Today's Scriptures are John 13:21-25. In this passage, Jesus reveals that somebody is going to betray Him. What begins is a lot of staring and looking at each other. All of them were trying to figure out which one it was.
I remember being in youth group and playing a game called wink. The object of the game was that someone was randomly chosen in secret to be “the murderer.” And the murderer’s job was to act innocent and simply wink at people without giving it away who he/she was.
Everyone else’s job was to look around at everyone else and try to 1) not be killed and 2) guess the identity of the murderer before he/she winked everyone to death. If you happened to be the unlucky recipient of a wink, you had to lay your head down on the table and say that you had just been murdered.
I don’t know why, but I loved this game. We played it a lot in my youth group. It really is a blast. And that is kind of the imagery that comes into my mind when I read this scenario with Jesus reclining at the table with His disciples that evening.
Everyone was trying to figure out who the bad guy was. No one was really sure. Some might have been wondering if Jesus was giving some future-oriented prophecy. If that was the case then any and all could be guilty. But if it wasn’t a future prophecy but more of a current reality, then who did it?
We all know who it was. It’s kind of like we get to read it from the vantage point of having our heads down on the table, already having been winked at. We know Judas is the bad guy.
One of the things that I think is unfortunate for the church today is we like to play wink too much. We spend too much time pre-occupied with who the bad guys are. Fact is only Jesus knew. That was good enough. Jesus was able to handle that information.
Sometimes we’re not. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out who the worst people are among us and then when all of our suspicions are confirmed, we have a hard time serving those people and continuing to minister to those people (Jesus was able to wash Judas’ feet…we don’t even want them to sit in the same row with us as we sing “How Great Thou Art”).
I think it best that we probably not be so pre-occupied with playing wink. Here’s the dirty little secret. We’re all winkers! We’re all sinners and bad guys. We all have screwed up and thus we are totally screwed…without Jesus. But with Jesus in the mix, everything changes.
He doesn’t play the game like we play it. He is able to treat sinners and even betrayers with a level of dignity that very few of us can ever seem to achieve. I think we could learn a lot from Jesus.
Yes it is true. There are bad people who do bad things among us. But, don’t search to hard for them, because you might end up seeing yourself.
“Heavenly Father, help me to not go on witch hunts. Help me to care about the things you care about. Help me to not always be seeking out sinners so I can condemn them, but help me to love sinners because you loved me…a sinner. Help me to hate self-righteous indignation. Cleanse that tendency out of me. In Jesus’ Name.”
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