a villain,” he said and he leapt from the tree.

The rope held, and he was strangled to death. 

After a day, nobody had come to this remote field. Judas’s body began to bloat from noxious gases. The rope began to give way. His belly made him look like a fat man, a dead fat man. After some time, the rope gave way and his body tumbled to the ground. His belly landed on sharp rocks and his innards gushed out. Wanting to be a hero, he had betrayed the King, and he had died a villain.

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