It’s easy and tempting to look at today’s gospel (John 13:21-32) and cast Jesus as the victim and Judas as the villain. It seems to be the usual interpretation. Maybe that’s a projection of our own experience of being betrayed. We feel like the victim. But Jesus never cast himself as the victim.

He doesn’t play the victim. He doesn’t take offense. He doesn’t argue with Judas. He doesn’t express outrage or shock. He doesn’t blame or retaliate. He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t question or guilt Judas. So I want to look at today’s gospel in a different way. 

What if today’s gospel says more about Jesus than it does Judas? What if it reveals, once again, how Jesus lives and loves? What if Jesus makes himself betrayable by how he lives and loves?

Maybe that’s why Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you one of you will betray me.” Maybe he knows that he has made himself betrayable.

I don’t know where I learned it, who said it, or if anyone even said it to me, but somewhere along the way I got the message: Choose your friends wisely, be careful who you trust, look out for number one because no one else will. Maybe you know that message too. 

It doesn’t seem to be a message Jesus got. We just don’t see that in him. Think about who he surrounds himself with; fisherman, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the untouchables, foreigners, the poor, the hungry. He surrounds himself with people we might see as a bit sketchy. They have nothing to give him and no power to do anything for him. They live on the margins. They were strangers.

Jesus didn’t surround himself with loyalists, yes men, or bodyguards. He carries no exit strategy in his back pocket. That’s what little men who want to be big men do. That’s what weak and scared men who want to be seen as strong do. 

Jesus demonstrates a different kind of power and strength. Love, trust, vulnerability, self-giving. He doesn’t need to be in charge of or control the outcome. He simply makes an offering of himself – his love, trust, presence – and let’s go of the outcome. He holds nothing in reserve. He invests fully and that makes him fully betrayable. 

I don’t think Jesus wanted to be betrayed anymore than you or I do. He wanted to be true to himself. 

To not live a betrayable life, to be incapable of trust and vulnerability, means that we are always living a guarded life, suspicious of others, walking through a conspiratorial world, paranoid, everyone is an enemy. There can be no love, trust, depth, or intimacy. And at some level our unspoken motto is, “Get before you are got.”

When we live without trust and vulnerability, there is no depth of relationship. And where there is no depth of relationship there is nothing to betray. We may think that we are saving our life, but it is already lost.

What if life isn’t to be saved, but to be offered? 

Isn’t that really what Jesus is saying and doing in today’s gospel? Isn’t that what we see in Jesus throughout the gospel? Isn’t that what makes him betrayable?

Maybe that’s why Jesus says to Judas, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” I don’t think he’s encouraging or asking Judas to betray him. And I don’t think Jesus is giving up. He’s being true to himself.

Maybe he’s talking to himself as much as he is to Judas. “You might betray me, but I will not betray myself. I will not regret how I’ve lived my life. I will not regret having chosen you as one of the twelve. And I will not regret having washed your feet and loved you.”

What about us? How betrayable are you and I? Are we saving or offering our life?

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Image Credit: By unattributed, possibly from the so-called Sigmaringen Psalter – Sotheby’s, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.