The Work Of Salvation
Commentary
The work of salvation is embodied in the crucifixion and death of Jesus. That, all Christians are agreed upon. But how does that work? Jesus is obedient to God, undergoing torture and a horrible death, naked and in public view. Unless someone will come forward and claim the body after the crucifixion is over, it will be disposed of like garbage, literally: it will be thrown in the garbage pit outside of Jerusalem and slaked with lime to hold down the smell of the decaying flesh and hurry the process of tissue breakdown.
It’s an ugly end to a tumultuous life for Jesus and his followers, which finally includes his mother and siblings. His terrified disciples hide, fully aware that they are being sought by both the Romans and the temple officials because the claims being made about Jesus constitute a huge danger to the status quo. Even if Jesus is not the promised Messiah (Christ), his followers are seen as a danger to the occupying forces.
As for the temple cadre, they are afraid that Rome may shut them down. Unlike the average person in the street, the priests and lawyers are educated, have regular contact with the Roman governor, and therefore know what the Romans think of them, and the possibility of Rome destroying Jerusalem. They want the followers of Jesus gone, to remove the danger of this destruction. In their minds, the only way to assure this is to co-operate with the Roman governor to arrest and kill Jesus.
And what about us, the post-resurrection Christians? What are we to believe about this end to the life of Jesus of Nazareth? If you listen to some preachers, you will be told that Jesus had all the sins of the world loaded onto him while he was nailed to the cross, and that his death frees us from our sins. It doesn’t stop us from sinning again and again, though.
One website I read said that once God had piled all the sins of the world on Jesus he had to turn away, because God cannot look at sin. This leaves Jesus, the author said, truly abandoned by God, who will not even look at this man who is doing God’s will.
Some preachers will tell you that while he was on the cross, Jesus saw you and your sins, and forgave you. Jesus had that right, as Mark 2:8-10 tells us. So if he had the right to forgive sins, he must be God, because only God has that right, right?
I remember one Ash Wednesday when I was alone in the sanctuary, praying Psalm 32, hearing God’s soft whisper saying to me, “So, are you ready to forgive me?” I was shocked. “I, forgive you?” I responded (silently, don’t want to be seen as crazy). “I need YOU to forgive ME.” Silence. I thought about moments in my life when I had, in fact, been angry with God. When my parents divorced. When the man I had thought to marry was seen by a friend with a former girlfriend. Plans I had that failed. Missed opportunities. Difficult times in parishes. Health problems that were interfering with my ministry. At last, I sighed. “Yes, Lord, I forgive you.” I never planned to tell anyone about that encounter, because I had never heard any such thing taught or preached. But it wasn’t long before God said to me (in the midst of a sermon!) “Tell them what you learned on Ash Wednesday.” I cannot tell you how many people came to me after that and said, “I’m so glad you said that. I have had so much anger against God! But I didn’t dare say it, especially to God. I feel like I’ve been set free.” Indeed.
The doctrine of the Trinity says that God inhabited the soul and body of Jesus during his ministry. If Jesus got hungry, tired, sad, angry, so did God. When the time came to die, God felt the fear anyone might feel. Maybe as Jesus prayed in the garden God felt it all, wanted to run away. Maybe God experienced the beating, the stripping of his body, the nails, the thorns. Since God cannot die (or can s/he?), God slipped out, but only out of necessity. And left the man to cry out “Where are you? I’m so alone!” because he had never been alone, not in his whole life. Until that moment.
It’s all so complicated. And we get so tied up in our theology.
So perhaps we can say: “Somehow, God learned how to be a human.” And found out that it’s very hard being human. Being limited. Being unable to hear the thoughts of others, to know that they didn’t mean what we heard, to know that they’re lying (or not). Being powerless. Being afraid of others, of dying, of losing our loved ones, of being wrong, of being right. How else could God ever learn what it is to be human without trying it out? And having learned life from our side, God forgives us. And asks for our forgiveness. And in that way, makes peace.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
This is the third of the four Servant Songs found in Isaiah. These songs are found in Isaiah 42:1-4 (the Servant is to “bring justice to the nations”); Isaiah 49:1-6 (the Servant will “lead the people of Israel to God” and will be a light for other nations to see God’s “saving power”); today’s passage (the Servant will suffer physical pain and humiliation); and finally Isaiah 52:13--53:12 (the Servant’s work, of taking away the sins of others, is fulfilled by his sacrificing his life for others). This quartet was recognized by the early Church as applying to Jesus and his death on the cross. God’s reward for Jesus’ faithful sacrifice was his resurrection and ascension to a place of honor in the heavens.
