I could handle enemy insults.
I could run from a bully.
But it’s you,
My soul friend,
My lifelong companion.
My most cherished memories include you
And me together in prayer,
Hearts united in worship
As we offered ourselves in God’s house
Among the joyful throng.
Oh let death swoop down unexpectedly,
Hauling my haters into Hades.
So fitting for their slumber parties
With evil.
…
My fake friend
Lied to my face,
Feigning friendship
With sweet words laced with poison,
With embraces disguising daggers.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 55, page 129)
The kiss of Judas echoes in the empty part of so many hearts, the parts emptied because of betrayal, the parts former friends and coworkers and spouses and church members used to keep filled.
Betrayal is violent. It’s a ripping of the soul. It takes relationships which have been knit together beautifully and thrusts a knife through them, rending and tearing and leaving a jagged edge where the two had been connected.
Throughout the Scriptures, we see God nursing wounds of betrayal inflicted on him by his people. The cuckolded prophet Hosea expresses this anguish in his own life when his wife leaves him, offering her love to any man other than him. And yes, the Judas kiss. A sign of affection and intimacy turned into a weapon.
Jilted. Stabbed in the back. Thrown under the bus. Slapped in the face. Ambushed. Ditched. Let down. Left in the lurch. Betrayal is a shock, an unhappy surprise. The way that betrayal cuts across expectations makes it that much harder to deal with, that much harder to process and forgive. Not only does it leave our minds swirling, but our emotions as well.
All this makes betrayal one of the hardest things to pray — and therefore one of the most important things to pray. The volume of emotions makes us want to avoid it. But that messy mass and noise so fill up our souls, dealing with it before God is essential. And fortunately for us, the Psalms are filled with prayers of the betrayed.
The first thing we find in these prayers is a feeling of violence for having been violated by those who should have been safe. And the response we find in the Psalms is surprisingly violent. We expect to be pointed immediately to prayers of forgiveness. But the truth is we’re not ready to go there quite yet. We need to get to the bottom of our emotions of betrayal before we can get on with the necessary business of forgiveness and ultimately of reconciliation if possible. But that’s down the road. Psalm-inspired prayer leads down into the dark depths before returning to the sunlight.
God knows what happened, but we articulate the details of the betrayal anyway. Verbalizing it makes us actually deal with it. And what we’re doing here isn’t giving information to God; he knows all. What we’re doing is starting a conversation with God. So we lay it all out, every stab and slur we’ve endured. We vomit.
But we don’t stop there. We ask for retribution, even if it’s hellish in over-reaction. Even if it’s horrifically violent. Our job here isn’t to sanitize our praying. Our job is to suck the venom from the wound, leaving none behind to go septic and fester and kill.
As we pray the pain of our betrayals, we drain ourselves of the violence done to us and welling up inside us, putting it into words before the only one who can’t be harmed by them. And as we do so, we release our hold on our pain and it releases its hold on us, for it’s all placed in God’s hands.
Prayer: Jesus, you know the pain of betrayal from the inside out, having felt the lips of Judas on your cheek and having heard the crow of the rooster as Peter denied knowing you. So here’s my pain. With clenched teeth and balled-up fists, I vent my betrayal before you. I can’t handle these feelings on my own. They are a black hole sucking in my soul. So take it all: My surprise; my wrath; my self-pity. Help me get to the other side of it. I want to be whole again, freed of my fury. In the name of Jesus the crucified. Amen.