The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal & Forgiveness in the Scriptures – I
UPDATE (22 Mar.): This is the first of four Lenten reflections on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal and Forgiveness in the Scriptures. The four addresses have been compiled into a booklet, which can be accessed here.
“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”
They are haunting and troubling words. All of the Gospels identify Judas in one way or another as the betrayer of Christ, the grand paradigm in a way of all betrayal. Luke alone has Jesus address Judas with this telling question in the very moment of his being taken captive (Luke 22.48), a chilling moment of truth and its betrayal. Mark, with admirable economy of expression, has Judas simply tell the crowd “whomsoever I kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely.” Whose safety, we may ask? “And as soon as he was come [Judas] goeth straightway to him, and saith, Master, master; and kissed him” (Mark 14. 44-45). Matthew identifies Judas outright as the betrayer. “Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him. And he came up to Jesus at once and said, Hail, Master! And he kissed him” (Matthew 26. 48-49). Only John says nothing about the kiss of Judas, though he is very clear about Judas’ betrayal.
Luke gives us this most intimate moment of betrayal, a moment made ever so memorable by its intensity and its intimacy. It has, to be sure, captured the imagination of the artists, though depictions of the betrayal, like the crucifixion itself, are relatively rare at least in early Christian art. Apart from a few sarcophagi, the earliest artistic representation in a Church appears in Ravenna, Italy, at the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in a lovely mosaic dating to the sixth century. But perhaps the most arresting artistic representation of the betrayal is Giotto’s fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1305/6). In a way it has become iconic. There are other representations to be sure – by Duccio in Sienna, Fra Angelico in Florence, and, later in the sixteenth century, Caravaggio in Rome, to name but a few – all of which connect the betrayal with violence as well. “Are ye come out as against a thief, with swords and staves, to take me?” Jesus says, (Mt. 26.55, Mk. 14.48). There are representations in stone and wood and in stained glass, too, scattered among the Cathedrals and churches of Europe and beyond. But one could hardly say that there was an excess of artistic representation of this momentous scene which is such a telling moment in the life of Christ. There is, after all, a disturbing quality about such a theme.