The similarities between the Servant and Jesus in this passage are evident starting at verse one -- Jesus was acknowledged as an excellent teacher, even by at least one member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, who stood up for him when the Pharisees had sent temple police to arrest Jesus. He had come to Jesus at night to learn what Jesus was teaching. He also had come to claim Jesus’ body and put it in his own unused tomb, according to John’s gospel.
The Servant, according to verse four, has been schooled by God to understand that teaching is not a matter of having an ability to speak; even more important is the ability to listen. This is so important that Isaiah repeats it three times in verses four and five: God “wakens my ear,” so the prophet can listen as a student ought to listen. Then Isaiah repeats “the Lord God has opened my ear.” This repetition is the ancient Hebrew equivalent of the English superlative, which is not part of the Hebrew language. It stresses the concept of listening in order to learn, but also to teach.
We have all had the experience of sitting in a classroom, listening to a teacher. And we also know that the teacher from whom we learn the most is the one who can “read” the class. In preaching, we know that pastors who don’t spend time with their parishioners cannot be good preachers. How would we know what they need to hear otherwise? The good preacher also listens to the congregation as the service is moving along. Unease among the listeners tells us that either people don’t understand or they disagree with what we’re saying, giving us the nudge we need to say what they need to hear. Silence in the sanctuary means people are listening intently (or that they have fallen asleep, but then you’d probably hear snoring!).
We also know that the smartest student in the room isn’t as identifiable by the answers they give as by the questions they ask. Luke points this out in saying that when Jesus’ parents found him in the temple (Luke 2:46-47) they found him listening to the teachers and “asking them questions”: “His understanding and answers amazed them.” Isaiah has been learning from God “how to sustain the weary with a word.” May the same be said of us!
The next thing the Servant says is that having learned to listen, he “was not rebellious,” he followed God’s leading to suffer pain, humiliation, and disfigurement (v. 6). He counts such experiences as negligible, because God has helped him, and vindicated him (v. 7). He has set his face “like flint” -- in other words, he has not allowed his suffering to show on his face, because he knows God is at his side (v. 8).
Verse 8 is a demand for the Servant to confront his adversaries. It’s easy to misread this verse and the Servant’s request, because of translation difficulties. But the Servant asks “Who will contend with me?” not as a call for his comrades to stand with him and contend with the authorities; instead, he is asking to face his accusers. This becomes clearer in the second part of this couplet: “Who are my adversaries? / let them confront me.” These two lines are not two sides of a coin, comrades vs. adversaries. They are couplets that express the same meaning, which is the soul of Hebrew poetry.
God Almighty is the Servant’s advocate (lawyer). And if this is so, “who will declare me guilty?” What human judge, in other words, would dare to bring a guilty verdict if God him/herself is defending the accused?
This question is tricky. If a defendant is saying “As God is my witness...” no one need believe him. And they probably won’t. In today’s society, where so many think they can get away with anything, and lie in the court of public opinion, and get away with it, you’ll need to have a really strong witness on your side -- or a miracle -- if you expect people to believe you.
On the other hand, as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” That is an excellent interpretation of this passage. Although the Servant must face denigration and pain, he can still say: “All of them (who are against the Servant and the Servant’s work) will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.”
Philippians 2:5-11
Paul is writing to a congregation he helped to found and with whom he maintained a cordial relationship.1 He was probably in jail in Ephesus at the time, having caused no small stir in that city, which was near Philippia.
