“Objects of the Passion: The Pieces of Silver”
Original sermon given February 21, 2024, written and delivered by Pastor Jeffrey Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
This sermon was not recorded.
“Objects of the Passion: The Pieces of Silver”
Matthew 26.14-16
Matthew 26.14-16
In the name of the living God and the Christ who has appeared to us. Amen.
Thirty pieces of silver. The compensation or renumeration for a dead slave, according to Mosaic law. About 4 months salary for a day laborer. According to the state of Illinois minimum wage law, that’s about $9,000 in today’s money.
Nine thousand dollars. Depending on your financial status that might sound like a lot: a semester of tuition dollars, a “new” used car, the price of a pretty amazing engagement ring. Or maybe it doesn’t sound like that much to you: a few months of house payments (including taxes and insurance), the trade-in value of your old car, the cost of last year’s overseas family vacation.
Whatever value you might assign to thirty pieces of silver, the human element of the biblical account adds weight to those coins. Jesus was betrayed by a close, trusted friend. After all the Lord had invested in him, shared with him, done for him, revealed to him, Judas used Jesus for the cost of a used car. We might speculate, as many have over the years, as to the betrayer’s deeper motives. Maybe he thought Jesus’ mission went too far, or was too dangerous. Maybe he came to agree with the theology of the Pharisees. Maybe he felt hurt that he wasn’t in the inner circle like Peter, James, and John. This is all a speculative attempt at adding character depth to Judas, who some consider a vilified anti-hero. But in the end, the scriptures are clear: Judas sold a friend for the price of an awesome vacation.
Judas’ actions and motives here are further exposed when contrasted to the previous scene in Matthew 26. Immediately before we hear about the pieces of silver, we hear about an unnamed woman in the home of Simon the leper who “wastes” a very expensive ointment by pouring it out upon Jesus’ head (Matt. 26.6-13). Her motivations were of love and sacrifice and beauty and worship. Judas’s were of selfish, self-serving, self-preservation. Two thousand years later both are remembered. But whose actions are revealed to have more real value: her giving everything away for Jesus, or Judas getting what he can out of him?
Now, there is an easy sermon and a hard sermon to preach, from this point forward. Which one do you want? How about I give you a quick summary of both?
The easier one: I could shock you with statistics regarding human trafficking today, the sobering fact that people, even children, are daily sold for much less than $9,000. Indeed our church body, the LCMS, does important work in this regard. According to the LCMS website, human trafficking has created an estimated $32 billion global profit that continues to grow larger every day.
Or, I could offer a historic reminder of our nation’s own sad and sobering history with slavery, where human beings, created in the image of God, equally loved by Christ and equally paid for by his blood, were auctioned off like cattle. And infamously, enslaved people from Africa were legally regarded as but 3/5th a person, for electoral purposes.
But this would be the easy sermon. Easy, not because these aren’t important issues—they certainly are. And not because we shouldn’t be involved in them—we certainly should, according to our Christian consciences. But it’s the easy sermon because we put Judas’ thirty pieces of silver in others’ hands, easily condemning others. We lament the injustices and betrayals others perpetrate, without examining our own.
The harder sermon is to see the silver in our own hands and examine our own tendencies towards greed. Or more subtly, towards incessant transactional relationships. The fallen human nature, which still infects each of us, tells us to get as much out of this world as possible; to use others for our own pleasure; to see each interaction or relationship as what I can get out of it—how it makes me feel or advances my status or keeps me in control. We might not say it as crassly as, “what can I get out of you?” or “how much are you worth to me?” but that subtle tendency still remains. If we’re really honest, and do the hard sermon on ourselves, we’ll find ourselves more often with Judas in using people than in the unnamed woman at Bethany, in pouring out for them. And this using people for our own purposes is often much closer to home than we realize—as in our own homes and workplaces and relationships.
That’s the hard sermon, to realize you and I are holding the bag of silver too. And in this season of Lent, to turn away from interpreting life or other people or relationships or circumstances as simply what I can get out of them. Or even worse, to sell your soul for a short-term fix.
The good news for the hard sermon (or the easy sermon for that matter) is that God’s power and grace were bigger even than Judas’ betrayal; and so bigger also even than yours and mine. God could—would—take a petty, crass, hurtful betrayal of a friend, and turn it into grace beyond human understanding. God would take a dead slave and make him the living Lord of heaven and earth.
Christ was given in exchange for us, for you, the full price paid for in blood. After his betrayal, he would be handed over for a sham trial, tortured, mocked, and crucified like a common criminal. But God’s power and grace were still at work through this—beyond what Judas, or the chief priests, or the Romans could control or understand.
But we understand it. We know that, “by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53.5). That the Lamb led to the slaughter was given over for us—given in exchange for our very selves. He poured out everything for us, that we might have everything in his name—forgiveness, life and salvation.
We live now then, with the unnamed woman rather than with Judas. We live as those purchased and won, not by gold or silver, but by the precious blood of Christ and by his holy, innocent, suffering and death. We are his own now, his own precious possessions, and so now can live lives emptying ourselves for others.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.