For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
The cross used to denote punishment but it has now become a focus of glory. It was formerly a symbol of condemnation but it is now seen as a principle of salvation. For it has now become the source of innumerable blessings: it has delivered us from error, enlightened our darkness, and reconciled us to God; we had become God’s enemies and were foreigners afar off, and it has given us his friendship and brought us close to him. For us it has become the destruction of enmity, the token of peace, the treasury of a thousand blessings.
Thanks to the cross we are no longer wandering in the wilderness, because we know the right road; we are no longer outside the royal palace, because we have found the way in; we are not afraid of the devil’s fiery darts, because we have discovered the fountain. Thanks to the cross we are no longer in a state of widowhood, for we are reunited to the Bridegroom; we are not afraid of the wolf, because we have the good shepherd: “I am the good shepherd,” he said. Thanks to the cross we dread no usurper, since we are sitting beside the King. That is why we keep festival as we celebrate the memory of the cross.
…Now do you see why [Saint Paul] appoints a festival in honor of the cross? It is because Christ was immolated on the cross. And where he was sacrificed, there is found abolition of sins and reconciliation with the Lord; and there, too, festivity and happiness are found: “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed.”
Where was he sacrificed? On a gibbet. The altar of this sacrifice is a new one because the sacrifice himself is new and extraordinary. For he is at one and the same time both victim and priest; victim according to the flesh and priest according to the spirit.
This sacrifice was offered outside the camp to teach us that it is a universal sacrifice, for the offering was made for the whole world; and to teach us that it effected a general purification and not just that of the Jews. …For us [then], since Christ has now come and purified the whole world, every place has become an oratory.
In my cycle of reading through Holy Scripture I am now currently in the book of Ezekiel. Usually I look forward to reading the books of the Old and New Testaments, but not Ezekiel. Why? Because the Lord is so relentless in his judgment and condemnation of the people of Jerusalem’s wicked behavior in late 7th and early 6th century B.C. Judah. Their chief sin is the worship of various idols (idolatry) that has corrupted them thoroughly as God’s holy and chosen people, and turned them into something that God never intended; they had become just like the nations they were called to help redeem. Take the following passages for example (and there are dozens like them throughout Ezekiel):
5 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This [the sign-act in Ezekiel 5.1-4] is an illustration of what will happen to Jerusalem. I placed her at the center of the nations, 6 but she has rebelled against my regulations and decrees and has been even more wicked than the surrounding nations. She has refused to obey the regulations and decrees I gave her to follow. 7 “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you. 8 Therefore, I myself, the Sovereign Lord, am now your enemy. I will punish you publicly while all the nations watch. 9 Because of your detestable idols, I will punish you like I have never punished anyone before or ever will again. 10 Parents will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents. I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few who survive. 11 “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will cut you off completely. I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my Temple with your vile images and detestable sins. 12 A third of your people will die in the city from disease and famine. A third of them will be slaughtered by the enemy outside the city walls. And I will scatter a third to the winds, chasing them with my sword. 13 Then at last my anger will be spent, and I will be satisfied. And when my fury against them has subsided, all Israel will know that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my jealous anger. 14 “So I will turn you into a ruin, a mockery in the eyes of the surrounding nations and to all who pass by. 15 You will become an object of mockery and taunting and horror. You will be a warning to all the nations around you. They will see what happens when the Lord punishes a nation in anger and rebukes it, says the Lord (Ezekiel 5.5-15, NLT)
Or this passage:
Then this message came to me from the Lord: 2 “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says to Israel:
“The end is here! Wherever you look— east, west, north, or south— your land is finished. 3 No hope remains, for I will unleash my anger against you. I will call you to account for all your detestable sins. 4 I will turn my eyes away and show no pity. I will repay you for all your detestable sins. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
24 I will bring the most ruthless of nations to occupy their homes. I will break down their proud fortresses and defile their sanctuaries. 25 Terror and trembling will overcome my people. They will look for peace but not find it. 26 Calamity will follow calamity; rumor will follow rumor. They will look in vain for a vision from the prophets. They will receive no teaching from the priests and no counsel from the leaders. 27 The king and the prince will stand helpless, weeping in despair, and the people’s hands will tremble with fear. I will bring on them the evil they have done to others, and they will receive the punishment they so richly deserve. Then they will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 7.1-4, 24-27, NLT)
This is tough stuff, folks, made tougher by the realization that while the historical context focuses on the people of Jerusalem, it also points to the day when the Lord God will finally come to judge his good but corrupted creation along with his image-bearing people, and this kind of judgment and wrath will fall on every human being on earth, me included. This is very unsettling because I know my transgressions against God and my sin is ever before me (cf. Ps 51.3), and passages like these quite simply make me shudder. And if you think you are exempt from God’s wrath because you are a “good person,” you are only deluding yourself. You may well be a good person in some sense, but you are not perfect in God’s holy eyes (nobody is), and that won’t go well for you on the Day of the Lord. In other words, Ezekiel’s story could very well be my story and yours without some serious help from a Power greater than the power of Sin! To repeat: reflecting on these passages in this way is no easy matter.