Philippia was on the Via Egnatia, a major road between Rome and Byzantium. As such, it was a traveler’s road something like our interstate highway system. The city had a special charter so most of the people who lived there were Roman citizens, which probably accounts for some of the warm feeling between Paul and the congregation as Paul was also a Roman citizen.
This section of the letter is a hymn dedicated to the Christ, and the resemblance between Christ and the Servant cannot be missed. Paul certainly intended for the readers to make that connection, as most of the letter is encouraging the members of the church there to have “the same mind... that was in Christ Jesus.” And to make that lesson completely understandable, he either quotes from a known hymn of the day or composes the words we read here. The strong resemblance of this hymn to the prophetic poetry of Isaiah makes me think the latter is the case. This hymn also walks a fine line about the nature of the Christ, an argument that was to define this part of the history of Christian thought.
One of the big questions went like this: How can we believe that the Christ was both human (Jesus of Nazareth) and divine (the second “person” of a triune God)? And there was a second, building off of the answers: How can God die? Or suffer, for that matter. Which led to a discussion on the nature of God, as well as the Christ. All of this questioning is contained in this psalm, and resolved in a resounding statement of the glory of God, which is embodied in the human man Jesus.
The opening of this hymn is slightly different than the Isaiah hymn. Isaiah did not equate the Servant as being “in the form of God.” Such an equation would have been blasphemy to the ancient Hebrews, especially since the pharaoh of Egypt, their ancient enemy, was seen as being a god. It was still problematic in the early Church for that matter, because Caesar Augustus also claimed that he was divine. This clash is part of what stirred up the animosity toward Christians in the Roman empire, a clash between the competing claims of the Christian messiah and the Roman emperor.
Furthermore, vv. 6-8 are clearly saying the same thing as the Christ hymn that opens the gospel of John. Since John’s gospel was written after Paul’s writings, it is possible that John was directly reflecting what Paul is saying in the first stanza.
In the second stanza, Paul says that because Jesus was willing to die a horrible death God elevated him above any known powers on or under or above the earth. Moreover, the name of Jesus (Greek;Joshua in Hebrew) had become so powerful that people would behave as they would at the entrance of a sovereign -- they would bend into a profound bow, with at least one knee on the ground, and pledge themselves to him as their ruler. By doing so, they are also worshiping and praising God, because what Jesus did restored the parent-child relationship between us and God (cf. Luke 15:11-32).
Matthew 27:11-54
Palm Sunday has the longest set of readings of any Sunday of the year, especially because so many churches have come to combine the gospel passages for Good Friday with the traditional readings for Palm Sunday. Since fewer and fewer people have the freedom to attend worship in the middle of the day, Good Friday services have faded away in most of our Protestant churches, so now we have a combination of the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem and the descent into a nighttime arrest (to avoid the crowds that had been surrounding Jesus), and illegal trial in front of the Sanhedrin. Then he was turned over to Pilate’s soldiers for torture (although Matthew omits the flogging). The story ends with Jesus facing Pilate and being condemned to crucifixion. All this has been part of the last week of Lent for centuries, but spread out over many days of worship during that week; now it is condensed into the last Sunday of Lent.
We’re well familiar with the general outline of events of the last day of Jesus’ life, but there are some particulars in Matthew’s account that we might take a look at.
First is the appearance of Jesus before Pilate. Matthew makes it seem that Pilate really wanted to free Jesus; that is highly unlikely. What we know of Pilate is that he was a mediocre politician at best, known for his laziness and animosity toward the Jews.
From Pilate’s point of view, the Jews were unshaven, unwashed people of a fundamentalist bent. Compared to the Romans, who bathed frequently, even daily, the Jews were dirt.2 While the Romans wore linen, the Jews wore mostly wool, a heavier fabric less easily washed than linen. The Roman men shaved daily unless they were in battle, while the Jewish men tended to wear long beards, following the command of God to leave the edges of their beards untrimmed (Leviticus 21:5). The place that the Jews considered the most holy place in the world smelled constantly of the blood and entrails of the animals being prepared for sacrifice, and although the cooking of the meat would certainly make the mouth water, it was usually not able to drown out the smells of the slaughtering floor.
Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Pilate wanted to spend any time with Jesus, who appeared before him bloodied but unbowed. Jesus was not known as a taciturn man, but he refuses to converse with his adversary. Pilate asks him if he is the king of the Jews. Was he laughing as he asked it? Confrontational? No matter. Jesus answers, “You’re the one saying it.” In other words, he neither affirms nor denies his status.
The chief priests and elders are outraged by this exchange and press Pilate to pronounce the penalty. A rush to judgment indeed, which probably indicates that they knew their case against Jesus wouldn’t stand up to examination. Even if it would, they knew the “trial” they had held, being after dark, was illegal in either the Roman or the Jewish system of law. All trials are to be held during the light of day. It’s typical of Pilate that this problem never gets mentioned.
Matthew says that “the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner...” There is no historical evidence for this claim. Common sense says this practice would weaken the grip of the Romans on the Jews. They had enough problems ruling the Jews as it was.
However -- and this is a big “however” -- Matthew tells a strange thing about this trial. In verse 16, he says the Romans had “a notorious prisoner, called [Jesus] Barabbas.” Not all of the ancient manuscripts give Barabbas a personal name. Either way, the name Jesus was a common name among the Jews, which is the Greek form of the Aramaic/Hebrew name Joshua, the man who led the people across the Jordan into Canaan when Moses died. But it’s the last name of the “notorious prisoner” that is most puzzling: Barabbas. Or, if we write it properly for the Jews, Bar Abbas, which means “the son of the father.” Since Jesus of Nazareth often called God “My Father,” this juxtaposition of the two Jesuses has given rise to all kinds of questions in our time about what Matthew was trying to say. The Bar Abbas would be plain to the early Jewish Christians, to whom Matthew was writing, and there has been speculation among those who are interested in the dark corners of Christianity that this was a way of saying that Jesus of Nazareth did not die on the cross, because “[Pilate] realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.” Some of these writers have offered the meaning of all this to be that the crowd was tricked into confusion over which man they were calling to be released.
Furthermore, Matthew claims that Pilate’s wife had sent him word while he was presiding over this case that she had a dream about “that innocent man” and was distraught over it. The Bible is full of stories of people being warned about what is to come or enlightened in a dream. This is especially true of believers, who are warned in time to escape death or danger. Some dreams are given to non-believers, giving the faithful servant the opportunity to interpret the dream and so win the dreamer to the Lord. Matthew may have been trying to say that Pilate had an opportunity to be saved but rejected it. Instead, he sentences Jesus without evidence (v. 23) to quiet the crowd.
As Jesus is hanging on the cross, Matthew says some people derided Jesus by saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!” This is one of the charges hurled at him in the trial before the Sanhedrin by two “false witnesses” (Matthew 26:61). Now, Matthew never has Jesus say any such thing; but John does (John 2:19). It’s just an oddity that is quite intriguing; apparently this saying was well known among the post-resurrection Christians.
All three of the synoptic gospels record that the “curtain of the temple” (the entrance to the holiest part of the temple, which could only be entered once a year, by the High Priest alone) was torn in two, “from the top to the bottom.”3 It’s important that it split beginning at the top -- if a human were to tear the curtain, he would have to start at the bottom, because the curtain was tall -- 12 to 15 feet. The implication here is that God split it, allowing anyone to enter the space. The earthquake that accompanies this is a sign that God is enraged. The breaking open of the tombs (remember, the Jews buried in stone caves) and the resurrection of “many of... the saints who had died” is unique to Matthew. Such an event would be expected at the final day by those Jews who believed in a life after death, but not at the death of the messiah. So Matthew says they were raised on this day, but entered the holy city after Jesus’ resurrection.
Matthew repeats a theme we see often in Luke’s gospel: the community of faith of the Jews did not recognize who Jesus was, but the Gentiles (in this case “the centurion and those who were with him”) did, saying: “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
1 Notes on The Letter of Paul to the Philippians, New Interpreter’s Study Bible, p. 2099
2 The Jews had a set of cleanliness laws which included frequent hand-washing, but bathing in the Roman manner, fully immersed, was much more difficult, as the Jews of Jesus’ day could not be naked in front of others, and their homes lacked indoor plumbing.
