There is an exquisite tension on Palm Sunday, which is also known as Passion Sunday. It’s the high point of the lectionary year: Jesus is acclaimed as he enters Jerusalem. It’s also the low point of the lectionary year: Jesus is betrayed, condemned, and executed. In some ways we try to celebrate both -- some churches involving children who carry in the palms, while also displaying more prominently the cross or swathing church decorations in purple or black.
As I write this there have been some high-profile incidents in which Christians have been martyred for their faith on a wholesale basis. Because our collective memories are short, people need to be reminded that this is nothing new. Christians have been martyred for their faith from the beginning. If you are not familiar with The Martyrdom of Polycarp, the story of the seven brothers and their mothers in 2 Maccabees 7, or books like The Martyr’s Mirror (or if your congregation is not familiar with these), it might be well to incorporate a few stories at the least. Your denomination or congregation may have a special connection to suffering people in the past or present (for instance, the young women abducted in Nigeria by Boko Haram were almost all members of my denomination), and Holy Week is an appropriate time to remember these. Little purpose is served by demonizing their murderers. Christian history would show that most martyred Christians have been murdered by fellow Christians. The point is that the road of self-sacrificial love pioneered by Jesus has been well trod in all ages, including our own. The Isaiah passage assures us that God sees and hears what we have endured. The Christ hymn in Philippians invites us to willingly take on the form of a slave, as Jesus did. And the evangelist draws us in to the center of a world of suffering, only to begin to show us the way out toward vindication and hope.
I intend to focus on the Passion Sunday scriptures, but if you are intending on focusing on the Palms, you can certainly find resources on this website to that end.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Whatever the contemporary situation addressed in this text, in which someone is being humiliated but waits with confidence for vindication, there is no question that the early church saw Jesus in terms of the suffering servant whose complaints are recorded in this and the passages that follow. What seems more apparent is that this was not a minority viewpoint. Writers like Daniel Boyarin (The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ) and discoveries like the Gabriel Revelation make it clear that, as Boyarin puts it, there is “a very strong textual base for the view that the suffering messiah is based in deeply rooted Jewish texts early and late” (p. 133). There was a general first-century understanding among some of God’s people that the messiah would suffer and be humiliated. The writing on the Gabriel Stone looked clearly to a messiah from Ephraim who would suffer and die. There are other texts from other communities which suggest this as well. While the Christ hymn of Philippians 2:5-11 might have been difficult to sing for some new Christians from the larger empire where status meant everything, those who knew their Isaiah would have been singing a familiar tune.
The servant says that he has the tongue of a teacher. His suffering, the sufferings of Christ, and our own sufferings are not without meaning. They are not simply the senseless soundtrack to a world without meaning. Three times the name of the Lord God (God’s personal name is involved here) is woven into the passage. God hears. Something will be done.
Note that I used the word “complaint” instead of “lament” with regards to the suffering servant. In terms of the Psalms and the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, a lament reflected a situation in which nothing could be done. A complaint, however, was made with the expectation that something would be done about it. Our suffering has significance, and ultimately vindication will follow.
Philippians 2:5-11
When it comes to the so-called “Christ hymn,” there’s not much middle ground: either this stuff is real or it’s crazy. In a class-conscious society with an oversensitive sense of honor and shame, and where emperors claimed to be the descendants of gods, the suggestion that a god would willingly take on the form of a slave and perform the functions of a slave would be impossible to believe. Yet the apostle not only describes the life and ministry of Jesus in this manner, but exhorts us to willingly doff our dignity and take on the trappings of a slave.
While slavery in the Roman empire, unlike American slavery, was not race-based, it was still a symptom of a culture which included a thin veneer of the ultra-rich and everybody else clustered down at the bottom. Slavery was awful, which is possibly why we ought to find it awe-filled that Jesus does not equate equality with God as something to be grasped, but takes on the form of a slave and is obedient not only unto death, but to a death which is reserved for the dregs of the dregs, designed to eradicate not only life but memory of that person.
This self-giving enslavement is best personified in the gospels in the Maundy Thursday feetwashing text (John 13), but can also be observed in the context of those in your congregation who are engaged in this sort of service, whether in organized ministries of the church or through the self-giving love of service to loved ones and friends in difficult stages of living and dying.
In this hymn we are called not just to adore, but to imitate and then to share beyond suffering in the glorification of Jesus, at whose name ultimately every knee will bow.
Mark 14:1--15:47
Much of the gospel of Mark is wrapped around the messianic secret, which was perhaps an effort on the part of Jesus to discourage people from following him for the wrong reasons: that somehow he was only a teacher, a healer, a miracle worker. But the secret is out now, stretched in agony across a cross of pain and suffering. With the crucifixion of Jesus, it is finally possible to know the messiah completely.
At the end of a desperate struggle on the part of the powers of this earth, Jesus is tried and executed on shaky legal grounds. Why would anyone want to kill a miracle worker, a healer, a teacher? Walter Wink suggests that for the powers of this earth it is an automatic reflex to suppress anyone who threatens the established order. Jesus posed a clear and present threat to the economic and political order. He proclaimed that the last would be first and the first last. He cast out the moneychangers from the temple. Worst of all, he did not take the religious leaders seriously.
But before the sacrifice which makes possible the new covenant, Jesus celebrates the foundation of the old covenant with his disciples. The Passover meal memorialized the hurried preparations before God’s people shook off slavery and grasped freedom. Jesus takes the symbols of Passover and “baptizes” them, making food and drink the memorials of his death and resurrection, and of our escape from the slavery of sin to the freedom of grace as well.
Now follows the complete and utter failure of his worldly ministry. Those who had closest contact with him let him down. The inner circle cannot stay awake during his time of trial. It gets worse. One betrays him, one denies him, and the rest turn tail and run. Only a few of the women remain, to look on from a distance.
And, consistent with the rest of the story, an outsider recognizes Jesus for what he is -- and not just any outsider. The centurion, one of those who participated in the execution, states: “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39). The nations, in their sin, have recognized that Jesus is Lord. This is the true inner circle, the club we ought to desire entry into.
The Roman empire that crucified Jesus, the temple authorities who conspired the frame-up, are no more. We still recognize Jesus as Lord.
Which in no way romanticizes the obscenity of the cross. All of this makes nothing short of incredible the words of the apostle Paul, who wrote: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Nowadays, we who are separated from crucifixions by nearly two millennia think nothing of wearing the cross around the neck or on the lapel, and there is probably one on display in practically every church. But it wasn’t always so.
The cross as an instrument of torture also represents the intersection of two roads. It is the place where heaven and earth come together. It is the spot where we meet Jesus.
The cross was supposed to eradicate the carpenter and all he stood for. It was supposed to end the problem. Just as the death of Stephen, John, and the other martyrs was supposed to put an end to Christianity. Just tear it up by the roots and it will die.
It doesn’t work that way. I remember a scene from a couple years ago. I watched my neighbor down the road pull up the dandelions on his property to prevent their spread. Meanwhile, just a few yards away my then-young son Jacob was reciting what he had learned about dandelions at school the previous day -- while blowing on the puffy heads to spread the seeds. Each one caught the wind and was lost to sight as it sailed into the sun. No problem. There were going to be plenty more dandelions next spring.
That’s the way it works. There’s a stiff breeze blowing and you can’t put the seeds back on the stem. You can’t put Jesus back in the tomb.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Let’s hope so.