But then last week in the midst of reading Ezekiel, the Lord reminded me of something important: that while his wrath and judgment are real and he will one day come to right all wrongs and address all kinds of injustice, wickedness, and evil, the kind we are all guilty of committing—because a perfect, Holy, and loving God cannot allow any form of sin into his Presence (what kind of justice permits these things?)—his justice is always tempered by his love and mercy. We can see hints of it in the text, most notably when God tells his prophet that he takes no pleasure in the death of anyone, not even his enemies (Ezekiel 18.32).
Accordingly, the Lord showed me that I was to read the “hard passages” in Scripture through the lens of his Son’s Cross because on the Cross God the Father has poured out his terrible justice and judgment on himself, allowing his terrible wrath and judgment to fall on his beloved Son, God himself, so that we no longer have to bear it ourselves or live in fear that one day we will, even though we are the only ones who deserve his wrath and judgment. Christ never sinned but he bore willingly the full weight and judgment of God’s perfect justice for the collective sins of the whole world on our behalf to spare us (cf. Romans 8.1-4 et al.). It’s hard enough for us to deal with the weight of our own sins; try bearing the weight of everyone’s sins who has ever lived or will live! What greater love is there than that? What greater mercy? How can anyone be more gracious? That is the miracle and beauty of the Incarnation (God become man in Christ): it manifests God the Father’s unfathomable love for us. None of us will ever be able to completely wrap our minds around this love, but we can still appropriate it in and through the power of the Holy Spirit and be grateful.
We all would be recipients of God’s wrath just like the people of Jerusalem were, but now we who belong to Christ don’t have to fear that anymore because now we can humbly go and kneel at the foot of the cross in inexpressible gratitude and thanksgiving for God saving us from ourselves and his justice. This kind of love and mercy is worthy of our best and highest reflection and devotion; that is why a good theology of the Cross is so important and fundamental to the Christian Faith. More importantly it demands a response from us. Yes, we can only be saved by faith in Christ, but our faith is made known to God and others by our actions, actions which are consistent with our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, we can’t say we have faith in Christ and then continue to act like his enemies and keep on wallowing in our sin. That’s not faith, that’s living a lie.
Armed with this knowledge and grace, I no longer dread reading the book of Ezekiel as I once did. Yes, it’s still tough reading, but now I am reminded what an unbelievable gift we all have been given when I realize that the Lord God loves even one like me, that he loves me enough to do what he needed to do to spare me from eternal death and separation from him by dying on my behalf. That’s not about me, it’s about the unfathomable love and mercy of God. He will do the same for you as well if you let him.
For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover. That mystery is Christ, and to him be glory for ever and ever.
For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb, and was born as one of us. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen humanity upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt our destroyer, Death, a fatal blow.
He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world, as he had ransomed Israel from the hand of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil, as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit, and the members of our body with his own blood.
He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning. He is the One who smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptians of their offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom; who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own forever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.
It is he who endured ever kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.
He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised us from the depths of the tomb.
—Melito, Bishop of Sardis, (d. ca 190), Easter Homily 65-71.
Here is a reflection worthy of Palm Sunday and approaching Holy Week. It is worthy of your own reflection too. Whether you agree with the good bishop, his central point remains true: we worship a God who is infinitely merciful and loving, beyond our capacity to fully grasp, yet not entirely beyond our capacity; but we must look to the cross if we are to have a hope and clue to accessing God’s vast treasure. That is worthy of our thanks and wholehearted devotion. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Every year on Palm Sunday, we read, in the Catholic liturgy, one of the great Passion narratives from the Synoptic Gospels. This year, it is St. Matthew’s. There are a number of distinctive features in Matthew’s account, but the most distinctive and interesting, for me, is the evangelist’s treatment of Judas.
