Author: CCW

“We have become a spectacle to the world”

“We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men”, St. Paul tells us (1 Cor. 4.9). We have become a spectacle, but what kind of spectacle? A spectacle of what? we might ask, a spectacle of ourselves in our pride and vanity, in the celebration of our brokenness and woundedness, or the spectacle of Christ at once convicting us of our betrayals of his love and redeeming us by his love?

By ‘we’, I mean the Church or at least what claims to be the Church in its many manifestations. St. Paul’s challenge to the Corinthians is equally his challenge to us about what kind of spectacle we have become. The question is a constant challenge; one which is critically before us in the events of Holy Week. We are to see ourselves in the spectacle of sin and love, the spectacle of our betrayals. We are very much on display in these events, caught in the conflicting storms of the emotions of our hearts. We are not spectators of others so much as we are spectators of ourselves as betrayers of Christ. This reality of our humanity is strikingly, poignantly and painfully present to us in our liturgy. We who cry “Hosanna to the King” then cry “Crucify, Crucify Him”! If we have hearts, then we cannot help but be convicted by the terror and the tyranny of our betrayals.

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“I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.”

Holy Week is the spectacle of all our betrayals. The words of Judas Iscariot are all the more poignant for this reason. His words are also our words. They belong entirely to the pageant of Holy Week. We go into the parade of Christ’s celebration of the Passover only to discover what we might call the great make-over, the great and redemptive transformation of our humanity. Central to that transformation, however, is a certain discovery about ourselves and our humanity. We discover the deep and dark betrayals of our hearts. But then what?

Make no mistake. There can be no Easter, no joy, no happiness apart from the realization of our own failings and stupidities, our own self-willed preoccupations which by definition set us at odds with every one around us. To know this and to feel its truth is to be catapulted into Truth itself. The paradox of Holy Week is signaled in the liturgy of this day. We who cry, “Hosanna to the Son of David” are the same as those who cry, “Crucify, crucify!” These are our cries, our voices, our contradictions, our betrayals.

We are Judas. Holy Week confronts us with the betrayals of our hearts. We do not wish to see this or to think it which is why our churches, like our souls, too, are in such disarray. Such is the power of our illusions. Holy Week would show us to ourselves as we are truly are. In the great Gospel for this day, we hear of Judas’ words of confession. “I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.” And yet, Judas’ confession does not lead to repentance and renewal, to new life and joy. His words are to the Chief Priests and elders, not to God. “And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hung himself.” Confession without contrition; remorse without repentance leaves us in the darkness of our selves; in short, there is only death and despair.

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Fr. David Curry has compiled his four Lenten meditations on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal and Forgiveness in the Scriptures into a booklet, complete with selected artwork. Click on the cover image below to download the pdf document.

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This is the last in a series of four Lenten devotional reflections given by Fr. David Curry on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal & Forgiveness in the Scriptures. The first is posted here, the second here, and the third here.

UPDATE (22 Mar.): The four addresses have been compiled into a booklet, which can be accessed here.

“Judas, betrayest thou me with a kiss?”

There are no greater betrayals than the betrayals of intimacy, the betrayals of trust and love. And indeed, the larger biblical witness to the ‘kiss of Judas’ as the archetype of all betrayal features precisely those themes of intimacy betrayed. At the same time, they become the occasions of a greater love, the redemptive love of God. Forgiveness is the greater theme that arises most profoundly out of the betrayals of the intimacies of love.

Our focus is upon the themes of betrayal and forgiveness in the Scriptures. There is, of course, a further story that belongs to the history of reflection upon the wisdom of the Scriptures. One has only to note Dante and Shakespeare, medieval and modern, so to speak, to realize how profoundly the themes of betrayal and forgiveness have shaped our literary, philosophical and political culture. Dante’s Divine Comedy explicates with a wonderful and powerful philosophical logic poetically expressed the dynamics of betrayal and forgiveness. Shakespeare, too, in a different timbre of expression but with no less insight undertakes to explore the very power of forgiveness precisely through the betrayals of trust. One only needs to consider The Merchant of Venice, where “mercy seasons justice,” or Measure for Measure, where the one who has been wronged seeks mercy for the wrong doer who himself wishes death and destruction for his sin. And, then, there is The Tempest, a play which in some sense puts love, the love that is greater than the burden of our remembrances, at the heart of the political and social order.

Powerful stuff, we might say. And yet all of it springs if not entirely at least mightily from the witness of the Scriptures. It will not do to focus simply on the New Testament for there is nothing in the witness of the New Testament that is not a reflection upon some story or theme or idea in the Old Testament. And with respect to the kiss of Judas, perhaps no story illumines so much of the dynamic of Christ’s redemptive love than the love-prophet of the Old Testament, Hosea.

The text is graphic. Hosea takes his personal situation in all of its vulnerability and wonder as the lesson of human betrayal and divine forgiveness and restoration. It is, perhaps, not by accident that the last two chapters of this book of prophecy are read in Holy Week in the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. The whole book itself, of course, is rich and suggestive about the deeper meaning of the pageant of Holy Week.

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