Passion Week » Wednesday. (What’s your price?)

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Passion Week readings for Wednesday: Matthew 26:1-5, 14-16; Mark 14:1-2, 10-11; Luke 22:1-6. Passion Week: Wednesday

Wednesday is a dark time in Gotham City Jerusalem. The religious leaders — the prominent and influential Sanhedrin — is plotting to kill the usurping “king” Jesus. They go in cahoots with Judas Iscariot, who knows his way around the city. Of the Twelve disciples, Judas is the only one from Judea, the metropolitan area of Jerusalem. He’s been bought with a price, and this one-time betrayal is no doubt the culmination of many calculations in his heart of how to get ahead (greed) and build a better life for himself. Apparently knowing God personally and walking with Him daily is not enough to satisfy his hunger for meaning and significance.

In the ancient (OT) times, thirty pieces of silver was the penalty paid by the owner of an ox that gored a slave to death (Ex. 21:32). Equivalent to about four months’ wages for a laborer (about $7,500 in modern terms), this meager sum suggests the low esteem in which Jesus was held by both Judas and the chief priests. 1 Also note that Judas (or Judah) was a popular and common name for sons in that day. Not so much since.

What’s your price?

  • What is the one thing, that if God doesn’t give it to you, you would hold it against Him and threaten to leave Him? (Is it a job or opportunity, a relationship, an award or accolade?)


Let us recognize there is a bit of Judas in all of us. As Imagine Dragons sing, “No matter what we breed, we are still made of greed.” Most of the rest of the song:

I want to hide the truth
I want to shelter you
But with the beast inside
There’s nowhere we can hide
No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
This is my kingdom come

When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide

Don’t get too close
It’s dark inside
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide

When the curtain’s call
Is the last of all
When the lights fade out
All the sinners crawl
So they dug your grave
And the masquerade
Will come calling out
At the mess you made

Don’t want to let you down
But I am hell bound
Though this is all for you
Don’t want to hide the truth
No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
This is my kingdom come 2

  1. Source: ESV Study Bible Notes on Matthew 26:15-16. ↩
  2. “Demons” by Imagine Dragons. Songwriters: Benjamin Arthur Mckee, Daniel Coulter Reynolds, Daniel Wayne Sermon, Alexander Junior Grant. Copyright: Songs of Universal Inc., Imagine Dragons Publishing. ↩