When Jesus announces the betrayal by Judas at the Passover, He alludes to Psalm 41:9. The one who dipped his hand with me in the dish, Jesus says, betrays Him; centuries earlier, David had written, “My close friend, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” That is Judas; he lifts his heel to crush Jesus.
This all seems wrong. Jesus is the conquer; Jesus is the seed of the woman. He should be the one lifting up His heel against others, against the wicked, against the Satanic accuser. But that’s not what happens. Judas the betrayer lifts his heel, and Jesus looks like the serpent being crushed beneath. Jesus looks like the one with the crushed head, not the one with the bruised heel.
That it the foolishness of God that reveals the deepest wisdom.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
