Reliving The Passion #15

Mark 14:43–49

And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders.

Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away under guard.”

And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Master!”

And he kissed him.

And they laid hands on him and seized him. But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear.

And Jesus said to them, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.”

There comes an orange snake eastward through the night. A snake of fire, a long snake of torches. Perhaps the disciples glance down from the Mount of Olives and see it and do not understand. Jesus understands. It winds the same path they themselves have followed from the city. It winks through the trees in a smooth and silent, serpentine approach. It is a fatal snake. It kills by kissing.

The binding strength of that snake is the armed guard of the Temple and the police of the Sanhedrin. Behold how the servants of God can bite!

But the head of the snake is one of the twelve, a disciple of Jesus. Behold how an intimate may kiss for other reasons than affection and respect.

Suddenly Judas Iscariot appears beside the group of friends who stand outside the Garden of Gethsemane. Smiling. Judas is smiling. And claiming his accustomed place. And holding his torch aloft to shed light on the faces around him. Peering into these faces. Looking for…no, not for John, not James; no, not for Andrew or for Peter, though he greets them all with familiar nods. He’s looking for…ah!

The snake coils now into a thick knot of bodies and flame before the disciples. It has scores of eyes all flashing red in torchlight. Its scales are weapons, swords and clubs adown its sides. Its silence is tense, dead menace in close proximity—and it stinks of human sweat.

The disciples swallow, nervous and uncertain.

Jesus gazes and waits.

Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God made. From the beginning its movement was smooth, its manner mild, its promise to elevate whom it would eat. It was a murderer even from the beginning, a liar, the father of lies, and the father, so Jesus once declared, of—

The serpent strikes!

Smiling, Judas says, “Rabbi!” and kisses Jesus. A sign of devotion. A sign, for the Temple guard, that this is the one to seize and lead away. A lie.

In a garden once the Lord God decreed enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, enmity to the death. In a garden again that enmity produces this pathetic assault: a kiss that can kill.

But the serpent, that father of lies, is father too of what other brood? Why, of a human brood!—of those who know the nature of God and yet reject him! “You,” said Jesus once, “you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires!” (But read all of John 8:34–47!)

Even so do children, tragically, exchange one Father for another. How long must it be before the second father’s exposed as a fraud and a murderer?

And even so, with the meekest of gestures, has the war for the world been engaged. With a kiss. And the kiss has a tooth. And the snake that struck the Lord has a back of fire and a body of human opinion.

O Jesus,

This is such a sad meditation; yet this is just the start of “the hour,” first sips from the cup of your suffering!

Send even now your Spirit of Comfort, the Paraclete, since it is in your grace alone that I can bear to hear the horrible word and to see this story to conclusion. Please!

Amen.