7th Sunday of Easter (A)
Acts 1:12-26
May 17, 2026
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The text that I have chosen for this morning’s sermon is the first reading from the book of Acts.
The Bible contains some stories that you really have to wonder why they were included: Jael who drives a tent peg through a man’s head, Herod Agrippa who dies after being eaten by parasitic worms, and today’s recounting of the suicide of Judas. Luke says of Judas: “Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.” How’s this for a story on a Sunday morning? Really gets you feel like praising God, right? It seems wrong, but Saint Paul teaches: “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16), so there must be a reason for it. The purpose of this story is not to offend your sensibilities or gross you out. Rather, we’ll see that a gory account not found in today’s text is connected to Judas’ gory story.
This past Thursday the Church celebrated Ascension Day, the day that our Lord returned to the glory that is rightfully His. With Pentecost ten days off, the disciples and the other followers of Jesus stayed in Jerusalem, where they spent their days praying. This reveals a problem though, there’s one missing. The twelve disciples are meant to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, and being only eleven they were incomplete. To set the stage for finding Judas’ replacement Peter gives us a little too much information. But why?
The account of Judas’ horrible death reminds us partly that mankind has always faced horrible and bloodthirsty enemies. Satan is the real and insidious instigator behind the traitorous actions of Judas. Satan, the archenemy of Jesus used Judas to do his dirty work. Luke tells us that “Satan entered into Judas”. The gory stories of the Bible can be traced to the traitorous rebellion of the once-holy angel Satan. Saint John tells us, “The devil has been sinning from the beginning” (1 Jn 3:8). The one who tempted Judas to sin was the one who brought sin into the world in the first place. Satan continues to inflict destruction on God’s people and the world.
It didn’t take long after Satan seduced Adam and Eve that we find the first gory account in the Bible. “And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” Now, compared to Judas’ death, it’s pretty tame, however, it happened simply because Cain was jealous and angry with God. Paul says, “The wages of sin is death.” Once sin entered the world, death followed. And we can’t make it pretty, right? We’ve seen ugly death on TV and we’ve seen our loved ones die ugly deaths. It’s why the Bible frequently reveals death to be graphically ugly and violent.
Tragically, Judas suffered not only a horrible physical death but also met the most horrific fate imaginable: eternal life in hell, with its unthinkable spiritual and physical sufferings. Jesus says hell is “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mk 9:48). Now that’s gory! We can’t explore the hidden recesses of God’s mind, all we can do is go by what He says. Jesus refers to Judas as “the son of destruction” and as one who “has been lost”. Judas’ damnation is a sober warning against sin. It may be hard for us to think and talk so bluntly about the horrors of hell, but we cannot deny or avoid the reality of Hell for those who die without faith in Christ.
The story of Judas’s horrible death is a necessary reminder that these same enemies continue to wreak havoc in our world, the Church, and in our own lives. Reading the account from Acts enables us to rejoice as we see how God is guiding his newborn Church, but the Bible and the world clearly show us that Satan is still hard at work to undermine God’s word. Saint Peter warns us: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” God’s not soft-pedaling satan; satan wants to rip you to shreds and gulp you down, just as he did to Judas!
The account of Jesus’ suffering and death is certainly a gory account. The movie The Passion of the Christ gives a pretty realistic and factual depiction of the whipping and crucifixion of Jesus. There are definitely times in the movie when you want to close your eyes and cover your ears. It may seem inappropriate to compare the gory suicide of Judas with the sacrifice of Jesus but in these two deaths we see how utterly and completely different these two deaths were in nature, in purpose, and in their implications for us. The death of Judas frightens us and warns of damnation. The death of Jesus gives us ultimate comfort, consolation, and salvation.
In Genesis, Adam and Eve succumb to the temptation of eating from an outlawed tree. Jesus though bore our sins in his body on the tree. He undid the curse of the first tree by dying on a bloody tree. The tree of Judas is a tree of death, hopelessness, guilt, and despair. The tree of Jesus gives life, hope, and forgiveness. The gory death of Judas simply makes us want to “turn away” in sadness, revulsion, disgust. The blood of Jesus, on the other hand, “cleanses us from all sin” because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb 9:22). Rather than turning our eyes away from the cross, we fix our eyes upon it and rejoice for what He did on that cross is for us. The account of Judas is gory, the passion of our Lord is glorious!
When Peter says, “May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it” he means that Judas died utterly alone. Like every other person who dies without true repentance and faith, he is suffering an eternity of separation from God. Jesus was also abandoned and forsaken in his death, by His disciples, and more significant by far, by his own Father, His being left alone and deserted is the source of infinite comfort for us. Jesus was forsaken by his Father in our place, as our substitute and sin-bearer. Since He was forsaken for us, once and for all, we have God’s sure and certain promise that He will never leave us nor forsake us. Not even when death is ugly, because in the gory death of Jesus we find the beauty of eternal glory.
When Jael nailed a peg into Sisera’s head, it showed that God defends His people and sometimes acts in unexpected ways. When Herod Agrippa was eaten by worms it shows God’s anger over those who claim to be God, and that He is the only God. The gory death of Judas starkly reminds us of the horrific enemies of humankind: Satan, sin, death, hell. The gory yet glorious death of Jesus assures us all our bloodthirsty enemies have been vanquished forever. At almost every funeral or committal I read this passage from I Corinthians: “Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:54–57). The gory stories of the Bible aren’t written to entertain us but show how the gory death of Christ, fixes and undoes all the gory sin and death this world has ever known.
Amen
Now the peace which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen