“Then one of the twelve…” The betrayer Judas came not from the fringe group of people interested in Jesus, not from religious leadership, but from Jesus’ own tightly-knit and called dozen.
Since the earliest days, the Church has fasted on Wednesday, for it is “Spy Wednesday,” the day of Judas’ betrayal of our Lord Jesus. We humbly acknowledge that we too are prone to betrayal, that we who have been brought near by the blood of the Lamb are quick to call for his slaughter.
The price on Jesus’ head is not insignificant (cf. Zechariah 11.12-13 for the arc of Judas’ betrayal from his agreement on price to his giving back the money). I think the question for us today is not so much “How much do we sell out Jesus for?” but rather “For what do we sell Jesus? For what things do we trade the Lamb of God?”
Verse 16 reads literally: “And from that time, he began to search for a ‘eureka moment’ so that he might hand him over (paradidomi).” That last verb, paradidomi, to hand over, becomes significant in the Passion narrative. A quick search yields these instances in Matthew’s Gospel: 4:12, 5:25, 10:4, 10:17, 10:19, 10:21, 11:27, 17:22, 18:34, 20:18, 20:19, 24:9, 24:10, 25:14, 25:20, 25:22, 26:2, 26:15, 26:16, 26:21, 26:23, 26:24, 26:25, 26:45, 26:46, 26:48, 27:2, 27:3, 27:4, 27:18, 27:26.