3 Luke lacks this detail.
It’s an ugly end to a tumultuous life for Jesus and his followers, which finally includes his mother and siblings. His terrified disciples hide, fully aware that they are being sought by both the Romans and the temple officials because the claims being made about Jesus constitute a huge danger to the status quo. Even if Jesus is not the promised Messiah (Christ), his followers are seen as a danger to the occupying forces.
As for the temple cadre, they are afraid that Rome may shut them down. Unlike the average person in the street, the priests and lawyers are educated, have regular contact with the Roman governor, and therefore know what the Romans think of them, and the possibility of Rome destroying Jerusalem. They want the followers of Jesus gone, to remove the danger of this destruction. In their minds, the only way to assure this is to co-operate with the Roman governor to arrest and kill Jesus.
And what about us, the post-resurrection Christians? What are we to believe about this end to the life of Jesus of Nazareth? If you listen to some preachers, you will be told that Jesus had all the sins of the world loaded onto him while he was nailed to the cross, and that his death frees us from our sins. It doesn’t stop us from sinning again and again, though.
One website I read said that once God had piled all the sins of the world on Jesus he had to turn away, because God cannot look at sin. This leaves Jesus, the author said, truly abandoned by God, who will not even look at this man who is doing God’s will.
Some preachers will tell you that while he was on the cross, Jesus saw you and your sins, and forgave you. Jesus had that right, as Mark 2:8-10 tells us. So if he had the right to forgive sins, he must be God, because only God has that right, right?
I remember one Ash Wednesday when I was alone in the sanctuary, praying Psalm 32, hearing God’s soft whisper saying to me, “So, are you ready to forgive me?” I was shocked. “I, forgive you?” I responded (silently, don’t want to be seen as crazy). “I need YOU to forgive ME.” Silence. I thought about moments in my life when I had, in fact, been angry with God. When my parents divorced. When the man I had thought to marry was seen by a friend with a former girlfriend. Plans I had that failed. Missed opportunities. Difficult times in parishes. Health problems that were interfering with my ministry. At last, I sighed. “Yes, Lord, I forgive you.” I never planned to tell anyone about that encounter, because I had never heard any such thing taught or preached. But it wasn’t long before God said to me (in the midst of a sermon!) “Tell them what you learned on Ash Wednesday.” I cannot tell you how many people came to me after that and said, “I’m so glad you said that. I have had so much anger against God! But I didn’t dare say it, especially to God. I feel like I’ve been set free.” Indeed.
The doctrine of the Trinity says that God inhabited the soul and body of Jesus during his ministry. If Jesus got hungry, tired, sad, angry, so did God. When the time came to die, God felt the fear anyone might feel. Maybe as Jesus prayed in the garden God felt it all, wanted to run away. Maybe God experienced the beating, the stripping of his body, the nails, the thorns. Since God cannot die (or can s/he?), God slipped out, but only out of necessity. And left the man to cry out “Where are you? I’m so alone!” because he had never been alone, not in his whole life. Until that moment.
It’s all so complicated. And we get so tied up in our theology.
So perhaps we can say: “Somehow, God learned how to be a human.” And found out that it’s very hard being human. Being limited. Being unable to hear the thoughts of others, to know that they didn’t mean what we heard, to know that they’re lying (or not). Being powerless. Being afraid of others, of dying, of losing our loved ones, of being wrong, of being right. How else could God ever learn what it is to be human without trying it out? And having learned life from our side, God forgives us. And asks for our forgiveness. And in that way, makes peace.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
This is the third of the four Servant Songs found in Isaiah. These songs are found in Isaiah 42:1-4 (the Servant is to “bring justice to the nations”); Isaiah 49:1-6 (the Servant will “lead the people of Israel to God” and will be a light for other nations to see God’s “saving power”); today’s passage (the Servant will suffer physical pain and humiliation); and finally Isaiah 52:13--53:12 (the Servant’s work, of taking away the sins of others, is fulfilled by his sacrificing his life for others). This quartet was recognized by the early Church as applying to Jesus and his death on the cross. God’s reward for Jesus’ faithful sacrifice was his resurrection and ascension to a place of honor in the heavens.
