The Long Life of Judas Iscariot
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 9:12AM | by Otter 
"I can't think for you / You'll have to decide / Whether Judas Iscariot / Had God on his side..." -- Bob Dylan
Somebody lied about Judas, for he never hung himself and fell upon the ground and burst, but they had good reason to kill him twice, for to him was granted the curse of eternal life.
Even as the Roman coins were ringing on the floor of the Roman-JewishTemple and the Sanhedrin's brethren were staring coldly at him, he felt it in every cell of his body.
There were words that were on his lips: he had almost said, "I did it for Israel," but had he said that he would have been deader than any man ever was. Nobody ever was faithless to be faithful.
But the Holy Spirit entered into him and kept his jaws tight, and he was saved, and to him it was given to see all things.
And so into the world he went, a man without money or food or messiah or home, a wanderer and watcher who looked on as the faith in which he had no faith spread out over the world, and began to grow and to change.
For a time he ran like Jonah, trying to escape. On every ship he found the apostles of The Way, in their eyes the deep shining conviction and in their hands the miraculous signs that indeed God had come to earth.
They haunted him for a time. Here was God's judgment, he thought.
And his fear was like a fish that swallowed him on the sea until he was alive only in terror and called out to Yahweh from the belly of Sheol, but he did not deliver him, for he had no god.
But he was shipwrecked thirteen times, bitten by serpents, beaten for a wanderer and stranger, crucified for his circumcision. And by and by Judas came to see that he could not die.
He lived among the animals, and found his way to the riverbanks where he slept in the shade of cool trees. The otters and the great birds of prey cared for him, and kept the cold serpents from biting him, for they were mischievous and had heard of him, and wished to see for themselves. But he fed the animals, and to the smaller serpents who had not yet earned their wisdom, he offered his hand and they bit, and filled him with cold poison, and marveled, and worshiped god.
And so he lost his fear, and he watched as the world embraced the faith of the Nazarene, and he heard his name spat out with hatred, for even a faith in love requires someone against whom one's anger must burn in calumny.
He heard of his own shameful death, that he had been hanged on a tree, and wept for himself for forty days.
He heard that he had fallen upon the ground and burst, and he wept instead for the new faith.
And that was the last time he wept in this world. But the otters say before that, he wept beneath the willows on the banks of the world's rivers.
Judas watched the deaths of saints, and he was neither cold nor hot in his grief.
He saw the signs of the apostles dry up, for a new vision came: "In this sign, conquer." And the cross was lifted high, and the sword unsheathed beneath it, and he watched the pagans die also, and his grief was for the world.
He saw the Crescent rise in the East, and the howling of humanity, for now there were two messiahs come to claim the worship of the world.
And he saw the great battles, and thought of soldiers far, far away in ancient times, camping beneath the Levantine sun, taking the local girls beneath the crescent moon before the new Prophet had ever been.
In great pain he walked barefoot across deserts, always weary but needing neither food nor water. He crossed glaciers and swam seas, unable to drown.
He saw the conquest of new lands, the people enslaved, diseased, uprooted. He walked with them along roads wet with tears. He wandered from town to town to hear the grieving while the bastard children of The Way preached their gospel. He listened without rancor, for it seemed to him now, This is the way the world will be. If it were not thus, it would be otherwise.
But everywhere he smelled the scent of fear.
In churches, the terror of hell. In chancellories and legislatures the fear of conquest. In homes the fear of the Other who watched over the morning paper with shame and guilt at the ready like daggers. In schools, the fear of what might happen if some intelligence was not pressed into the mud of a fresh new man or woman. In universities, fear of being left behind in the world's agonized need to get somewhere, to be something, to gobble up faith and to make it a weapon against fear.
The cities grew, and grew similar, and the old world crumbled away as it always had.
He has long since stopped longing for a simpler time, or for human company.
"Judas Iscariot and The Magdalene," Copyright 2004 by Christopher Gollon. Used by kind permission.
He has even left behind the river-banks, so the otters don't really know him any longer.
But they tell stories.
Judas will not die, but he watches the world and the faith that it longs to have. He watches its fear making dreadful things of us all.
He longs only now for one thing, but it does not come.
"The Lord," wrote someone pretending to be his one-time friend Simon, "is not slack in his promise." Judgment is coming, he said.
Judas raises his eyebrow, still just mildly surprised that they do not really understand.
Judgment had you long ago. It always comes the moment your faith and your fear meet, and they kiss, and one of them weeps, and the other one dies.
Judas in Personal Reflection 
Reader Comments (7)
Have you seen the play "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot"?
It's one of those ones that are so good there's no describing it.
"Judgment had you long ago. It always comes the moment your faith and your fear meet, and they kiss, and one of them weeps, and the other one dies."
Yes, exactly.
Victoria, haven't seen it. I'll put it on the list.
Natalie:
Ah.
WTF Otter?
No offense meant. But I'm not trying to dress up some simple axiom in too many words in the post... hopefully I'm saying something that is best said as I've said it.