Judas

A poem which may connect into some of my reflections on faith and religion, and which I gladly offer for all to read as Holy Week approaches:

If you ask the folk who knew me
just what kind of man I was,
I wonder now what answers you might get?
I signed up in all good faith, and I hung on his every word,
for he told us things nobody could forget.
I joined a march to freedom, I was ready for the fight,
and I’m sure the others saw it that way too,
but when we reached the holy city,
something happened, I don’t know, and yet
it seemed somehow he wasn’t coming through.

All our people cried ‘Hosanna!’
and they hailed him as their king -
well, they’d seen down by the lake what he could do;
but the people of the city, they looked down on us in scorn -
“A messiah from the north? That can’t be true!”
When he went into the temple,
turned their tables, broke their stalls, I thought
“Well, now we’ll see this city set alight!”
But then he seemed to pause, as though he wasn’t really sure,
as if he didn’t have the stomach for the fight.

I did not sign up for failing, Judas here goes all the way,
I stayed with him, he would not be left alone.
We had come to make him king,
and he could trust me, through and through,
for I’d not rest till he was seated on that throne.
So it was me, I set it up,
I brought the high priests and the guard,
and he knew what I was doing all along;
this is where the fight begins, I thought,
it’s revolution time - so tell,
how could a man like me have got it wrong?

For he talked about the kingdom, told us tales
to make it clear,
and yet somehow I had never understood;
he stirred dreams in me of David,
of a palace and a crown,
but he made his only throne a cross of wood.
As from the shadows by the path
I watched them dragging him away;
there were shadows in my heart - by God above,
as I knot this cord for hanging,
tell me, any who can hear,
just how you’d have better served the King of love?