No other Gospel stresses the repentance and regret of the traitor more effectively. “Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply regretted what he had done. He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.'” This is not callous indifference or self-justification. This is a clear and honest admission of guilt.
Then we are told that Judas flung the money into the temple and “went off and hanged himself.” An awful ending to a sad life, the betrayer of Jesus falling into despair and committing self-slaughter. And this is why most figures in the great theological and spiritual tradition have assumed that Judas is in hell. Augustine thought so; Aquinas thought so; Dante depicted him perpetually chewed in the very mouth of Satan. And if his betrayal of the Lord wasn’t enough to earn him a place in hell, then his suicide, most theologians agreed, certainly sealed the deal.
But I want to draw your attention to a counterview—admittedly in the minority—on display in one of the capitals on a column in the magnificent Vézelay Basilica in France.
On one side is a grossly vivid depiction of the hanging of Judas, eyes popping, tongue lolling out of his mouth. But on the other side is a depiction of the Good Shepherd carrying the body of Judas on his shoulders like the lost sheep. And the dead man appears to be smiling.
Pope Francis was so fond of this image that he had a reproduction of it over his desk in his papal office. It showed, for him, the hope that even Judas might have been saved by the overwhelming mercy of the Lord. Now I know (please don’t send me letters of complaint) that we cannot embrace a simple-minded universalism, which says that we are perfectly confident that all people will be saved. We do indeed have to admit to the very real possibility of an eternal rejection of God. And yet St. Pope John Paul II insisted that the Church has never made a definitive statement regarding whether any particular person is in hell. And Pope Benedict said that we should suspend judgment in regard to Judas, committing him to the mercy and justice of God. But again, wouldn’t his suicide guarantee that he has gone to eternal perdition?Listen to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this point: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (2283).
Sermon originally delivered on Passion (Palm) Sunday, April 9, 2017. As usual, it will be helpful if you read the assigned lectionary texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Lectionary texts: Isaiah 50.4-9a; Psalm 31.9-16; Philippians 2.5-11; Matthew 21.1-11. Passion narrative: Matthew 26.14-27.66.
In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In our OT lesson this morning, the so-called Servant—widely held by Christians to be Jesus—desires to faithfully preach the word of God to sustain the weary. But what does that look like and what does it have to do with our celebration of Passion Sunday today? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.
To help us understand what we’re dealing with, listen to this short list of news stories compiled from the past couple of days. Father Says Goodbye to His Baby Twins Killed in Syrian Attack. MIT Grad Arrested on Terror, WMD Charges. US Launches Missile Strikes on Syria Base Over Chemical Attack. 1 Dead, 2 Wounded After Shooting at Fitness Center in South Florida Mall. Terror in Stockholm: Four Dead as Hijacked Truck Plows Into Shoppers. Palm Sunday Bombings at Two Egyptian Churches kill at least 32. 11 Year-Old Boy Kills Himself in Response to Girlfriend’s Fake Suicide Prank on Social Media. I have to tell you. These stories and countless more like them make me weary. How about you? And they don’t even begin to address the things in our own lives that make us weary: life-threatening health issues with which we and/or our loved ones struggle, job and career struggles and uncertainties, chronic financial struggles that some of us face, fear of loneliness and broken relationships that don’t seem to get better. The list goes on and on. We see a world seemingly becoming more insane by the hour, not to mention parts of our lives that spin out of control with little or nothing we can do about it, and it makes us weary and afraid. When we get to this point in life—and all of us eventually do—we want to cry out to God for help. You’re all-powerful, God, so help us out here. Do something about the craziness in your world and in our lives and in ourselves!
Like us, God’s people Israel in Jesus’ day knew what it was like to be weary from evil and oppression and disorder in their lives. Their beloved land was occupied by hated foreigners. And while Solomon’s Temple, the very place where God chose to dwell with his people on earth, had been rebuilt, God had not returned to his people to live among them as promised. Neither had God’s promised Anointed One, God’s Messiah (or Christ) returned to lead God’s people. To top it all off, God’s people were assembling in Jerusalem for the great Passover festival that celebrated God’s mighty act of deliverance on behalf of his enslaved people in Egypt. Passover always raised people’s hopes and expectations that God would soon act on their behalf to expel the foreigners and restore right religious order in the land in preparation for God’s return to it.
