Christ Church

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

Holy Week is the spectacle of all our betrayals. In a way, all betrayal is an aspect of the archetype of all betrayal, the betrayal of Judas. It is the intimacy of a kiss that heightens the sense of the enormity of sin and its betrayal of the goodness of God.

We read the Passion of St. Mark on Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week. The Passion of St. Matthew has already been read on Palm Sunday. The beginning of the Passion of St. Mark is intriguing and to my mind, quite beautiful and compelling. The passage begins with the pouring out of the ointment of spikenard from the alabaster box upon the head of Jesus. It ends with the outpouring of the tears of Peter. In between are the various scenes of betrayal: Judas Iscariot going to the chief priests to betray him; Jesus’ at table with the twelve predicting that “one of you which eateth with me shall betray me”; the falling asleep of the James and John and Simon Peter while Christ wrestles with the Father’s will in Gethsemane; the actual betrayal and capture of Christ; the false witnesses against Christ before the high priest and the council of the elders; and, of course, Peter’s threefold betrayal of Christ. Betrayals are us.

The frame of the story here is most instructive. What the unnamed woman has done is portrayed, too, as a kind of betrayal. Pouring out the ointment is seen as a waste “for it might have been sold for more than three hundred pieces of silver, and have been given to the poor.” Her anointing of Christ is seen as a betrayal of what is owed to the poor. We have obligations and duties, responsibilities and commitments to one another, to be sure, and especially towards the poor, but the point of the Gospel is not the eradication of poverty – an utopian dream – but to do always what you can, “for ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.” There is more than money, dare I say, that the poor and, indeed, all of us need. The church must be more than another agency for worldly improvement.

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“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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