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By Rev. Larry Faraon
Mel Gibson’s Opus Magnus, The
Passion of the Christ (2002), depicted the agonizing Jesus as
crushing the head of a serpent, a veritable allusion to the promise
made by the Lord in the Old Testament book, Genesis 3:15, “He will
crush your head and you will strike at his heel.” But a real human
‘serpent’ was about to arrive at the misty scene with the
arresting officers of the temple, who would strike a blow on
Christ’s heel but through a soft kiss (or was it a bite). That was
Judas, the epitome of the word ‘traitor.’ Enemies do not really
hurt, but traitors and betrayers do. To his Father he was still
trying to make a deal, “Father, if it is possible, take this cup
away from me . . . but not my will but your will” (Matthew 26:39).
But he knew that no deal was possible with Judas Iscariot who made
an earlier deal with the Chief Priest to hand over to them the man
who claimed to be the “messiah.” Judas was Jesus’ appointed
and trusted administrator, manager of the twelve, the one who kept
the money bag, the treasurer—a position of confidence.
Similarly, also hurting was the
scene of the three apostles—Peter, James and John, dozing off in
the garden where they could not even “watch an hour with me,”
because the “spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Oh yes,
Peter, the other apostle, so trusted because of his primacy among
the apostles when he hit the jackpot of an answer, “You are the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.” But now the sanguine Peter,
whom Jesus would one day rebuke as, “Get behind me, Satan,” was
indeed serpent-like in character, just like the other trusted
apostle Judas. It was not a cock crow that woke him up when Jesus
declared, “Are you still sleeping? Behold the hour is at hand when
the Son of Man is to be handed over to sinners. Get up, let’s go.
Look, my betrayer is at hand” (Matt. 26:45-46). But it would be a
cock crow that would bring him back to his senses when engulfed in
cowardice and self preservation, he denied his master, not once, nor
twice but three times and in front of a housemaid at that!
What really agonized Jesus to the
point of “perspiring in blood” is the fact that two of his most
trusted apostles turned their backs on him. Of course, one repented,
i.e. Peter (John 21: 15-19), and Judas whose guilty conscience never
had any space for Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness, just hanged
himself in total disarray. In paradise, Eve’s best chat friend was
the serpent because “it was the most cunning of all the animals
that the Lord created” (Genesis 2:1). It was then logical for the
enterprising Satan to hide beneath the serpent’s slither and
fanged venom to strike at Eve’s weak points and brought her low in
the sham of original sin.
Really, you just can’t trust so
called friends and loyalties. It would really be so hurting if ever
they betray you. But we find them everywhere, not only in thick
grasses or jungles, but in cities of steel and fancy too, in this
civilized and nonbiblical times. Didn’t I hear some place in the
heart of Manila being branded a ‘snake pit’? I can’t remember
what that place was!
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