St. Matthew wants us to see all this, of course, and like a good story teller, he lets the story itself convey his message. Jesus clearly saw himself as God’s Messiah, God’s anointed, who would lead God’s people and be their king. But not in the way the people expected. We see this in his choice to ride on a donkey and colt as he entered Jerusalem. As St. Matthew explains, this was to fulfill what the prophet Zechariah had written about how God’s promised Messiah would return to his people ahead of God’s return. In effect, God was promising his people that when his Messiah showed up, God wouldn’t be far behind, so it was time to get ready! And the people’s response clearly showed they understood the symbolism behind Jesus’s mode of entry into Jerusalem, or at least that he was proclaiming himself to be God’s Messiah. Their shouts of Hosanna to the Son of David (i.e., for the new king to save them from their occupiers), coupled with throwing their cloaks on the road and waving (presumably palm) branches, indicated that they understood something very special was happening. But did they really?
By choosing a donkey on which to enter Jerusalem instead of a warhorse, Jesus was proclaiming that he was not a Messiah who would be a conquering warrior. To be sure, Jesus did conquer Israel’s enemies that week, not to mention the world’s, but not in the way most of them or us expected. He conquered our enemies by shedding his blood for us in a way that helped fulfill the prophesy in our OT lesson this morning (cf. Isaiah 52.13-53.12). More about that in a moment. And while Jesus would clear the Temple later in the week, it was not for the reasons many of his contemporaries expected. As St. John makes clear in his gospel, this was the Word made flesh, God himself, returning to his people to announce that Jesus, instead of the Temple, would be the place to meet and know the One True and Living God. Astonishingly, God and Messiah were apparently one and the same! By his actions, Jesus was telling God’s people Israel that the Romans were not the real enemies. There were powers far more evil and sinister that had to be dealt with, and only he could do it because only he was God. Suffice it to say that this would not have been the word God’s weary people wanted to hear or what they were willing to believe. It would have violated their hopes and expectations to their very core.
Now if you want to have folks turn on you, and ferociously, all you need to do is to violate their deeply-held expectations. Do this and you can be assured that you will go from hero to villain in no time flat, and this is exactly what happened to Jesus. But violated expectations about Jesus are not unique to first-century Jews. They also apply to us. Like Jesus’ contemporaries, we cry out to the Lord to save us and our world and we expect him to answer in the way we want and demand because, well, we know better than Jesus. This is the challenge of Palm Sunday and Holy Week for us. Can we worship and follow a God and his Christ who constantly violate our expectations in how they should act to rescue us from the chaos and evil in God’s world, our lives, and ourselves? Will we let God’s word to us, spoken through an unfolding story, a story that reached its climax with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the subsequent events of Holy Week, be sufficient to relieve and sustain us in our weariness?
We would prefer God to bring in the tanks and destroy the forces of evil and their human minions, but God knows better because he knows evil runs through all of us. To destroy evil means God would have to destroy us and his entire creation because we are all that radically infected, and God simply won’t do that. So bringing in the tanks just won’t do. There has to be another way, a better way that shows God’s love for his world and its creatures, especially God’s image-bearing creatures. The better way, of course, was through Jesus’ death and resurrection. In one way or another, the NT writers all insist that on the cross, God broke the power of Sin and Evil. As we have seen this Lent, the power of Sin—the outside, alien force that is greater than and hostile toward us—had to be broken and God did that by condemning Sin in the flesh through his Son (Romans 8.3-4), who willingly obeyed his Father’s will because both love us and hate what Sin and Evil have done to us. So God acted on our behalf in and through Christ to free us from the power of Sin and Evil, and to take his own good and just judgment of our individual sins on himself, thereby enacting the justice that is so necessary, thanks be to God!
