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The Passion Sunday gospel reveals how insidious our sin is. We need to dwell on this theme, according to famed 20th-century Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr. He compares sinners like us to onions. You have to peel a lot of skin to get what is edible in the onion. The closer you get below the layers, the more pungent the onion is. So it is with us. Once you peel off our pretentions or righteousness (skin deep), you get to the depth of the onion, which is downright intolerable to be around (Justice & Mercy, p. 90). About the only one capable of finding any good out of onions like us is Jesus, and he only got used to us by going to hell for us first! Martin Luther was right when he called the Passion a testimony to Christ's "tremendous love," a love that can even tolerate rotten onions like us (Complete Sermons, Vol. 5, p. 372).