The similarities between the Servant and Jesus in this passage are evident starting at verse one -- Jesus was acknowledged as an excellent teacher, even by at least one member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, who stood up for him when the Pharisees had sent temple police to arrest Jesus. He had come to Jesus at night to learn what Jesus was teaching. He also had come to claim Jesus’ body and put it in his own unused tomb, according to John’s gospel.
The Servant, according to verse four, has been schooled by God to understand that teaching is not a matter of having an ability to speak; even more important is the ability to listen. This is so important that Isaiah repeats it three times in verses four and five: God “wakens my ear,” so the prophet can listen as a student ought to listen. Then Isaiah repeats “the Lord God has opened my ear.” This repetition is the ancient Hebrew equivalent of the English superlative, which is not part of the Hebrew language. It stresses the concept of listening in order to learn, but also to teach.
We have all had the experience of sitting in a classroom, listening to a teacher. And we also know that the teacher from whom we learn the most is the one who can “read” the class. In preaching, we know that pastors who don’t spend time with their parishioners cannot be good preachers. How would we know what they need to hear otherwise? The good preacher also listens to the congregation as the service is moving along. Unease among the listeners tells us that either people don’t understand or they disagree with what we’re saying, giving us the nudge we need to say what they need to hear. Silence in the sanctuary means people are listening intently (or that they have fallen asleep, but then you’d probably hear snoring!).
We also know that the smartest student in the room isn’t as identifiable by the answers they give as by the questions they ask. Luke points this out in saying that when Jesus’ parents found him in the temple (Luke 2:46-47) they found him listening to the teachers and “asking them questions”: “His understanding and answers amazed them.” Isaiah has been learning from God “how to sustain the weary with a word.” May the same be said of us!
The next thing the Servant says is that having learned to listen, he “was not rebellious,” he followed God’s leading to suffer pain, humiliation, and disfigurement (v. 6). He counts such experiences as negligible, because God has helped him, and vindicated him (v. 7). He has set his face “like flint” -- in other words, he has not allowed his suffering to show on his face, because he knows God is at his side (v. 8).
Verse 8 is a demand for the Servant to confront his adversaries. It’s easy to misread this verse and the Servant’s request, because of translation difficulties. But the Servant asks “Who will contend with me?” not as a call for his comrades to stand with him and contend with the authorities; instead, he is asking to face his accusers. This becomes clearer in the second part of this couplet: “Who are my adversaries? / let them confront me.” These two lines are not two sides of a coin, comrades vs. adversaries. They are couplets that express the same meaning, which is the soul of Hebrew poetry.
God Almighty is the Servant’s advocate (lawyer). And if this is so, “who will declare me guilty?” What human judge, in other words, would dare to bring a guilty verdict if God him/herself is defending the accused?
This question is tricky. If a defendant is saying “As God is my witness...” no one need believe him. And they probably won’t. In today’s society, where so many think they can get away with anything, and lie in the court of public opinion, and get away with it, you’ll need to have a really strong witness on your side -- or a miracle -- if you expect people to believe you.
On the other hand, as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” That is an excellent interpretation of this passage. Although the Servant must face denigration and pain, he can still say: “All of them (who are against the Servant and the Servant’s work) will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.”
Philippians 2:5-11
Paul is writing to a congregation he helped to found and with whom he maintained a cordial relationship.1 He was probably in jail in Ephesus at the time, having caused no small stir in that city, which was near Philippia.
Philippia was on the Via Egnatia, a major road between Rome and Byzantium. As such, it was a traveler’s road something like our interstate highway system. The city had a special charter so most of the people who lived there were Roman citizens, which probably accounts for some of the warm feeling between Paul and the congregation as Paul was also a Roman citizen.
