Isaiah 42.1-7; Psalm 26; John 12.1-11
Strikingly, Judas Iscariot is the only one of Jesus’ twelve disciples not native to Galilee, the region far to the north of Jerusalem. Iscariot is probably a reference to Judas’ home, Kerioth, a town in the south. [Joshua 15.25] How did he come to be in the north? How did he come into contact with Jesus? We can only speculate.
What is apparent from the Gospels, though, is that Jesus and the others trusted Judas. He was apparently their treasurer, and in that capacity he complains about the profligacy of a woman who had poured spikenard, the extraordinarily expensive lavender-like spice used in the burials of the well-to-do throughout the ancient Middle East, over Jesus’ feet.
‘It could have been sold, and given to the poor’ Judas complained. Three hundred denarii was pretty much the annual wage packet of a working man. But Jesus retorted that ‘You have the poor with you always; you will not always have me.’ He is that Servant of God who will not ‘break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame,’ he who ‘became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.’ [II Corinthians 8.9]