The Holy Trinity of Betrayal
Everything ends in existence. Existence itself seems not to (so far). And everything that endures this existence for any significant time will experience the end of other things close to it whose time is past.
We become attached to things we share our time with. And when they end we almost always resent them going, even if it’s completely irrational. We feel betrayed and forsaken. Emotionally we may even blame people for leaving us who die involuntarily. Certainly it is very difficult to let go of any relationship where Love has become intertwined with attachment.
Even the Jesus of the Christian gospels wasn’t immune to this response in himself. “Father, why have you forsaken me?” These words, if we don’t do double back flips to ‘excuse’ them or ‘explain’ them must surely give pause. This we are told was the Son of God - born as a man, but a third of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! What did he really know that I don’t if this supreme divine being became disengaged from his God and his life’s teaching at the moment of Truth? Surely a display of confidence and certitude would have served Humanity’s needs better?
And yet, no.
I know, I know, he was sorely abused, and exhausted, and, and, and... But other ordinary men have been as badly or worse tortured and humiliated, and they (reputedly) have sometimes stayed steadfast in their certainties, even rejoiced at their imminent reunion with their particular experience of ‘the divine’.
So this sense of betrayal in Jesus Christ is of particular interest.
As I recall, betrayal raised it’s ugly face three significant times in the story:
First, poor Judas sold his Master’s life for silver. Betrayal number one.
Then, at the first whiff of the flames, hIs favourite disciple and friend denied even knowing him. Three times, just so we don’t think it’s a blip. Betrayal number two.
Then, his Father let him die a slow agonising death on the cross without even being there with him. Betrayal number three. (I’m not reading anything into this - He announced aloud before the world at large that the Truth he had been teaching had forsaken him).
Now there’s a Trinity I can understand without 2000 years of theological soft-shoeing. And there is a sort of Mythological beauty about the sequence.
First, at the outermost concentric of his solar system, a friend, a believer, a follower sells him to Death for money. Nothing fancy, nothing sophisticated or metaphysical. He did it for filthy lucre. As coarse and as worldly an act and motivation as one would need to make the point. The World in a nutshell.
Then, one concentric nearer, his dearest friend, with whom he’d shared some rough journeys and presumably previous harassment, washes his hands of the whole relationship; refuses to share his Master’s suffering; declines even to make a timid public apology or excuse to try to just get Jesus off the hook. Nothing, A knee jerk reaction out of blind self-regarding fear to deliver himself from danger. From the physical motives of Judas to the emotional motives of Peter.
Pilate actually comes out looking a lot better.
Then, after all of the exquisite and imaginative pantomime of humiliation, torture, and execution, when the story could have been resolved with words of defiance, or with a Divine intervention, or even with some mysterious calm inward bliss, he dies just like everybody else.
He feels the pain, he’s exhausted, he’s had to take what many ordinary human beings have taken at least as well without breaking, in fire or flaying or any of the rest. And he, in his divine consciousness (I’m not a believer, but I am not being ironic - on the contrary) sees that he’s been abandoned, forsaken, betrayed.
The Father he had preached turned out not to be what he thought he was. There was just himself, confused, bewildered, dying in great pain, and clearly unsure about where he was going. Certainly the conventional idea of the Christian Heaven appears to have been far from his mind.
And then he finally makes his exit, and what does he say?
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”.
That’s what he’s got left. After a life of poetry, miracles, philosophy, heroic resistance, what’s he got left? His spirit. Just his spirit. He can make no other gesture, exhibit no other power, claim no other authority. Not even his great Father’s loyalty. He is completely and stunningly abandoned and alone at the end of his journey.
And if at the end of it all, Jesus has nothing but “his spirit”, maybe the Holy Trinity isn’t what I’ve been taught. Maybe Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Maybe Peter (and the rest of us, perpetually left behind him) is the Son. As Jesus was when he existed. Certainly Peter is a Son of Man, and in the end at Jesus’ behest, the son of Mary.
And who or what is the Father?
None of my business. If all I have left to meet the mystery at the end of Time is my Holy Spirit, I’d better find it and get to work.
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
