Jesus' last week of his life in first-century, Roman occupied Jerusalem was not a good one.
Jesus met with scandal, pressure from opponents, misunderstanding, a hasty nighttime trial, beating, humiliation, and a grueling death. He was among friends who misunderstood him, and worse, some of his closest friends turned on him.
Peter denied knowing Jesus. Judas betrayed him. In the gospel of Luke, the two events happen side-by-side, first Judas, then Peter.
Judas pretends closeness with Jesus, greeting him with a kiss. Peter stays at a distance, unsure of whether he wants to be associated with Jesus or not. Some people think Judas' offense was worse. He handed Jesus over to be crucified. Well, Peter played the coward. Judas, it seems, misunderstood Jesus and made a poor judgment call that merely helped out events that were already in motion. Peter simply cowered out of selfish fear.
However you evaluate their actions, they both turned their backs on and abandoned their friend and Lord.
The real difference is not in what they initially did, but what happened next.
As the story goes, Judas took his own life. The gospels don't really psychoanalyze Judas, but one would think that he couldn't climb out of the hole of guilt. He had turned on his friend, which resulted in his gruesome death, something perhaps Judas didn't see coming. He couldn't fathom coming out of it. He couldn't imagine God forgiving him for what he did.
Peter's story turns out differently. Peter wasn't any better. However, Peter's story ends differently because he experienced Jesus' forgiveness and a new chance. Jesus embraced him, and offered Peter the possibility of a new chance.
If Judas had only waited around and not given in to the guilt.
If he had, he would experience that God knows that beneath our human evil, beneath our petty judgmentalism, beneath our tendency to turn on people rather than embrace them, beneath our violence, anger, lying, lust, and greed, -- beneath it all God sees frail, broken humans who don't understand.
Even beneath the show we might put on of not really caring about God.
We're not as "bad" as we think we are. God sees right through it all. And the story of Jesus' love says that God embraces us with the hope of something better than our brokenness.
God knows that what we need most is not to be crushed by the guilt of our actions and mistakes. What we need most is someone beyond ourselves to say we are forgiven. What we need is to be welcomed and told we have another chance. Our offenses and mistakes do not need to be the end of the road, or what defines us.
Judas gave up on the idea of that kind of hope. Had he not, he would have known the same forgiveness and hope of new life that Peter did.
Their stories are for us. The story of Jesus says that we do not have to be enveloped by the darkness of our lives. We do not have to live with the mentality that "God can't or won't forgive what I've done." Or the silly idea that, "You don't know what I've done," and then conclude that somehow it makes you out of God's reach or care.
There is no depth too deep. The 90s rock band Gin Blossoms sang a song "Follow You Down." The lyrics go,
"Anywhere you go, I'll follow you down, I'll follow you down but not that far..."
Jesus' life says that God could sing the first part, but never the second. God will never say, "but not that far."
There is no life that is unredeemable or unworthy of God's love and forgiveness. Even as they crucified him, Jesus said, "Father forgive them; they do not understand what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
God understands. That's what the whole story is all about. God understands, and God forgives.
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