"Betrayed with a Kiss”
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Jesus has known this moment of betrayal is coming.
Matthew 26:47-56
March 22, 2026
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Touch can be as casual as bumping into someone while waiting in line; as clinical as having your pulse taken at a blood drive; or as tender as a toddler grasping their parents’ hand.
“The Bible includes touch,” Debra Bendis reminds us, “in all of its [variations] — compassion, love, friendship, violence, and fear. There is the bleeding woman who risks touching Jesus’ hem with her hand, a forbidden, intrusive act that he accepts as an expression of faith. There’s Jesus himself, who touches strangers daily with an empowered authority, tenderness, and lack of fear — [he] ‘put forth his hand, and touched him’ (a leper), and ‘he touched her hand’ (Peter’s mother-in-law) and ‘touched their eyes”(two blind men).’[i]
And there is that awful scene in Judges where Ehud, a left-handed man, “took [a hidden] sword and thrust it into King Eglon of Moab’s belly. The hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the sword out of his belly, and the dirt came out.”[ii]
That’s more tactile than I want to imagine! More violent and intimate, too!
Touch sparked Richard Renaldi’s book of photographs, Touching Strangers. Beginning in 2007, he talked with strangers on the street and persuaded some to let him photograph them.[iii]
Here’s how his work is described on Amazon:
“He pairs them up and invites them to pose together, intimately, in ways that people are usually taught to reserve for their close friends and loved ones. Renaldi creates spontaneous and fleeting relationships between strangers for the camera, often pushing his subjects beyond their comfort levels. These relationships may only last for the moment the shutter is released, but the resulting photographs are moving and provocative, and raise profound questions about the possibilities for positive human connection in a diverse society.”[iv]
One reviewer adds,
“Most photographers capture life as it is, but in these strangers, Richard Renaldi has captured something much more ethereal and elusive. He shows us humanity as it could be - as most of us wish it would be - and as it was, at least for those one fleeting moments in time.”
I wonder what Renaldi would have made of the scene in the garden when Judas kissed Jesus.
Would he have assumed it was the affectionate greeting of two old friends? Or the forced familiarity of strangers, like in one of his photos?
I’m sure he wouldn’t have imagined it to be a signal for betrayal – not a kiss!
And yet that is what it is.
Judas has followed Jesus, along with the other 11, for most of his ministry. Like them, he was given authority over unclean spirits and to cure every disease and sent out to proclaim the good news. Like them, he heard all Jesus’ parables and witnessed his deeds of power. Like them, he was a guest at the last supper, straining to understand as they were all bidden to eat the broken bread and drink from the cup of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sin.
He is betraying all of that.
Max Lucado wonders, “What was your motive, Judas? Were you trying to call his hand? Did you want the money? Were you seeking some attention?”[v]
He continues, “Why, dear Judas, did it have to be a kiss? You could have pointed. You could have just called his name. But you put your lips to his cheek and kissed. A snake kills with his mouth.”
Have you been stung by betrayal? Does this moment strike close to home?
Lucado observes, “Betray – the word is an eighth of an inch above betroth in the dictionary. [Fitting!] It’s a weapon found only in the hands of one you love. Your enemy has no such tool, for only a friend can betray. It’s a violation of a trust, an inside job.
It’s more than a rejection,” he explains. “Rejection opens a wound, betrayal pours in the salt.
It’s more than loneliness. Loneliness leaves you in the cold, betrayal closes the door.
It’s more than mockery. Mockery plunges the knife, betrayal twists it.
It’s more than an insult. An insult attacks your pride, betrayal breaks your heart.”
Jesus has known this moment of betrayal is coming.
He told his disciples while eating Passover dinner with them, “one of you will betray me.”
It was on his mind as he broke bread and shared the cup indicating what would result.
It was in his heart as he prayed at Gethsemane, grieved and agitated, desperate and obedient.
It was in his voice as he rose and proclaimed, “my betrayer is at hand.”
Judas has known too.
He has been looking for an opportunity, ever since he went to the chief priests, after the anointing at Bethany, and offered to betray his Lord for 30 pieces of silver.
This confrontation was inevitable when he witnessed the chief priests gathering a crowd armed with swords and clubs; as he led them to the spot; and as he briefed them on the sign, saying, “the one I kiss is the man, arrest him!”
And we have known it too.
Three times, in Matthew, Jesus has predicted how things will unfold. That he would …
“undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes,”
“be betrayed into human hands, and
“handed over to the chief priests and scribes.”[vi]
I wonder, does knowing about betrayal in advance allow you to numb your heart?
Or does it just extend the pain over a longer period?
Three things become clear as Jesus responds to this betrayal:
It had to happen this way – according to scripture and the will of God.
Jesus could have stopped it – by calling on 12 legions of angels – some 72,000 heavenly warriors.
And Jesus is in control of the script –
he stops his people’s foolish resistance,
rebukes their use of violence,
and goes voluntarily with the mob into the night.
We are moving ever closer to the cross as we step through this week called Holy.
The one who came to bring life, is walking willingly toward death.
What are we, who have committed to following him, supposed to think, to feel, to say?
In his poem, “The First Night”, Billy Collins wonders if day and night will continue to circle each other after we are dead. He writes:
“Or will the first night be the only night, a darkness for which we have no other name?
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death. This is where language will stop,
the horse we have ridden all our lives rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff.
The word that was in the beginning and the word that was made flesh –
those and other words will cease.”[vii]
I think Matthew would disagree.
The Living Word may be betrayed, arrested, and put to death, but that will not be the end of things. Violence cannot have the last word, any more than fear can.
We live in a world that constantly shouts about both – beating the drums of war or screaming about its waste and foolishness – but only because it has forgotten the story we need to hear most.
Matthew makes sure that Jesus’ story does not get forgotten. He tells:
How one who was betrayed, refused to resort to anger, hatred, or violence.
How one who was unjustly arrested, beaten, and condemned, becomes a symbol of hope.
And how one whose last words before dying were of forgiveness and paradise, lives on.
May that story live on in you! Amen
[i] From “A Person’s Touch”, in the Christian Century, 5/8/14
[ii] Judges 3:21-22
[iii] For some of the photos from the book, see https://issuu.com/apertureny/docs/touchingstrangers_interior_spreads_?e=5944098/7173427
[v] Here and following from And the Angels Were Silent, pages 173-175
[vi] See Matthew 16:21, 17:22, and 20:18
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