Christ Church

This is the third 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, and the second here.

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

“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”

There are kisses and there are kisses. One has only to think of the sensual imagery of the kiss to realize how profound the very idea of a kiss as betrayal really is. And yet, it takes the larger view of the biblical panorama in all its complexity, and, dare I say, confusion, to bring home to us the radical nature of betrayal that in turn can be so simply and yet profoundly captured in a kiss.

The pageant of Holy Week immerses us in the theme of betrayal. In a way, it seeks to concentrate our minds on the ways in which we all participate in the kiss of Judas, the archetype of all betrayal. That may seem very distant and dismal, rather dark and disturbing, but the point is quite the contrary. Our being awakened to the awareness of betrayal in each of our hearts is the spring that catapults us into the freeing grace of Christ. The paradox is that we can really only come to that by way of the horrendous spectacles of betrayal. Two stories stand out in the Old Testament view of things that illumine so much of the later New Testament perspective.

The two stories that I have in mind are the stories of the Levite’s Concubine and the story of David’s betrayal of God. The one is told in the Book of Judges, the other in the books of Samuel and First Kings. The story of the Levite’s Concubine is probably, I am afraid to say, completely unknown to you. It does not figure in the Church’s public reading of Scripture. You can only know it from your own reading of Scripture or perhaps from the odd and curious reference from some preacher, no doubt odd and curious too! And there is very little about the story in the older commentary tradition either.

The story of the Levite’s Concubine is the most disturbing story of the whole of the Old Testament. It is at once complex and confusing yet quite compelling about the nature of a kind of inchoate form of betrayal, of betrayal avant la lettre in a way and yet as illuming après la lettre something of the deeper aspects of betrayal. The story appears at the end of the Book of Judges, a book which is buttressed by the telling theme that “in those days there was no king in Israel.” The idea of a king in Israel raises intriguing and compelling questions about authority. That the Book of Judges raises the question about Kingship in this way signals a kind of change and a problem. The problem is about how to give expression to our commitment to things spiritual and intellectual – to God and the soul, as it were. The whole Book of Judges is taken up with the problem of how the people of God are to be governed and organized under the ultimate authority of God. In other words, how are the transcendent principles of the Kingdom of God to be translated into the practical life of the people of God? Ultimately, it is a question about mediation, the mediation of authority.

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“Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of,
and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

Passiontide begins with two powerful and suggestive readings, not to mention the gradual psalm set to one of Bach’s passion tunes. We ignore them at our peril. The epistle reading from Hebrews lays out the profound theology of atonement and redemption. Christ is the Mediator of the New Covenant, the new understanding of the relationship between God and Man accomplished through Christ’s sacrifice. The gospel reading from Matthew relates a critical set of exchanges, first, between Jesus and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, secondly, with the sons themselves, and, then, with the rest of the disciples. The dialogue is altogether about two things: sacrifice and service.

“We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus said, in the gospel read on the Sunday just before Lent, Quinquagesima Sunday. Not just I go up. Not just you go up, but we go up. In some sense that is the meaning of Christian pilgrimage. It is about a journey to God and with God. The meaning of that journey takes on an heightened sense of intensity with Passiontide. Suddenly more and more of what that journey entails begins to become more and more apparent. It challenges all our worldly aims and ambitions. It is not about success as the world counts success but neither is about being losers. No. There is altogether something here that is much deeper and grander. It speaks to our souls.

The Letter to the Hebrews is a theological treatise. It seeks to explicate the theology of God’s engagement with our humanity in Jesus Christ. Atonement is one of its major themes. Atonement simply means being at one; in this case, being at one with God. But the whole reality of human experience is about our estrangement from God. The story of the Fall is played out in each of our lives individually and collectively. We are not at one with the world. We are not at one with one another. We are not at one with God.

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“The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and life”
(John 6. 63)

“Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage”

These are the opening lines of a wonderful poem by George Herbert called Prayer (1), a poem which presents a collection of images, biblical and natural, domestic and exotic, historical and experiential and which ends with two words, “something understood.” Prayer is something understood in and through the images of our journey in faith to God and with God.

It speaks, I think, to the rich marvel of today’s readings from Galatians and the Gospel according to St. John. There is a banquet in the wilderness. “Prayer the churches banquet” happens in the wilderness of human experience.

The theme of the wilderness is a fundamental feature of the season of Lent. By extension, the wilderness is a profound and important metaphor for the journey of our souls in faith.

The wilderness in the biblical accounts is the place of revelation: God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush in the wilderness as “I am who I am.” The whole exodus is about the going forth of the people of Israel into the wilderness. There the Law is given to them. The wilderness is the place of the giving of the Law and the context of the giving of the Law is liberation; the law itself is about a greater freedom, a freedom to God. “I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” the Ten Commandments begin.

This sense of liberation ultimately finds further expression in Paul’s evocative description of Jerusalem as the city which “is above”, which “is free” and which is “the mother of us all.” This passage takes us back to Quinquagesima Sunday where Jesus tells us that “we go up to Jerusalem.” What does that mean? It means learning to live from God’s Word and will.  It is in the wilderness that the people of the Hebrews become the people of the Law, after all, learning what it means to be God’s people, defined by the intellectual and spiritual realities of God’s word and will. How much more so when we are in the wilderness with Christ, learning about the darkness of our sinful hearts and about the light of Christ’s love?

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