It’s Easter weekend, so I probably ought to be writing something celebratory and feelgood. But I’ve been thinking about betrayal, which is, after all, a central part of the Easter narrative. Some key betrayals happen leading up to the miraculous event of the empty tomb and the vision of the risen Christ. And I do think that betrayals, as unfortunate as they can be, are often part of new beginnings.
At first glance we might imagine that this theme has little to do with us or our own lives. Betrayal is such a big and dramatic word. We see it play out in movies or read about it in novels, but its occurrences in our own lives aren’t really the stuff of water-cooler conversations.
But I suspect that people frequently find themselves in situations that are, on closer examination, experienced as betrayals of some sort or another. Even small betrayals can be so wounding that our reactions — beyond seething, plotting or falling apart — are about trying to move on. Yet I wonder if there are benefits to reflecting on the ways we experience our trust being broken by others, or when we choose to act against our own confidences or integrity.
A few years ago, while walking through the newly reopened Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, I chanced upon the 1878 painting “Judas Iscariot” by Norwegian artist Eilif Peterssen. I was so taken aback by its intimacy and its intensity that I made a note right there to one day write about it.
Peterssen depicts just two figures, Jesus and the disciple Judas, centred in a dark space illuminated only by the red and orange light from Judas’s lantern. We know they are not alone because it is at this point in the story that Judas will use a kiss to reveal who Jesus is to the soldiers waiting to arrest him. But the work puts close focus on the men’s faces and upper bodies. Jesus stands looking directly into Judas’s eyes, his face alight and fully visible to us. His gaze is deep with recognition as Judas leans in, his lips just inches away.
What I love about this painting is that it shows Jesus deciding, in that moment, to look openly into Judas’s eyes, letting him know that he sees him. I can’t help thinking that what is also being expressed in this gaze is that Jesus sees Judas for his current harmful actions — but also for who he has known him to be for the past three years when he was closer than a brother. He knows this cruel decision is not Judas’s full story. It makes me wonder if it is because of this compassion that Judas is driven to such remorse and despair shortly thereafter.
Intimate betrayals seem not only the most painful but also the most complex. Without denying the immense pain, and the grievous actions that are part of most all intimate betrayals, this painting makes me want to believe that even when we are our worst selves, there is some part of us that is aching to be seen for our larger story.
“Peter’s Denial” is a painting by Frank Wesley, an Indian artist born in Uttar Pradesh in 1923. In this work, we see the profile of a man wearing a brownish purple garment, his body bent slightly at the waist so that his back is curved like the side of a mountain, his head buried in his hands. A mop of black hair and an ear are almost all we see. He is clearly in anguish. An orb of light frames the arch from his forehead down to his lower back. Beneath his upper body on the lower half of the canvas, a wash of blue paint drips like rainwater down a glass panel.
This is a portrait of Peter, the second disciple to betray Jesus on the night of his arrest. The narrative is found in all four gospels of the Bible. At the last supper, Jesus tells Peter that before the cock crows the following morning, he will deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter counters that this will not happen; he believes that his devotion and commitment is too great.
But later in the story, when Jesus is arrested and the authorities are looking for anyone associated with him, Peter denies knowing him on three separate occasions. And then he hears the cock crow. His response in all four gospels is the same. He remembers what Jesus had said about him and he goes out and weeps.
Wesley has painted two large imprints of the rooster’s feet on Peter’s shoulder blades. What I find so interesting and moving here is that by making Peter the sole focus of this painting, Wesley seems to suggest that the pain Peter is experiencing is not just the betrayal of someone he loved but also his self-betrayal. Three times he spoke directly against and in complete denial of what until that point had been his core identity and what he had committed his life to.
It made me think about the many smaller ways we all permit or give into betrayals of self or of who we want to believe ourselves to be. At the root of Peter’s self-betrayal is fear. He’s afraid of being arrested. When was the last time we acted against who we desire to be or think we are? And if we thought about it now, what was at the root of our own behaviour?
One of Rembrandt’s most famous works is “The Return of the Prodigal Son”, dated around 1667, two years before he died. It depicts the Bible story of a father whose youngest son returns home after years spent away, squandering his inheritance. The son returns home destitute and willing to be a servant, at which point his father welcomes him with a feast and a celebration.
In this painting, the son kneels before the father, his clothes appear worn and his shoes are falling apart, revealing the filthy soles of his feet. The father, dressed in fine clothes, lays both his hands on the son’s back as if in blessing, comfort and forgiveness. Some critics have argued that the father’s larger rough-looking left hand symbolises a father and his smaller, slimmer right hand a mother. A figure watches from the back left of the canvas, presumably the boy’s actual mother. And in the centre of the canvas we see the dutiful older brother of the story, the one who stayed and worked for his father all the years the prodigal son was away. In the story the older brother is resentful of the father’s display of love and celebration. In his mind there should be dire consequences for his brother’s betrayal to the family.
Reflecting, even for just a moment, on the older brother’s story feels important to me in regard to how betrayals can keep us locked in our own private miseries, even when repentance is offered. And yet his journey needs to be respected too, I think. We do not know how it ends. In this work, the prodigal son, full of humility and his own grief, is still able to receive the forgiveness of his father and will begin his life again in a different way.
I love this painting for many reasons but primarily because it is a reminder that betrayals — the ones we commit and the ones we endure — are not necessarily the last word on our individual and collective futures. It brings me back to Eilif Peterssen’s painting of Jesus and Judas, and makes me wonder also about the role of self-compassion and self-forgiveness, which are also part of extending grace. Maybe it’s worth revisiting the betrayals in our lives that we are still hurting from or harbouring, and looking at them from different perspectives. What is still to be done? What is still possible? Where could there be a new beginning?
Enuma Okoro is a New York-based writer for FT Life & Arts
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