Year: 2013

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.

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“Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness,
to be tempted by the devil”

The Christian season of Lent traditionally begins with the temptations of Christ on the first Sunday of Lent. The whole idea of Lent, the quadragesima, is derived in part from Christ’s going into the wilderness and fasting for “forty days and forty nights.” It recapitulates the themes of the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews; the forty years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. It takes on a symbolic significance. At once a liberation from the yoke of slavery under the Egyptians, it was also a time of testing, and, above all, a time of learning. Learning what? Simply what it means to be the people of God, defined ultimately by God who reveals himself and his will in two ways: first, in the burning bush, and secondly, in the Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, if you will.

These are astounding stories. And in a way they are recalled and reworked in the story of the temptations of Christ which sets us upon the Christian journey of life, a journey into the greater promised land of our redeemed humanity, our humanity forgiven and restored, like the paralytic in the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, our humanity called and empowered, like Matthew, to follow Christ at his word to challenge and proclaim the new reality of God’s absolute mercy for our wounded and broken humanity. Somehow in the season of Lenten fasting we are also reminded of the joy of the new life of redemption. “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” Jesus asks. It is a provocative question which calls attention to something new and wonderful in Christ which at once corrects and completes all that belongs to the rigour of the law and to the disciplines of Lent.

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“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve”

The Christian season of Lent traditionally begins with the temptations of Christ on the First Sunday of Lent. The whole idea of Lent, the quadragesima, is derived in part from Christ’s going into the wilderness and fasting for “forty days and forty nights.” It recapitulates the themes of the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews; the forty years in the wilderness of Sinai. It takes on a symbolic significance. At once a liberation from the yoke of slavery under the Egyptians, it was also a time of testing, and, above all, a time of learning. Learning what? Simply what it means to be the people of God, defined ultimately by God who reveals himself and his will in two ways: first, in the burning bush, and secondly, in the Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, if you will.

These are astounding stories. And in a way they are recalled and reworked in the story of the temptations of Christ which sets us upon the Christian journey of life, a journey into the greater promised land of our redeemed humanity, our humanity forgiven and restored.

(more…)

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