Some say that some say – and you know what “they” say about hearsay – that Judas hung himself after his betrayal of Jesus on a redbud tree which, in fact, is abundant in Israel.
The red is for the blood when Judas burst asunder – reminding us of another character in the Old Testament – falling downward from the branches, the rope tightening, but continuing to fall downwards to hell. This was Judas’ mockery of Jesus.
As Jesus said, Judas, playing Jesus, raised his heel against Jesus, thus playing the son of the Mother of the Redeemer in Genesis 3:15 and making Jesus into Satan: such mockery!
Jesus also died on a tree, a cross, soaked with Jesus’ blood, just a couple of thousand feet away. Jesus also precipitated down to hell as we say every Sunday in the Creed. What Jesus was doing there is to preach to the fallen spirits. See 1 Peter 3:19. These are the fallen angels, but also Judas would have freshly arrived. This preaching of Jesus was not to convert them, or Judas, the “friend”, but rather to reprimand them, and Judas, with Jesus telling the truth of the way things are, to proclaim victory because He stayed on the cross until death, for us, out of love, the Innocent for the guilty, so that the guilty, seeing such great love, might convert and be brought to heaven. Judas was already dead, but Judas had been told a myriad times by Jesus Himself the truth of the matter. Also, all of the Hebrew Scriptures point to the Suffering Servant. Judas knew, and rejected this, siding with a merely political expediency. The truth of the great love of God – and the irony of the life-giving death of Jesus forever crushes the fallen spirits in hell.
The field which Judas bought with his newly acquired 30 pieces of silver, the money of the betrayal, the blood money, was what was then called, Akeldama, the Field of Blood. This is to be found in valley of hell on the south side of the wall of the old City of Jerusalem. Towards the bottom, below the “Dung Gate”, below the Temple Mount, was where the hellish hell of the hollow metal fire-filled idol of Marduch was to be found, where idol worshippers would sacrifice their children.
Meanwhile, Jesus wants to lead His little flock to heaven.
Oh yes… and Jesus’ good mom? A flower? Yes. She saw it all. She was in solidarity with Jesus, crushed herself with Jesus under the heel of Judas, but only for a time, those terrible three days of darkness, from the total eclipse of Good Friday, then Friday night, then Saturday night… then the resurrection Sunday, that first day of the week, the new sabbath, the seventh day which we can now enter. Mary saw it all. A flower for you, Mary. Yes, a redbud. You saw all the blood, Judas and Jesus. Thank you, Mary, for your solidarity with your Son, with us.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 