But if Judas was actually a good guy who was just misunderstood, the story of our redemption loses something else. It no longer includes the kind of betrayal that really happens in this world. And in some ways, such a betrayal really can be a culmination of all sorts of forces that break our lives and our world apart. There are questions of power and money and violence and loyalty and so much more wrapped up in the character of Judas. And he wasn’t just one of the hundred sheep in Jesus’s fold. He was one of the twelve closest people to Jesus. One who, according to Matthew, felt remorse, tried to give the blood money back, and, when he failed, took his own life.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives the disciples his commandment, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” After eight years here, I hear Calvary’s commandment: that I go out into the world and love as I have been loved here.

At the end of the day, love is grace. Endless, undeserved, unexplainable grace for ourselves and others, for our quirks and mistakes. Grace.

But what I do trust is that we were brought together by the Holy Spirit, whose reconciling work in the world happens through our hopeful and failing selves. The church is one of those rare places in the world where we voluntarily enter a room with people we just don’t get. You sit down by strangers and hear that those who do not love do not know God, and sometimes you you feel deeply the implications of such a belief — you fearfully declare it the Word of the Lord. You look around the room and wonder if you’re up to the work. You look inside yourself and find a heart capable but not always willing, itself a maze of excuses and excesses and anxieties that keep you from knowing your true self — the one beloved and redeemed by God.

Throughout this past year and in the time going forward, it means everything to know that the Lord is with us, and that his rod and staff comfort us. We are called to share this comfort with one another, to help each other find and go down the right paths, to wipe away one another’s tears.

So, what if Easter is about letting go of some of our concrete expectations and understandings, and learning to see deeper connections and patterns and meanings, the timeless way, a quality without a name in our faith beneath its familiar forms?

Jesus teaches his disciples and us that the Good News isn’t good if it stays in a locked room. Are we ready to go out and share and be the Good News? Are we ready to be apostles?

But if we begin with terror and amazement we’ve known, we can enter the redemption story from right here. Because there never was a more holy age than ours. Our strange pandemic age included.

That is why we are here tonight. The last Word has been spoken, and it is Love.

Jesus starts with the particular and moves to the universal. One of his last thoughts on the cross was about one particular person, his mother. Would this person I love so much be taken care of? Before pouring out his life as a libation for the renewal of all creation, he does the very human thing of making sure Mary is taken care of. That was not just a human thing, but a true act of divinity.

It’s hard to use the word love, even if you’re Jesus, at supper with your friends, the night before you’re going to die. There are so many ways to get love wrong.