The Kiss

"Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?" (Luke 22:48)

Of everything that happened that week, this is the part I can't shake.

Not the whip. Not the nails. The kiss.

Judas walks into that garden with soldiers behind him, and the signal he picked to point Jesus out was a greeting friends gave each other. He could have pointed. He could have said the name. He chose the one gesture that meant closeness.

"Greetings, Rabbi!" he said, and kissed him. (Matthew 26:49)

Betrayal from a stranger is just conflict. Betrayal from someone who ate at your table is something else entirely. That's the one that makes you second guess every good memory you had with them.

And Jesus saw it coming the whole time.

He knew at dinner. He said it out loud at the table. He still handed Judas bread. He still let him sit there. He still called him friend in the garden.

That's the part that gets me. Knowing what was coming did not make Him cold. He didn't pull back, go quiet, start protecting Himself. He stayed open all the way to the kiss.

I'm not sure I could do that, and I don't think most of us do. When somebody burns us, we get careful. We decide people can only get so close from now on. We call it being smart. Most of the time it's just a wall with better branding.

Here's what I keep landing on. Judas handed Jesus over for thirty pieces of silver, and Jesus went anyway. Not because He didn't see it. Because the thing He was going to do was bigger than the man who sold Him out.

Somebody hurt you. That's real and I'm not going to talk around it. But do not let what they did write the rules for how you love everybody who comes after them.

The kiss did not stop Him. It was the beginning of the very thing that saved us.

Next week it gets worse before it gets better. Because by sunrise, the one who swore he would die before he denied Him had already done it three times.

And then the rooster crowed.

Austin
Founder, TheRisenKing