30 Pieces

This day of Holy Week is known as Spy Wednesday—the day when we consider Judas’ plan to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Judas is often labeled as the villain of the story, and there is much that can be said about the pain of betrayal, about being stabbed in the back.

But when we focus on the personal act of Judas’s betrayal, we tend to overlook the schemes of unjust powers. To only talk about Judas is to miss the point about the ways that systems of injustice operate to keep those on the margins “in their place.” If you’ve seen the movie Judas and the Black Messiah, about the assassination of Fred Hampton, you’ll know there are striking parallels, hence the title of the movie. For those who are unaware, Fred Hampton was the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers who, when he was just a teenager, began to organize a movement that shook the governing authorities to their core. He began to pull together what he called a Rainbow Coalition that began to unite working class people, across racial and ethnic lines, to work together to push back against the injustices that were impacting them. Fred Hampton famously said, “We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.”

If there’s anything the governing authorities don’t want, it’s for those whom they’ve marginalized to be in solidarity with one another, and begin to push back against their unjust power. Hampton was assassinated by the FBI at just 21 years old in 1969. To only talk about Judas is like only paying attention to Bill O’Neil, who was a poor man who the FBI paid for intel on Hampton, while neglecting to hold the FBI accountable. It was an intentional scheme to offer a poor man 30 pieces.

One of the invitations of Holy Week is to pay attention to the ways that the empire pits marginalized folks against each other, like pawns in a chess match, to achieve their imperial goals—retaining power, maintaining “order,” and squashing those perceived as threats. While each one must take personal accountability—from Judas, to the religious leaders, to the chief priest—we cannot fail to see how the imperial system of domination hovers over all of it. Judas was used, and he was too blind to his own shadow to see what was happening.

May the Spirit give us all the grace to continue waking up, allowing us to see ourselves and the whole system we are caught up in more clearly, so that we might not be pitted against each other, and hand each other over to the executioners, for a measly 30 pieces of silver.