Passiontide 2016 - Seeing you

Betrayal is anachronistic. It is all about lies, and yet at the heart of the moment lies a kind of truth. Whatever form betrayal takes, the person being betrayed experiences something like shame – naked exposure, perhaps. In the moment of betrayal that person is defenceless, without ‘cover’ of any kind. They look and feel foolish because they have trusted. It is their own trust which makes them feel defenceless and ashamed as much as the act of betrayal itself.

The one betraying, whatever their reason for doing so, must justify the lies involved and the pain caused by more lies. They must justify it to themselves, so that the betrayal seems in some way ‘necessary’ and therefore not of their choosing. ‘I had to do it’ they will say. ‘I had no choice’. Apart from justifying the moment, or the act, they must maintain their integrity, at least to themselves by distancing themselves from any direct responsibility for the damage they have done, and thereby exonerating themselves from being held in any way accountable for it.

All of this is the stuff of politics, of international relations, of the life of the Church and of our own experiences of betrayal, as victim or perpetrator. One could say that it is a universal principle, but it is also complex. Take, for example, corruption or betrayal in institutions whose integrity we need to take for granted, we need to trust; the fiddling of party election expenses (and in some countries the election process itself), police pay-offs for saying nothing in the context of organised crime relating to the grooming of young people for sex, the treatment of people held in police custody (especially if they are black), the power games and personal betrayals (both public and private) of government, sexual exploitation and cover up by the institutional Church along with the countless glossed over betrayals of loyal and faithful clergy who have served it in good faith, often for years.

Betrayal leaves us dealing with truths we would perhaps rather not face because in the moment of betrayal we see ourselves and others differently. Two such moments occur within a very short space of time in the final hours of the life of Jesus. Neither came as a surprise, but that did not make the betrayal easier to bear. The first took place in a garden at night where one of his own friends shopped him to the religious police. His friend identified him with a kiss.

Betrayal so often comes masquerading as love. ‘I did this or said that because I love you.’ Or ‘I behaved in that way, but you know I really love you.’ Both are lies, of course. We do not harm others because we love them, no matter how justifiable the action may seem to be at the time. We do not abuse trust by exposing another to pain.

Judas was trying to force Jesus’s hand politically. He was prepared to take the risk of his suffering (which Judas may have imagined would somehow be averted at the last minute) to turn Jesus into what he ‘should’ have been. It was about control and manipulation. The control or manipulation of others, especially those who trust us, is always betrayal. In the moment of the kiss Judas knows that Jesus also knows the truth of the situation, and the truth about Judas. He has known it for a long time in allowing Judas to be what he was, a pilferer of the common purse who had his priorities all wrong. 

Then there was the incident in the courtyard later that night, or possibly early the next morning. Peter, nicknamed ‘the rock’, the one who could be trusted, denies ever having known his closest friend. This moment, held in the meeting of their eyes as the cockerel crowed for the third time, also held every lie that has ever been told for the sake of saving one’s own life or reputation at the expense of the life or reputation of another.

The two moments I have just described are seminal. They are the soil in which the reversal of all betrayals germinates and takes root. Both reveal divine love at its source. They also reveal what that love looks and feels like. It looks like vulnerability and trust. In these two moments Jesus invites us not to look away, not to hide from our betrayals, or from the lies we have lived with for years, but to look quietly and bravely into his eyes, not asking for anything, but simply allowing ourselves to be seen. The rest will follow.

True authority and the conflicts of today

Jesus provokes the religious leaders of his time in a number of contexts. He disturbs the status quo by threatening individual power bases, including religious ones. He outrages the authorities by openly challenging them in his teaching and through subversive behaviour, such as driving out the money lenders from the temple. But most significantly, he threatens their authority by winning people’s trust. He connects with people. In other words, he connects with the truth which they inherently sense but seldom hear spoken, or witness in the lives of the powerful. In Jesus they experience truth as something understood at a primary level of human consciousness. They experience truth, rather than just hear it discussed. This is what makes the authority of Jesus recognisably authentic.

Authority comes with trust. True authority is always given, or entrusted, but it does not always come with power. In fact, Jesus refused to be seduced by power. As a result, his authority challenged and disturbed the powerful. The authority of Jesus was not the same as political power. Through the authority given him by the Father, he inspired and changed lives and convinced people of the love of God, but he did not get rid of the Roman occupying forces. Instead, with the authority given him, he radically changed the destiny of the world. He set it on a different course.

It is authority and not power that is needed today with regard to the conflicts raging in the Middle East. We need an authority which is vested in God’s love for all of humanity, and so capable of changing the world, but which at the same time has been entrusted to our leaders by us, through the democratic process. Trust has to have been earned if authority is to be freely given. It is probably fair to say that political authority is rarely earned in the way God would have it earned, with the exception of one or two rare individuals – Myanmar’s President Aung San Suu Kyi being one which springs to mind.

Entrusting authority to world leaders does not exempt the rest of us from taking responsibility for what they do with it. So they should know that we expect and demand that the wisest, most truthful and most judicious course of action be taken in our name. For us at present, this involves taking responsibility for our country’s active engagement in  a conflict which has been brought about by violent extremism borrowed from religion, and from the lust for power. There are issues of genocide, our own security and that of other countries at stake, all of which return us to the question of authority rightfully earned and exercised in the interest of the freedom and safety of all. ISIS has no such authority. This is also true for those who facilitate or support its actions.

People of faith, as well as those who do not think of themselves as religious, should give religious and secular leaders who are engaged in the urgent business of defeating this particular evil their full and heartfelt attention. Giving such attention is a business which concerns us all. Attentiveness means being alongside the world’s leaders in heart and mind,– in other words, in that part of the heart which also thinks. This does not mean agreeing with them. In fact attentiveness will inevitably face us with some uncomfortable truths regarding other conflicts that we have caused, been involved with, or simply stood by and allowed to happen, Gaza and Israel being one of the most recent examples.

Nevertheless, where there is a heart and head attentiveness, there is also hope. We have had brief and surprising glimpses of what this kind of attentiveness could lead to. Who, for example, could have imagined that a group of leaders whose countries have long distrusted one another and, in some cases, declared themselves to be in a state of mutual enmity, would sit around a table in order to plan how they might best work together to overcome the evil being manifested through the murderous activities of ISIS? The scenario is of course far more complicated, but something of wisdom and common sense is at work here. Something of true authority is being exercised. It shows that an evil which is everyone’s problem requires a concerted and judicious response. If, either as individual nations or collectively, we do nothing, we shall all be responsible for a growing violent anarchy which is capable of doing immense harm to those its perpetrators hate most. This is true both in its own sphere of influence and in the wider global context.

But we are also implicated when we act. This is why trust is so badly needed in politics today. Exercising authority in a judicious way means doing the right thing for the right reason. But this can only be done with the support and trust of a majority who want the same just and peaceful outcome, including those of us who may not be 100% sure that a particular course of action is the right one tactically or as part of a broader strategy, but do know that we need to act. 

Exercising authority in the way God would like us to exercise it begins with humility. It means that the authority given comes with an awareness that our human and often short term thinking does not always turn out for the best for the greatest number of people. Such authority involves us all, so let’s try to be more deeply attentive to those who are accountable to us for the decisions they make in our name.