Sayers thus implies that betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver is merely an intensification of the exchange that many Christians fall into. The Jesus-following Judas, echoing the anti-Jesus Scribes and Pharisees, trusted his own certitude more than he trusted Christ. Sayers’s Judas thus acts like many Christians today, certain that his interpretation of the truth was absolute-much as those who denounced Jesus for healing on the Sabbath were certain that their understanding of the truth was absolute. Convinced that Jesus has sold out to political celebrity, Judas sells out Jesus to traditionalists. Judas, of course, saw only the triumphal entry, not realizing the symbolism of Christ choosing the donkey over the horse. But, Baruch adds, if Jesus is too timid to make war against political oppression, he should ride into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey. This would signal to the Zealots that Jesus was ready to have warriors follow him into battle in order to overthrow Roman control. What Judas didn’t realize is that a Zealot named Baruch, one of Sayers’s most important fictional additions to The Man Born to Be King, had contacted Jesus in advance, telling him that if he wanted to fulfill his political role as a revolutionary Messiah, he should ride a horse into Jerusalem. As a result, Judas thinks Jesus has fallen for the temptation of celebrity status. Much as politicians today enter rallies with fans cheering and waving signs, Jesus entered the city with admirers yelling “Hosanna” and waving palm branches. Then something happened that confirmed his suspicions: the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (Mt 21, Mk 11, Lk 19, Jn 12). But as Jesus became more and more popular, Judas began to worry that Jesus would abandon the role of suffering servant in order to satisfy his adoring fans. Convinced the Kingdom of God was to be spiritual, not political, Judas defended Jesus when others questioned his motives. In contrast to the Jewish Zealots, Sayers’s Judas fully understood that Jesus did not come to lead a revolution against Roman oppressors. Wanting both skeptics and Christians to see biblical characters as real and hence relatable human beings, she gave Judas a characteristic that tempts and corrupts the most earnest followers of Jesus to this day: certitude. Sayers challenged conventional images of Judas, I believe, for another significant reason. Very early in her writing process she wrote the BBC Director of Religious Programming to explain that Judas “can’t have been awful from the start, or Christ would never have called him.” And she proceeds to argue that Jesus was too psychologically astute “to have been taken in by an obviously bad hat.” It would imply either that Jesus was not smart enough to recognize Judas’s evil intentions, or that he was slyly manipulative, using a despicable man to achieve his own purposes-like something Herod might do.
She believed that to make Judas an obvious villain from the start would be an insult to the Son of God.
Sayers had betrayed tradition about the famous betrayer!īut Sayers was quite intentional in her betrayal. As he tells High Priest Caiaphas, Jesus “is the Messiah not of an earthly but of a spiritual Kingdom.” Sayers even has Jesus compliment Judas for his impressive “understanding, and courage,” calling them “great gifts.” Listeners were shocked, some to the point of outrage. Judas will do anything to protect Christ’s mission, fully believing that humanity can be saved only through sacrifice. The first to recognize that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, Judas also realizes that he is a Messiah born to suffer.
Though she follows the biblical account of Judas committing suicide after betraying Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, in her early plays she establishes that Judas is the most intelligent and committed of all the disciples. The publisher gave me permission to quote the following extract, which details the shocking way Sayers presents the character of Judas in her scripts, published as The Man Born to Be King in 1943. Sayers (Broadleaf 2020) , I recount how those plays challenge certitude. In my new book, Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Lewis that he read them every year until he died. Sayers, whose twelve radio plays about Jesus were so cherished by C. Enjoy this post by Wade Center Co-Director, Crystal Downing, that first appeared on the Christian Scholar’s Review blog on April 12, 2021.Ī Christian liberal arts education should undermine certitude: something I learned from Dorothy L.
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