But this is hard for us to believe because as our headlines scream out (not to mention the turmoil in our lives) the power of Evil, while broken, is not yet fully vanquished. That will have to wait until our Lord’s Second Coming. But the powers of Evil, Sin, and Death have been broken and defeated as evidenced by Jesus’ resurrection (more about that next Sunday), and we are called to imitate our Lord in his suffering and humble obedience to the Father as Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson. We are to empty ourselves of our own false glory and live our lives in ways that show God’s glory revealed in his great love, mercy, compassion, and justice. In other words, we are called to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow our Lord Jesus. Only then can we reflect God’s glory out into God’s world as we await our Lord’s return. It is a daunting task, precisely because it seems so counterintuitive to the ways of the world, and if we do not have real faith that begins to appropriate God’s strange and beautiful Truth contained in the events of Holy Week, we’ll never have the needed motivation to want to live this kind of life in the power of the Spirit.
This is why I appeal to you and exhort you to make the story of Holy Week your story first-hand. Come with our Lord to the Upper Room Thursday night where he will give his disciples a meal as the means to help them understand what his impending passion and death is all about. Watch with him in the garden as he struggles and shrinks from the gigantic task of allowing the powers of evil to do their worst to him, and the prospect of having to bear the judgment of God for the sins of the entire world, your sins and mine. Our own personal sins can be a terrible burden to us. Try to imagine having to bear the sins of the entire world. Come, therefore, and venerate the cross on Good Friday as you ponder and contemplate the death of the Son of God for your sake and the sake of the world. Such contemplation demands silence, desolation, and humility. Was there ever any suffering like our Lord’s (and if you answer yes to this question, there’s a good chance you don’t really understand the magnitude of what happened on Good Friday)? Grieve with his first followers as they laid his tortured and crucified body in the tomb with no expectation of Easter Sunday. Holy Saturday is the time to do just that, culminating with the Easter Vigil and the reading of the story of God’s salvation on Saturday evening. It simply won’t do to observe any of this from afar. It’s as unedifying as listening to one of Father Gatwood’s sermons. No, if you really love your Lord and have even an inkling as to what great love has effected your salvation and changed the course of history forever, how can you possibly stay away from our Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil services? Easter Sunday will come with its great joy. But let none of us be too hasty to celebrate the great Paschal Feast without first pondering and agonizing and reflecting on the great and astonishing love of God that flows from God’s very heart as it was pierced by a Roman soldier’s spear. To be sure, it isn’t a pretty or fun thing to do. But if you commit yourself to walking with Jesus this Holy Week it will change you in ways you cannot imagine or envision, and for the good. It will change you because it is the Good News of our salvation, now and for all eternity. May we all observe a holy and blessed Holy Week together as God’s people at St. Augustine’s. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.
In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The following day, Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which they call here the Great Week. On this [Palm] Sunday morning, at the completion of those rites which are customarily celebrated at the Anastasis [the Lord’s tomb] or the Cross from the first cockcrow until dawn, everyone assembles for the liturgy according to custom in the major church, called the Martyrium. It is called the Martyrium because it is on Golgotha, behind the Cross, where the Lord suffered His Passion, and is therefore a shrine of martyrdom. As soon as everything has been celebrated in the major church as usual, but before the dismissal is given, the archdeacon raises his voice and first says: “Throughout this whole week, beginning tomorrow at the ninth hour [3pm], let us all gather in the Martyrium, in the major church.” Then he raises his voice a second time, saying: “Today let us all be ready to assemble at the seventh hour [1pm] at the Eleona.” When the dismissal has been given in the Martyrium or major church, the bishop is led to the accompaniment of hymns to the Anastasis, and there all ceremonies are accomplished which customarily take place every Sunday at the Anastasis [Church of the Holy Sepulcher] following the dismissal from the Martyrium. Then everyone retires home to eat hastily, so that at the beginning of the seventh hour everyone will be ready to assemble in the church on the Eleona, by which I mean the Mount of Olives, where the grotto in which the Lord taught is located.
At the seventh hour all the people go up to the church on the Mount of Olives, that is, to the Eleona. The bishop sits down, hymns and antiphons appropriate to the day and place are sung, and there are likewise readings from the Scriptures. As the ninth hour approaches, they move up, chanting hymns, to the Imbomon, that is, to the place from which the Lord ascended into heaven; and everyone sits down there. When the bishop is present, the people are always commanded to be seated, so that only the deacons remain standing. And there hymns and antiphons proper to the day and place are sung, interspersed with appropriate readings from the Scriptures and prayers.
