SPY WEDNESDAY 2026 - Sarah Cooper

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and redeemer

And it was night

Judas, one of the twelve, had betrayed Jesus, and Jesus had known he would

Betrayal is the most visceral and agonising of human emotions, and one many of us have felt.

We see Jesus at his most human

His confrontation with betrayal has left him “troubled in spirit.” He’s agitated, stirred up, and shaken. We can so easily  imagine what that feels like…we feel that pain.

But we also see Jesus as who he truly is, as the Son of God, as he accepts the will of his Father,

So today I want us to pay attention to the times when you and I have been the betrayed, and reflect on how we do or could deal with it.

When has betrayal left you agitated, shaken, and disturbed?

All of us suffer betrayal at times. It’s a form of loss and what is lost is innocence, trust, a relationship. The greater the betrayal the more we tend to distrust others, the world, sometimes even ourselves.

Sometimes a specific betrayal gets generalized and it’s not just that individual, place, or institution we no longer trust, it’s all people, places, and institutions.

Sometimes we experience betrayal as an isolation or a devaluing of ourselves and consequently we avoid intimacy and authenticity.

Sometimes we respond with bitterness, anger, even violence. Sometimes we just can’t let go of what happened, we want to right th wrong done to us…..but that only binds us to the past. The betrayal wound can also distort existing and future relationships. We assume the other – whether a person, an institution, or God – will betray us again.

At some level we even pick our own betrayer.

Isn’t that what happened to Jesus? We shouldn’t be surprised that it was one of the twelve, one of his friends. Who else could it have been?

“We can only be deceived by those we trust” it is said.

 We can only be betrayed by those we love or to whom we entrust ourselves. 

The inherent risk of every relationship is betrayal.

The question isn’t whether we will suffer betrayal.

The question is: What do we do with our betrayals? How do we respond?

Jesus also dealt with those questions. 

We tend to focus on Judas as the exclusive betrayer in the life of Jesus. But betrayal is something Jesus dealt will all through his life, as do we, and it started early with King Herod wanting to kill him.

Later his family tried to restrain him because others were saying he had “gone out of his mind.”

His hometown of Nazareth wanted to “hurl him off the cliff.”

For Jesus Holy Week is a cascade of betrayals.

After Judas leaves the table in today’s gospel Jesus tells Peter, “Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times” 

And Peter does.

When Jesus is arrested “all the disciples deserted him and fled”

The religious authorities persuaded the crowd to turn on him.

Only his mother, John, and a few other women were at the crucifixion.

And on the cross he prayed “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”

What does Jesus do with his betrayals?

• He does not stop trusting

• He continues to love

• He does not reject

• He does not seek to right the wrong

• He stays true to himself

• He doesn’t take it personally.

• He has no need to justify, defend, or prove himself.

• He doesn’t criticize, judge, or accuse those who betray him.

• He acknowledges that they don’t know what they are doing and he prays God to forgive them.

Jesus washes Judas’ feet.

That moment, when you knelt before him,took off his sandals, readied the water,did you look up?  Search his eyes?Find in them some love, some traceof all that had passed between you?

As you washed his feet, holding them in your hand,watching the cool water soak away the dirt,feeling bones through hard skin,you knew he would leave the lit room,and slip out into the dark night.

And yet, with these small daily things –with washing, with breaking and sharing bread,you reached out your hand, touched, fed.Look, the kingdom is like this:

as small as a mustard seed, as yeast,a box of treasure hidden away beneath the dirt.See how such things become charged,mighty, when so full of love. This is the way.

In that moment, when silence ebbed between you,and you wrapped a towel around your waist;when you knew, and he knew,  what would be,you knelt before him, even so, and took offhis sandals, and gently washed his feet.*

Amen

©Andrea Skevington