He said this not because he was concerned for the poor, but because he was a thief and, being keeper of the purse, drew on what was deposited in it.
John 12.6, DBH
There was a time when I would have read this verse and thought, more-or-less, “what a bad man Judas is. I am glad that I am not like him.” John does not comment on this motive he includes here for Judas’s complaint of Mary’s use of the unguent on Jesus. He simply states his knowledge of Judas’s lack of character without emotional appeal. We are left to supply any emotion and, for me, that emotion would once have been contempt: “Yes, he deserves what’s coming to him.”
Reading these lines now, I see them less emotionally perhaps, at least with regard to setting myself apart from Judas. The emotion I now feel follows the realization of what is coming to him. Pity at the lack of character and pity at the recognition of what’s coming to Judas; what comes to each one of us to refine character: the purgatorial fire.
Judas must go through the fire in order to be purged of his selfish self. Must wander, feeling homeless and fatherless, until he recognizes the One Who is his Home and His Father. And so, he is my brother walking the same road upon which I find myself.