As the eleventh hour [5pm] draws near, that particular passage from Scripture is read in which the children bearing palms and branches came forth to meet the Lord, saying: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The bishop and all the people rise immediately, and then everyone walks down from the top of the Mount of Olives, with the people preceding the bishop and responding continually with “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” to the hymns and antiphons. All the children who are present here, including those who are not yet able to walk because they are too young and therefore are carried on their parents’ shoulders, all of them bear branches, some carrying palms, others olive branches. And the bishop is led in the same manner as the Lord once was led. From the top of the mountain as far as the city, and from there through the entire city as far as the Anastasis, everyone accompanies the bishop the whole way on foot, and this includes distinguished ladies and men of consequence, reciting the responses all the while; and they move very slowly so that the people will not tire. By the time they arrive at the Anastasis, it is already evening. Once they have arrived there, even though it is evening, vespers is celebrated; then a prayer is said at the Cross and the people are dismissed.
The extraordinary twist in this story is that, having announced judgment upon Jerusalem for refusing God’s way of peace, Jesus went ahead, embodying simultaneously the love and the judgment of God himself, to suffer the Roman horror he had predicted for his people.
That dark royal story lies at the heart of all subsequent Christian understanding of the cross, though it is a truth so strange that few hymns or liturgies plumb its depths. Theseus and Oberon are one and the same. Good Friday, itself a form of Roman street theatre, was taken up paradoxically within God’s street theatre, the play within the play within the play that explains everything else.
But, even without that sequel, the questions of Palm Sunday itself force themselves upon us.
First, the questions of which story we are living in, and which king we are following, remain urgent within our culture. As our public institutions are less trusted than ever, and our behaviour at home and abroad is more confused than ever, the stories which used to make sense of our lives have let us down.
We thought we knew how the play worked: get rid of tyrants, and people will embrace democracy, peace, love and flower-power. How quickly things have moved from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. The so-called Arab Spring has turned back to winter, as we have no idea what to do about Syria, about Israel/Palestine and, of course, about Ukraine. We have run out of stories, we have run out of kings of whatever kind; all we think we can do is trust the great god Mammon, as though our fragile economic half-recoveries would trickle out into the mountains of Syria or the deserts of South Sudan. Give me Psalm 72 any day.
But that’s where the second question comes in, a personal question. If the Palm Sunday street theatre means what Jesus meant, it challenges all his followers, then and now. The crowds may have been fickle, but they were not mistaken. The two on the road to Emmaus had hoped he would redeem Israel, and they were hoping for the right thing – God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven, a this-worldly reign of justice and peace – but they had not glimpsed the means by which Jesus would bring it about. Right story, wrong king.
Sooner or later, this happens to all of us. We start out following Jesus because we think we know the story, we know what sort of king we want him to be – and then things go badly wrong, he doesn’t give us what we wanted, and we are tempted to wonder if we’ve been standing on the wrong side of town, watching the wrong procession.
Jesus warned us this would happen: we all have to live through a Holy Week, a Gethsemane, a Good Friday of one sort or another. That happens in personal life, in vocational life, as well as in public life.
He who came down from heaven to raise us from the depths of sin, to raise us to himself, we are told in Scripture: “above every sovereignty, authority and power, and every other name that can be named,” now comes of his own free will to make his journey to Jerusalem. He came without pomp or ostentation. Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish.
—Andrew of Crete, Bishop, Sermon 9 for Palm Sunday
Almighty and everlasting God, who in your tender love toward the human race sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross: grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
A fine reflection on one of the dimensions of Christ’s Holy Death. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
God is not mocked, Paul tells us (Gal. 6:7). Matthew’s Passion narrative (Matt. 27:27–44) suggests otherwise. Matthew tells us very little about Jesus’s physical sufferings. For him, the cross is mainly about man’s mockery of God.
Pilate knows Jesus is innocent but turns him over to his soldiers for scourging and crucifixion. Inside the Praetorium, a “whole cohort” of Roman soldiers—one-tenth of a legion, some six hundred men—relieves its boredom and discharges its spite by designing a mock coronation for the “King of the Jews.” They dress Jesus in a scarlet robe, crown him with thorns, place a reedy scepter in his hand, and kneel to acclaim him king. Then they reverse: They spit in contempt instead of kneeling in reverence, pull the scepter from Jesus’s hand to beat his crowned head, strip off the scarlet robe. They remove the veil of irony and reveal what they really think about this king and the arrogant Jews who persist against all reason in believing themselves the chosen of the earth. The Roman soldiers reveal what they really think about this odd, pathetic God who would choose the Jews.
