It was evening the next day
when you came to the temple again
to see if your bold play had brought it all to light:
to see if he had at last seized the opportunity
to proclaim himself Israel's true king
and right all wrongs, if he
had at last given up his talk
of going away and finally
decided lead the way
to where you wanted
it all to go, back
to Zion's glory.

You asked the guards,
"Where is the man you seized?"
Casually, haphazardly, came their reply
that turned the world upside-down
and inside-out and sent
your heart reeling through
imagined gates of hell.
The image, a shock,
unthinkable: Christ, your friend,
Yeshua, your brother, crucified,
raised up and left to die.
Only the sign had called him king,
but nobody had believed
just as you had not believed
at first any of it was
even possible.

"An innocent man." These
were the angry words you spoke,
and Judas, these words were true !
For innocence was the crown
he wore and the title was yours
to share, just as he shared
the cup of the covenant. If only
you had known that, in the end,
it was as it was in that moment
before dawn, in the garden,
your face bathed in candlelight,
his heart spilling out so much
love for you.

He would have said the same of you --
you, Judas, an innocent man!
You, brother to us all...
The morning we found you
it was clear that your death
would not be the end of it.
Even with this, what seemed
the final blow, you could not change
the reach of an everlasting love
that rushes like a river to your aching heart
no matter than you would fight its tide
and cling to condemnation and perpetual
cycles of guilt.

That you might have life
and have it to the full:
this is why he came.
That we might seek first
the kingdom within.
And so still in the garden
he waits, and he will wait
again, for me or for you
or for some other. It is in watching
his waiting we see, one day
when we least expect it,
that no thing is a step too far,
a deed too dark or beyond
the reach of the one light
that still is ours to share.

I see it reflected
even there in the flowers
that blossom on the barren tree.
See how the light shines!
It reminds me of your eyes
and his heart and the love
that runs like a single stream
through all of us, even
still, after so much
has changed and
the light, expanded,
shines in all things
just the same today
as yesterday and
for all the days to come.

May this be a new day
in which we remember,
comforted by the laughter
tumbling toward us
like that river of love
unchanged by time
that flows through our hearts
and invites us to
stand in the stream and know
it is morning, the third day.