This section of the letter is a hymn dedicated to the Christ, and the resemblance between Christ and the Servant cannot be missed. Paul certainly intended for the readers to make that connection, as most of the letter is encouraging the members of the church there to have “the same mind... that was in Christ Jesus.” And to make that lesson completely understandable, he either quotes from a known hymn of the day or composes the words we read here. The strong resemblance of this hymn to the prophetic poetry of Isaiah makes me think the latter is the case. This hymn also walks a fine line about the nature of the Christ, an argument that was to define this part of the history of Christian thought.
One of the big questions went like this: How can we believe that the Christ was both human (Jesus of Nazareth) and divine (the second “person” of a triune God)? And there was a second, building off of the answers: How can God die? Or suffer, for that matter. Which led to a discussion on the nature of God, as well as the Christ. All of this questioning is contained in this psalm, and resolved in a resounding statement of the glory of God, which is embodied in the human man Jesus.
The opening of this hymn is slightly different than the Isaiah hymn. Isaiah did not equate the Servant as being “in the form of God.” Such an equation would have been blasphemy to the ancient Hebrews, especially since the pharaoh of Egypt, their ancient enemy, was seen as being a god. It was still problematic in the early Church for that matter, because Caesar Augustus also claimed that he was divine. This clash is part of what stirred up the animosity toward Christians in the Roman empire, a clash between the competing claims of the Christian messiah and the Roman emperor.
Furthermore, vv. 6-8 are clearly saying the same thing as the Christ hymn that opens the gospel of John. Since John’s gospel was written after Paul’s writings, it is possible that John was directly reflecting what Paul is saying in the first stanza.
In the second stanza, Paul says that because Jesus was willing to die a horrible death God elevated him above any known powers on or under or above the earth. Moreover, the name of Jesus (Greek;Joshua in Hebrew) had become so powerful that people would behave as they would at the entrance of a sovereign -- they would bend into a profound bow, with at least one knee on the ground, and pledge themselves to him as their ruler. By doing so, they are also worshiping and praising God, because what Jesus did restored the parent-child relationship between us and God (cf. Luke 15:11-32).
Matthew 27:11-54
Palm Sunday has the longest set of readings of any Sunday of the year, especially because so many churches have come to combine the gospel passages for Good Friday with the traditional readings for Palm Sunday. Since fewer and fewer people have the freedom to attend worship in the middle of the day, Good Friday services have faded away in most of our Protestant churches, so now we have a combination of the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem and the descent into a nighttime arrest (to avoid the crowds that had been surrounding Jesus), and illegal trial in front of the Sanhedrin. Then he was turned over to Pilate’s soldiers for torture (although Matthew omits the flogging). The story ends with Jesus facing Pilate and being condemned to crucifixion. All this has been part of the last week of Lent for centuries, but spread out over many days of worship during that week; now it is condensed into the last Sunday of Lent.
We’re well familiar with the general outline of events of the last day of Jesus’ life, but there are some particulars in Matthew’s account that we might take a look at.
First is the appearance of Jesus before Pilate. Matthew makes it seem that Pilate really wanted to free Jesus; that is highly unlikely. What we know of Pilate is that he was a mediocre politician at best, known for his laziness and animosity toward the Jews.
From Pilate’s point of view, the Jews were unshaven, unwashed people of a fundamentalist bent. Compared to the Romans, who bathed frequently, even daily, the Jews were dirt.2 While the Romans wore linen, the Jews wore mostly wool, a heavier fabric less easily washed than linen. The Roman men shaved daily unless they were in battle, while the Jewish men tended to wear long beards, following the command of God to leave the edges of their beards untrimmed (Leviticus 21:5). The place that the Jews considered the most holy place in the world smelled constantly of the blood and entrails of the animals being prepared for sacrifice, and although the cooking of the meat would certainly make the mouth water, it was usually not able to drown out the smells of the slaughtering floor.
Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Pilate wanted to spend any time with Jesus, who appeared before him bloodied but unbowed. Jesus was not known as a taciturn man, but he refuses to converse with his adversary. Pilate asks him if he is the king of the Jews. Was he laughing as he asked it? Confrontational? No matter. Jesus answers, “You’re the one saying it.” In other words, he neither affirms nor denies his status.
