Palm - Passion Sunday

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Palm - Passion Sunday
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: April 16, 2000


TEXT: Mark 14:32-72, 15:1-47 - The Passion Narrative
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
(John 15:13 - “There is no greater love than this, that someone should lay down his life for his friends.” John 3:16 “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not perish but have eternal life.” John 15:15 “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master us about. I have called you friends, because I have disclosed to you everything that I heard from my Father.”

ISSUE: The Passion Narrative is full of irony. The leaders mock him and challenge his status: They make fun of him as messianic and as king. When, in fact, these are truly what he is. The story tells of the great feeling of being forsaken by God, which Jesus expresses, and yet God is there, and his profound love is being revealed in the offering of Jesus Christ on the cross. “For there is no greater love that this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not perish but have eternal life.”)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Passion Narrative is probably the oldest part of the Gospels. It is a compelling and mysterious story. It tells of how the authorities of the time did their best to humiliate, and to shame Jesus. Throughout the Gospel, the Pharisees make futile attempts at challenging Jesus’ honor, and yet each time he has the last word. The crucifixion scene is their all out effort to humiliate and to shame him. They think that they are finally getting the last word by charging him as a criminal, by mocking him as a messiah and king who has no power. Having him stripped completely naked and hanging him on a cross is the final humiliation and shaming. His own disciples abandon him, and the beloved Peter denies him. Jesus is left totally forsaken. He is crucified with criminals surrounding him, to stress his own criminality. For all intents and purposes, the crucifixion was intended to fully discredit and eliminate Jesus and his movement which was a devotion to the expendable peasants of his time. It was intended to eliminate the changes and the justice for the poor that Jesus proclaimed so intently.
Yet, in spite of the fact that the crucifixion was intended to fully discredit him, Mark’s Gospel reveals the very subtle honor of Jesus. For the most part Jesus remains silent. He gives no response to those who accuse him. They bring false charges against him. They mock and poke fun at him as a King of the Jews, and as a messianic figure. They dare him to come down from the cross. But, Jesus remains silent. He remains silent before his accusers and before Pontius Pilate. The point that Mark is making in the telling of this story is that a superior person does not need to answer his inferiors. Seeing through it all, Jesus is the superior one. He is in his own right one who has all the majesty of a king, and he is messianic, he is savior, and helper of his people. The centurion see him for what he is, “Truly this man was God’s Son.”
The story of the Passion tells us that Jesus does not need the world’s honor. What is important is that he honor God, the Father, and that he remain obedient and faithful, and not be tempted to succumb to the world’s honor. Jesus remains constant, faithful, and deliberate in being the person he was called to be. The world may attempt to mock and shame him, and to discredit his calling and mission, but Jesus remains faithful to the end. The ultimate honor comes when Jesus is resurrected. Truly this is the Beloved Son with whom God is well pleased.
In our familiarity with the Passion of Jesus, it is important that we don’t allow ourselves to become anesthetized. We must allow ourselves to feel the great anguish that certainly Jesus felt as did the early church. The story reveals at a deeper level the genuine humanity of Jesus. He suffered significant physical and mental humiliation, pain and suffering. The majority of the disciples and friends abandoned him. It was a very lonely ordeal. He is so badly beaten, according to the story that he is unable to carry his the cross, which was an expectation of criminals. Nails are driven through his wrists; he is hanged naked on the cross in full view of a jeering mob. He cries out in shear agony the words of psalmist (22:1), “My God, my God why have you forsaken me!” Jesus knew and felt severe pain and suffering. He experienced the full meaning of what it is to be human. He does not escape this horrible ordeal of human pain and suffering. He is not swept away to safety as the last moment. He is victimized and mental, physical pain, suffering and humiliation are imposed upon him. It was a horrible God forsaken way to die. The experience all seems so undeserved, and surely unjust. Jesus must have wondered why that God did, in fact, abandon him to this terrible ordeal.
If we allow ourselves, we can all identify and know in varying degrees with what Jesus endured. It happens that people lose friends, spouses, and even children that they were so close to, and loved so much. People know the terrible abandonment feelings that come through death or divorce. Loss is very painful and anxiety producing. Who has not known pain, from hitting you finger with a hammer so that you see stars, to having seen someone agonize with both the fear and the suffering of diseases like cancer or AIDS? We know well the inhumanity of human suffering where people starve at the hand of corrupt governments and natural disasters, or lose their livelihood. Don’t we all ask why? We know what it is to grieve and to mourn, to experience pain and suffering. Don’t you sometimes worry and wonder and agonize over the sufferings of others, and feel so very helpless. Our lives and our humanity can be so broken. We are so frail. Life is hard, and the world is so violent, mocking, and cruel. We all at times know the feeling and wonder, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us? What’s a person to do? What can we do? What does this agony mean, and where do we turn? It’s hard, so very hard.
We can only turn back and look at Jesus Christ on the cross. He did not snatch at being God or being equal with God. He simply humbled himself as an obedient servant. He suffers too, and he knows our fears and agony so very well. We come to realize through him that we need one another and that we need to be there for one another. We need to love one another and be there for one another as he taught. For Christ came to our very suffering and was there for us in love, compassion, forgiveness. There is no greater love says Jesus than a person lay down his own life for a friend. In the laying down of his own life, we know he was and is there with us in our difficult times. As his gracious compassion and love embraces us, and we embrace him and one another. We find our true honor that mocks the powers of the world. We become the children of God with whom God is pleased.
The question is asked, Which is the greater holiday or feast in the Christian Year? Everybody loves Christmas. Oh, the efforts, energy, and work that goes into Christmas. Easter, however, has been called the Queen of the Feasts for Christians. Next week churches will be full of celebrating folk, and that is as it should be. But my good people, I would like to suggest to you that the really important day of the Christian Year is the days that we look at, study, and ponder, the Passion of Jesus Christ. It is the occasion of making us look hard at the great sacrifice and love of Jesus Christ. It is the time when we are called upon to mourn our sins, and to change or repent. It is the time when we see God in Christ reaching out and enduring our pain, suffering, our foolishness, and our violence. It is the time when we really come face to face with Jesus Christ and he with us. It is the time of such great and profound sacrificial love that grasps our attention. It is the time when we learn and experience that God loved the world so much that he gave his only son to the end that all that would believe, or trust in him, would gain eternal meaningful lives. It is in this holy season of Palm Sunday, and Good Friday, that we are faced with the one who showed the greatest love. No greater love has any person than they lay down their life for a friend. Jesus called us friends. “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master us about. I have called you friends, because I have disclosed to you everything that I heard from my Father.” John 15:15`.