{"id":6448,"date":"2013-03-29T00:29:03","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T07:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=6448"},"modified":"2015-05-05T14:55:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:55:09","slug":"good-friday-kiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2013\/03\/29\/good-friday-kiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Friday Kiss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kiss of Death<\/em>, Oil on Canvas, 40×30<\/h6>\n

This year I was asked by two friends to paint something for separate “Stations of the Cross” Easter commemorations. One I’ve already shared,\u00a0Hands of Proof<\/a><\/em>. In both cases I was assigned my “station,” while other artists would handle theirs.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it was Valentine’s\u00a0Day that I started work on the first one, the betrayal of Jesus. That day, NBC Internet News featured a photo story, Most Memorable Kisses of all Time<\/a>. There were the likes of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind<\/em>, two dogs in Lady and the Tramp<\/em>, Britney Spears and Madonna proving what they could get away with on television, the sculpture by Auguste Rodin, a painting by Gustav Klimt, and the famous sailor and a young nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

There were more. One they missed was Marc Chagall’s rendition of a man kissing a maid and floating off to the ceiling. And another, similar, of me and Anne moments after she said, “I guess so<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But all this is getting away from my original point, or actually closer to it. That point being that the most famous kiss of all time was not a romantic one at all, but the one by which Judas betrayed his friend Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

Certainly the NBC people can be forgiven for not including this on Valentine’s Day. It’s in a category all its own.<\/p>\n

You know the story. The Last Supper had just happened, during which Judas excused himself early. Jesus went to the garden to pray and sweat blood, all the while knowing what was next. Judas, now 30 dollars richer, returned with the government and the army. He’d told them, “The one I kiss is him.”<\/p>\n

It’s not as strange as it may sound, such kissing, particularly mouth to cheek . . . it being a common form of familiar greeting in those days, and still, in those parts. “Nobody will notice anything unusual,” Judas must have thought. But Jesus remarked on it, and its incredible irony, “You betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”*<\/p>\n

An evil deed indeed, one for which Judas surely could never get the taste of out of his mouth.<\/p>\n

In any case, it’s the most famous kiss in history, or most infamous.<\/p>\n

Note in my painting, the evil visages lurking behind. I never painted them in, believe me, at least not intentionally. They just showed up, making the piece seem all the more historical.<\/p>\n

You know how it ends. Judas and the lynch mob meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. For that we take heart. It all became a new beginning.<\/p>\n

Happy Easter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

________________
\n*Luke 22:48<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No act of love, this kiss, yet the highest love prevailed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6448"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10713,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448\/revisions\/10713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}