The Kiss of Death

Title: The Kiss of Death

Date: Unlisted 1987

Readings: Unlisted

The title for these few words might make one imagine a romantic setting where some daring spy has an affair with a deadly enemy agent. Such is how our minds and imaginations work these days. The biologist might fantasize in some poor anthropomorphic way about the love of two black widow spiders. He loved her so much, knowing that her embrace guaranteed both new life and the risk of his own. Snap! She bit off his head -- oblivion, the end of love -- now he is merely fodder for a horde of cannibalistic brood. Oh how sweet the kiss of death can be. Perhaps the damsel being drained of her blood would think so as she was enraptured by the vampires which emerge from late night movies. Well enough, these might make interesting asides; what I want to speak about is a far more realistic kiss, a kiss which has touched the lives of each and every one of us.

It is the story about a lonely figure in a garden. His friends are asleep. He had hoped they could spend awake what little time he had remaining with them, but alas, the flesh was too weak. All are asleep, except for one other. He had called this man friend. He had trusted him with their traveling purse. He had called him to follow him by name. And if Christ most loves the sinner, then this was the one man besides his beloved John whom he held closest to his heart. His name was Judas Iscariot. He came quietly in the night. Drawing near, he greeted his Master with a kiss. It had begun. All the sin that had ever erupted into the world, or which ever would, was a part of that kiss. A thousand, a million, no a billion and more lips touched his check in a gesture which should have meant love. Instead, it was an act of the most dire betrayal. Voices in history would echo the cry, "It would have been better if this man had never been born!" Maybe. Does he now reside beside Satan? I don't know. What tears he must have cried in knowing that he could not force Christ to be something he was not. No, he would not liberate with arms or with trumpet blasts. He would submit. He would die.

The seeming irony of our faith is that the kiss of death on our part, the hypocrisy of its false love is turned around by real love, a love which gives life and not death. Maybe like the sinner woman who dared to enter into the Pharisee's home to wash Christ's feet with her tears and later to dry them with her hair, we too need to see that the strangeness of God's ways are not always ours. He comes not for the righteous but for the sinner; not for the rich but for the poor; not for the satisfied but for those still hungry. He comes not waving a sword but pierced by one.