Judas. Everyone knows one. Whether it’s an actual sell-you-out-to-the-Romans-with-a-gesture-of-love kinda guy, or Benedict Arnold, or just a friend you know will ditch you for her boyfriend at a party the first chance she gets, they're all over the place. Judas is arguably the worst sinner of all due to the severity of his crime and his level intimacy with and proximity to Christ. He lived by Jesus’ side for years, as his most trusted apostle, hand picked, who witnessed all of Jesus’ miracles, and handled the most sacred of tasks. Jesus, through his own divinity, understood that someone close to him had to be his betrayer long before Judas’ lips grazed his cheek, making the story all the more unbearable. Caravaggio’s greatest talent lies in bringing the world and stories of God and Christendom into the brutal light of primal humanity. Caravaggio strays away from painting holy people as anything other than everyday human beings and uses this theme to forge often violent depictions of these moments that are shocking and painful and most of all horrifyingly real.

Caravaggio uses this cramped composition to garner a feeling of intimacy between Jesus and the audience, and his lack of background (characteristic of his portraits but not his religious scenes) forces the eyes to focus all the more on the tension at hand. As a master of movement, you can feel the forward momentum of Judas and the guards, as emphasized by his hand gripping the shoulder of the teacher he’s just betrayed. Caravaggio uses color here to show us what we need to see. The dark armor of the soldiers makes them drift into the background, pushing us to look at three things in particular. First, the follower directly behind Jesus, St. John the Evangelist, screaming into the night. It’s difficult to know just from this painting whether he is attempting to flee or to get help but either way there’s no aid coming. Second, Jesus, Judas and the agony between the two. In this moment Jesus begins to understand his fate just as Judas starts to realize what a sin he’s just committed. Jesus turns from Judas, pulling back from his betrayer and the rushing soldiers behind him with a mixture of sadness and resignation on his face.  Finally, the onlooker behind the soldiers, a typical Caravaggio self-portrait, tucked in a back corner, holding up a lantern. Is this a symbol for the effect he wants his paintings to have on the audience, an illumination of the bible, or merely another opportunity for a self-obsessed painter to show the world how cool he is by casually dropping himself into one of the most crucial moments in Christ’s story? Likely both. There is also a third option, which might be equally as true, guilt. It’s no secret Caravaggio didn’t run with the nicest, or the most law-abiding people. And he has put himself in this painting, watching Jesus be carried off to his death, doing nothing and apparently not trying either. What’s more he’s staged behind the soldiers, compositionally helping in the strength of their push towards Jesus. To me this detail is also a statement of the guilt of the frozen witness. To quote, of all things, the musical Hairspray, “Just to sit still would be a sin.”

Clearly selling out christ for 30 silver pieces is an unbelievably horrific thing to do, particularly of someone of Judas’ position in Jesus’ group of followers. That much of the story is clear. So clear in fact that Judas is incapable of living with what he’s done and commits suicide shortly thereafter. But examining the big picture theological role of Judas is a little more muddled and complex. Without Judas’ terrible betrayal Jesus would not have been crucified, an act this powerful, the sacrifice is believed to have given pardon to all good, repenting Christians. It becomes complicated, is Judas somehow partially responsible for Christian salvation. Did this act of betrayal need to happen for the will of God to play out, and if so, was Judas acting as servant of God in this act or should he remain the lowest of the low? These are questions we must ask, yes because this is a biblical post, but also throughout this final series. Growing up, my mother always used to tell a story of one of her law professors of which the punchline is “All the world is gray. If you can understand that, one day, you might turn out to be a competent attorney. You might even turn out to be a halfway decent human being.” And when it comes to confronting this topic, with the lowest of the low, we have to see this concept and understand, if even for a moment, these terrible people are still that, people. Not black and white, or good and bad, but convoluted, indefinable, mixed up creatures with big brains and a particular propensity for illogical rationalization. Caravaggio’s mastery comes in making us see that.