“Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” – Jesus (John 13:21)

“Well, did you trust your noble dreams and gentle expectations to the mercy of the night? The night will always win.”

Worse yet, Jesus, did you trust your noble dreams and gentle expectations to the mercy of your followers? Well, then you will always be betrayed. Even if we regret it in the morning. Even if we miss “your stupid face” and “bad advice” when we’ve done everything in our power to flee your presence.

The disciples each had to ask if he would be the one to betray you, Jesus, because they all knew deep down that they were capable of it. More than that, they had absorbed years of your teaching and knew their incapability of living up to it. Judas just knew it better than any of them. Recognized the foolishness of filling all these earthen vessels and tried to shift the onus back on you and your divinity to usher in the kingdom of God. He wasn’t wrong in thinking us unequal to the task.

Even in our attempts to be faithful, we try “to clothe your bones” with poor production values, to make you real to the world around us with unconvincing words that turn people off and trite music that falls flat.

“I throw this to the wind, but what if” Judas “was right” in a way — to just get it over with, and quickly? It was an honest betrayal of sorts, that literally gutted him, compared to Peter swearing up and down that he would never betray Jesus. We can only swear such a thing by the moon — “th’inconstant moon” that changes form and position constantly like our variable love (Romeo and Juliet, II:2).

Jesus knew this would happen all along, and yet he chose to trust, he chooses to entrust us with his message to the world, to include us in his intimate circle, to call us friends. Part of striving to live worthy of such a calling includes facing the inevitability of failing to do so. Jesus entrusting human beings with following the will of God means that yes, the night will always win. But the darkness will not have the last word. The day of the Lord is now, and coming. Jesus’s faithfulness in following the will of God means that the night will never triumph.