The chief priests and elders are outraged by this exchange and press Pilate to pronounce the penalty. A rush to judgment indeed, which probably indicates that they knew their case against Jesus wouldn’t stand up to examination. Even if it would, they knew the “trial” they had held, being after dark, was illegal in either the Roman or the Jewish system of law. All trials are to be held during the light of day. It’s typical of Pilate that this problem never gets mentioned.
Matthew says that “the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner...” There is no historical evidence for this claim. Common sense says this practice would weaken the grip of the Romans on the Jews. They had enough problems ruling the Jews as it was.
However -- and this is a big “however” -- Matthew tells a strange thing about this trial. In verse 16, he says the Romans had “a notorious prisoner, called [Jesus] Barabbas.” Not all of the ancient manuscripts give Barabbas a personal name. Either way, the name Jesus was a common name among the Jews, which is the Greek form of the Aramaic/Hebrew name Joshua, the man who led the people across the Jordan into Canaan when Moses died. But it’s the last name of the “notorious prisoner” that is most puzzling: Barabbas. Or, if we write it properly for the Jews, Bar Abbas, which means “the son of the father.” Since Jesus of Nazareth often called God “My Father,” this juxtaposition of the two Jesuses has given rise to all kinds of questions in our time about what Matthew was trying to say. The Bar Abbas would be plain to the early Jewish Christians, to whom Matthew was writing, and there has been speculation among those who are interested in the dark corners of Christianity that this was a way of saying that Jesus of Nazareth did not die on the cross, because “[Pilate] realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.” Some of these writers have offered the meaning of all this to be that the crowd was tricked into confusion over which man they were calling to be released.
Furthermore, Matthew claims that Pilate’s wife had sent him word while he was presiding over this case that she had a dream about “that innocent man” and was distraught over it. The Bible is full of stories of people being warned about what is to come or enlightened in a dream. This is especially true of believers, who are warned in time to escape death or danger. Some dreams are given to non-believers, giving the faithful servant the opportunity to interpret the dream and so win the dreamer to the Lord. Matthew may have been trying to say that Pilate had an opportunity to be saved but rejected it. Instead, he sentences Jesus without evidence (v. 23) to quiet the crowd.
As Jesus is hanging on the cross, Matthew says some people derided Jesus by saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!” This is one of the charges hurled at him in the trial before the Sanhedrin by two “false witnesses” (Matthew 26:61). Now, Matthew never has Jesus say any such thing; but John does (John 2:19). It’s just an oddity that is quite intriguing; apparently this saying was well known among the post-resurrection Christians.
All three of the synoptic gospels record that the “curtain of the temple” (the entrance to the holiest part of the temple, which could only be entered once a year, by the High Priest alone) was torn in two, “from the top to the bottom.”3 It’s important that it split beginning at the top -- if a human were to tear the curtain, he would have to start at the bottom, because the curtain was tall -- 12 to 15 feet. The implication here is that God split it, allowing anyone to enter the space. The earthquake that accompanies this is a sign that God is enraged. The breaking open of the tombs (remember, the Jews buried in stone caves) and the resurrection of “many of... the saints who had died” is unique to Matthew. Such an event would be expected at the final day by those Jews who believed in a life after death, but not at the death of the messiah. So Matthew says they were raised on this day, but entered the holy city after Jesus’ resurrection.
Matthew repeats a theme we see often in Luke’s gospel: the community of faith of the Jews did not recognize who Jesus was, but the Gentiles (in this case “the centurion and those who were with him”) did, saying: “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
1 Notes on The Letter of Paul to the Philippians, New Interpreter’s Study Bible, p. 2099
2 The Jews had a set of cleanliness laws which included frequent hand-washing, but bathing in the Roman manner, fully immersed, was much more difficult, as the Jews of Jesus’ day could not be naked in front of others, and their homes lacked indoor plumbing.
3 Luke lacks this detail.