At Golgotha, the mockery continues. Jesus’s enemies “blaspheme” him, shaking their heads and throwing his words back at him: “You who destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself.” The chief priests and scribes echo the crowds: “Come on down from the cross and we will believe in You.” Even the brigands on the other crosses join in. Jews and Gentiles, governors and criminals, scribes and soldiers, and random passersby, all humanity joins in a single chorus of blasphemy.
Atheists blaspheme and giggle like schoolboys. They think themselves daring, subversive, deliciously cunning. But their mockery is utterly conventional. They can do no better than mimic blasphemies learned from the Gospels. Mocking God is not an invention of atheists. It’s what Jews did when their God came close, a burning too hot to endure. It’s what the religious Romans did in the presence of God.
More Pelagian than Pelagius, the modern world assures us we’re okay, and that when we quite understandably fail, we have the resources within ourselves to put things right. Whether it’s war, or poverty, or racial hatred, or disease and disfigurement, we can fix it with a few quick twists of the dial. Scripture has no patience with such mild optimism. The cross of Jesus is the crux of human history, the deep revelation of the human condition. At this crossroads, the Bible forces us to look evil in the face. The cross is a mirror that exposes us as specialists in destruction. History is a waste of toppled temples, smoldering cities, corpses heaped for burning. And when God the Creator, source of all good and all life, appears in human flesh, we beat him back with clubs and crosses and insults. Putting Jesus to death is the human project. This is what we do. We are far, far worse than we let ourselves imagine.
Left to ourselves, mockery would have the last word. God has a different project, and he won’t let us get away with ours. Matthew’s ironic Passion narrative reveals a God who twists mockery back on the mockers. Roman soldiers mock Jesus as “King of the Jews,” but as he dies, they confess, without irony, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54). Soldiers offer Jesus gall and gamble for his clothing, and in so doing fulfill prophecies about David’s Son, who is indeed “King of the Jews” (Ps. 22:18; 69:21). Passersby “wag” their heads at the man who boasted about rebuilding the temple, just as, the prophets predicted, people would wag their heads in dismay at the temple ruins (Lam. 2:15; Jer. 18:16). Scribes of the law throw words from Psalm 69 at Jesus (Matt. 27:43), apparently unaware they repeat the words of David’s enemies and implicitly cast Jesus in the role of David. At every point, God turns mockery inside out to become truth.
Amen. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Where can the weak find a place of firm security and peace, except in the wounds of the Savior? Indeed, the more secure is my place there the more he can do to help me. The world rages, the flesh is heavy, and the devil lays his snares, but I do not fall, for my feet are planted on firm rock. I may have sinned gravely. My conscience would be distressed, but it would not be in turmoil, for I would recall the wounds of the Lord: he was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be pardoned by the death of Christ? And so if I bear in mind this strong, effective remedy, I can never again be terrified by the malignancy of sin.
Surely the man who said: My sin is too great to merit pardon, was wrong. He was speaking as though he were not a member of Christ and had no share in his merits, so that he could claim them as his own, as a member of the body can claim what belongs to the head. As for me, what can I appropriate that I lack from the heart of the Lord who abounds in mercy? They pierced his hands and feet and opened his side with a spear. Through the openings of these wounds I may drink honey from the rock and oil from the hardest stone: that is, I may taste and see that the Lord is sweet.
He was thinking thoughts of peace, and I did not know it, for who knows the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? But the piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The sword pierced his soul and came close to his heart, so that he might be able to feel compassion for me in my weaknesses.
Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love, the sincerity of his mercy with which he visited us from on high. Where have your love, your mercy, your compassion shone out more luminously than in your wounds, sweet, gentle Lord of mercy? More mercy than this no one has than that he lay down his life for those who are doomed to death.
My merit comes from his mercy; for I do not lack merit so long as he does not lack pity. And if the Lord’s mercies are many, then I am rich in merits. For even if I am aware of many sins, what does it matter? Where sin abounded grace has overflowed. And if the Lord’s mercies are from all ages for ever, I too will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever. Will I not sing of my own righteousness? No, Lord, I shall be mindful only of your justice. Yet that too is my own; for God has made you my righteousness.
—Saint Bernard, Abbot A Sermon on the Song of Songs
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