Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday

April 9, 2006

Sermon by Pastor John Marboe

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (Mark 15:1-39)

As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” He answered him, “You say so.” Then the chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate asked him again, “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.

Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, ”Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.

Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take.

It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying. “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it up in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani, which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this was God’s Son!”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Why do we observe Holy Week? Why do we remember these events? We do this every year. We sing the songs; we wave the palm branches; and, above all, we remember the last week of Jesus’ life. Why?

Jesus rode into Jerusalem all those years ago to shouts of acclamation and welcome. By the end of one short week, he was dead. He was the hero at the beginning of the week, and by the end of the week he was the scapegoat, someone to be gotten rid of. There’s a puzzle here. What happened? It’s not a pleasant or happy set of events, and yet we commemorate it every year. What is the meaning of it for us? What could have moved people in one short week from regarding Jesus as hero and savior to calling for his crucifixion? Was it something Jesus did?

My assertion is that it was what Jesus did not do. Jesus did not do what they wanted him to do. Compared to other times in his ministry, Jesus did remarkably little during that week. What happened to him was a result not of what he did, but rather of the people’s hopes and fears, expectations, and frustrated expectations. Were those people back then more fickle, or cruel, or stupid, or mean, than we are? I hope we don’t think so.

Unless we can identify with the people who both hailed him at the beginning of the week as their Messiah, and then were persuaded to shout “Crucify him” by the end of the week, unless we can identify with those people, we’re missing the point. The point is, that we recount these events in order to imagine ourselves in them. And as we imagine ourselves as being there, with whom do we identify? If we can imagine ourselves in the crowd, hailing Jesus at the beginning of the week, then we must also imagine ourselves as part of the angry crowd, calling for his death. We can’t be one without the other, because in this story the crowd does both. And this bears a closer look.

It’s not hard to imagine being part of the crowd, welcoming Jesus into the city. Jesus was thought to be the Messiah. The Messiah was the one who was expected to come and make things right. And so many things in their world were wrong. The city and the nation were under foreign occupation. The local government and the temple were under corrupt leadership, and were pawns of their Roman overlords. The people longed for freedom. They expected and hoped for a hero who would come and reestablish their independence.

Jesus fit the bill. He had extraordinary power: he healed the sick, he raised the dead. He was unafraid to speak the truth to anybody. He was gathering a pretty large following. And now he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, reminiscent of one of Israel’s greatest kings in history, King David. It was believed that the Messiah would appear in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, and here it was the Passover. The need and the longing were great. Jesus rode in. Maybe, just maybe, this was the guy. But he was not. He was not that guy.

Jesus did not come to fulfill the wishes of the people. This is a very important point. Jesus didn’t come to fulfill our wishes. Jesus is the savior, but he does not necessarily save in the way we would like him to save. Jesus refused to be on anyone’s side then, and Jesus is not on anyone’s side today. He’s very frustrating in that way. The only people Jesus consistently sided with were the powerless: children, poor, beggars, lepers, blind, sinners, outcasts, the last–whom he promised would be the first in the kingdom. But even with them, even with them, when they wanted to make him king, he would not do what they wished. He wouldn’t behave like a proper Messiah ought to. And so, by the end of the week, he fell victim to the hostility of some and the disregard of many. The priests accused him of treason; Jesus’ followers abandoned him; the crowds were persuaded to call for his death; and the government executed him. End of story! Except we keep on remembering it. Why? Because it still has relevance. It’s still happening.

When confronted with the truth about ourselves, we would just as soon kill it, deny it, get rid of it, snuff it out. Jesus was one of those most irritating people, who uncompromisingly told the truth, in whose presence people got huge doses of the truth. And he had that crazy notion that the truth, more than anything, is what sets people free. People, that is, we, want freedom, of course. But we don’t necessarily want the truth.

Some years ago, I was speaking with a wise friend of mine. We were talking about a mutual acquaintance with whom I had an issue, somebody who I felt had done me wrong. Now, this friend of mine is a wise friend. She is a counselor. This wasn’t a counseling setting; I was just telling her, as a friend, about this other person with whom I had a gripe. Halfway through my diatribe, she stopped me and asked, “John, what would you like me to do for you?” Well, I was startled and I didn’t quite know what to say. I started back into my complaint about this other friend, and she said, “John, what is it you want me to do for you?” Well, I wanted her to agree with me, of course! I wanted her on my side. She, of course, saw that, and realized this was good for nobody. What was unwilling to do was to speak with the person with whom I had the issue. Her response made me deal with that and with myself. I realized what I wanted, and I wasn’t proud of it. I didn’t like it. Whatever I wanted from her, I did not want the truth!

This is how I interpret Jesus’ silence at the trial. He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t defend himself; he doesn’t accuse anybody else. One has the feeling that Jesus is not the one on trial at all; everyone else is. Jesus, in fact, was God’s witness to the truth; that people preferred to kill God’s son rather than to live with the truth he brought.

Is that true of us? Sure, it is. Otherwise we would stop observing Palm Sunday, and processing, and waving palms. We’re no more able to live with the truth about ourselves than were those people in the crowd. The people who waved palms thought Jesus was on their side. He wasn’t. At least not on their side in the way they wanted him to be. And that should give us pause, those of us who claim Jesus is on our side.

Good Friday is an image for the way things are with us. Jesus dies all alone, by himself, without anybody taking his part. And he dies by the will of the people. Jesus wasn’t the one on trial—humanity was; we were. And we were found guilty of murder. And it wasn’t a back-alley murder. It was done openly, legally, religiously, and democratically. This is the truth of Holy Week. Who wants to live with this? This is why Christianity is not a nice religion. The death of Jesus is meant to be seen as death at our hands. There’s no side we get to be on where this is not the case.

To bring it closer to home, we might ask, “How are we killing God’s innocent son today,” for the innocent still die, every day; how are we participating in that? What or whom are we destroying in the name of our self-preservation? What or whom are we killing for the sake of our interests? We can ask these questions on any level—personal, or corporate, public, or private. Humans are killers. Before we point fingers, we need to take seriously that this is true of us too.

During Holy Week, we commemorate these events not because they are utterly unique and one-time events, but precisely because they’re not. In a sense, Jesus is crucified over and over and over and over again by the hostilities, fears, greed, and neglect of us all. But that’s not all.

And if I might borrow from another Gospel account of the same event, Jesus, when it was all said and done, died alone, yes. But as he is dying, another Gospel writer tells us—and now those who had made it happen or let it happen are looking on—Jesus looks back at them and says, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Our Messiah, Jesus, doesn’t really give us what we want, for we want him on our side. Instead, he gives us the truth, and the truth is hard to take. But if we can take it, then we also get grace. And grace recreates us. Grace recreates the whole world.