The Disciples Roused to Wakeful Death

The stories of Judas and Peter bear directly on this blog's description, particularly "the salvation of wakeful death."  This is the state to which we should aspire, a state of all-consuming servitude.  It should probably be clear that Jesus' emphasis on the duties of the master in such relationships--including the believer-to-God relationship that all life is leading to--means that the efforts of the servant are not seen as a direct attempt to "earn" salvation.  God's role as master is permeated with unwarranted grace enjoyed by the believer, and it is indeed horrible whenever this is forgotten, and God is thereby defamed.

The stories of Judas and Peter, as related by the Gospels, are similar in one crucial regard: they can be boiled down to versions, in simplest form, of "the salvation of wakeful death."  (I do not mean to opine here whether either of the men were saved or not.  That is not my business.)  The functional aspect of wakeful death is twofold.  First, there is the remittance, offered by us, of the value of a servant--placing it above our lives.  Second, there is waiting for the final consummation of actual death.  We pay the price of servitude, and then we pay with our lives.

Judas, in extreme despair, hurled back at the Jewish authorities the blood money--described no end by the interpreters as the price of a slave.  Then he ended his life.

Peter, in an agony of remorse made more acute by Jesus' persistent questioning at the Sea of Tiberias, is given to understand that his life will consist of unrelenting service to the flock, ended with a probably quite unpleasant death.  No televangelist's "abundant life" for Peter.

Nor indeed can any of us expect other than servitude and death.  If, as would seem prudent, we are to see ourselves in Jesus' story of the Prodigal Son, then all of us--having once been true heirs of the father--are reduced to pleading for the role of the servant.  And make no mistake, the Prodigal Son, though received with such joy, is also carefully described to us as a son now no longer with a patrimony, possibly without marriage prospects, and certainly fated to be in service to his elder brother for all their lives.

Of course, we are all in service to our sisters and brothers all our lives.  God help us.