3. Betrayal.
You ask about the night they took
Him?
It was terrible. Far beyond terrible,
Despair so utterly bleak
That it seemed the end of everything.
What was left but a pathetic scramble
for survival?
And guilt of course. Overwhelming,
suffocating guilt.
We’d all betrayed Him. Well, everyone
Except John and a little group of
women.
For all the rest of us it was
betrayal.
Let me list the whole sorry lot.
There was Pilate with his “washing of
hands”;
Herod’s shallow pantomime, dressing
Him in purple;
The High Priest’s cynical expediency;
The murderous hypocrisy of the Sanhedrin;
The Pharisees’ pious pretence;
The ungrateful mob’s “Crucify him!”;
Treacherous Judas’s love of money.
All this was betrayal and worse. It led
to the murder
Of a man whose “crime” was that He
was too good;
That His light exposed dark hearts;
A man who had helped, healed, taught,
brought hope,
Who showed us what we could aspire to
be;
Who only desired to set people free
and heal the broken hearted.
They were the betrayers and
murderers.
But what of us, His chosen companions?
We were not murderers, but we were
betrayers.
Was our betrayal cowardice or disbelief?
Superficially, it was cowardice.
Peter denied Him three times,
swearing and cursing,
His last “I don’t know Him!” just as
they were bringing Him,
Exhausted, beaten and bruised, into
the courtyard.
Of course He heard it and Peter fled,
weeping bitterly.
The rest of us? It too, superficially,
was cowardice.
We fled when He was taken. We hid
behind locked doors.
We trembled and jumped at shadows,
Scared they’d soon be coming and we’d
be next.
But our failure to believe was a
deeper betrayal.
He’d spoken many times about His
death and His resurrection.
We couldn’t accept it. Our minds were
set on Kingdom.
We thought that He would soon
establish it.
We thought that soon He’d be reigning
in power.
We even squabbled about who would be
greatest.
The idea that He would die was
incomprehensible.
Equally incomprehensible was His
resurrection.
It was completely beyond our understanding.
We, His closest companions, were the
most unwilling of witnesses.
So I come to the events of the third
day.
In the very early morning in rushed Mary
Magdalene,
Declaring she’d seen, spoken, even
touched Him.
Why didn’t we believe her? You have
to remember
That Mary had once been very mentally
unwell.
We thought that her grief had
unbalanced her.
Later Peter declared that he’d seen
Him.
Peter was a practical sort of man, so
that excited us,
But we still couldn’t accept it. It
just wasn’t possible.
Then that night we were gathered
together, Peter included,
And two of our friends burst in,
declaring “Peter is right”,
Said they’d walked, talked, even
eaten with Him.
We didn’t know what to think. Could
it be possible?
Then suddenly, He was there in the
room.
The wounds were visible in His hands,
feet and side.
He ate with us. Later, when He left,
The signs were there in the remains
of the food.
Then Thomas came in and, just like us,
Refused to believe unless he thrust
his fingers
Into the nail holes and fist into the
spear wound.
Suddenly He was there.
“Reach your finger here”, He said, “And
touch My hands.
Put your hand here into My side.
Do not be unbelieving, but be
believing.”
Then we, betrayers all, believed.
