Mark 15: 1-39
Well…it’s Palm Sunday…and Holy Week begins.
- When I was a kid Palm Sunday was just Palm Sunday.
- But now it’s Palm slash Passion Sunday.
- This is because people were not showing on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
- (It was easier back then when businesses and schools all shut down on Good Friday afternoon).
- Anyway…we were going from the triumphant “Hosanna” (adoration…praise…joy) of Palm Sunday to the glorious “He is Risen” of Easter Sunday.
- Without going through the horrifying “Crucify him!” of Good Friday.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
So…the church started making today into Palm slash Passion Sunday so that people would hear the scripture readings of the Passion of our Lord.
- Otherwise known as the betrayal… denial…insulting…spitting…beating, suffering death of Jesus of Nazareth.
- Think about it…who does not want to go from glory to glory.
- And just skip the messy condemning stuff in the middle.
It seems reasonable that people want to go from the big processional to the Empty Tomb.
- And skip the other processional of Jesus’s slow…agonizing walk to Golgotha.
- We desire to skip the uncomfortable stuff:
- How Jesus ate his last meal with the people he loved most.
- All of whom would betray…abandon and deny him.
- That these friends could not even stay awake while he prayed in the garden.
- That the crowd would strike and taunt him for not living up to their expectations.
- That the people would shout crucify him!
- And twist into him a crown of thorns.
- That passersby would shout “for God’s sake…save yourself”.
- So…if we could just go from the Palms of the parade to the lilies of Easter.
When we go from glory to glory and skip the cross…
- We get ourselves into a big mess.
- Because…we then…begin to think the cross is about us and not about God.
The big mess starts when we think we can know who God is by just looking at who we are.
- And then projecting that up hugely large.
- We are vengeful so God is vengeful.
- We are power-hungry so God is power hungry.
- We want to smite our enemies…so God wants to smite our enemies.
- That is why it is hard to get our arms around this.
- That God would willingly choose to be poured out for us on the cross because…
- Well…we would…never…do a thing like that.
Albert Einstein said:
- “The same thinking that created a problem cannot solve the problem.”
- We cannot be saved by a God who is just like us.
- A bigger…badder…version of the worst of us.
- Or…a bigger…better version of the best of us cannot save us.
Here is the good news!
- There is a way to honestly know about the nature of God.
- And it is never to look at ourselves.
- It is always to look at Jesus.
- God says: “Look at Jesus…this is how I want to be known.”
The way to know the Father is through the son.
- Anything else ends up being about us and not about God.
- We can see who God is in a humble cradle and a human cross.
From his roughhewn cross Jesus looks at the world and no one escapes his judgment:
- Those who betray him…those who execute him…those who love him…those who ignore him.
- From the cross the pronouncement is made…and the judgment is:
- “Forgive them Father for they know not what they are doing.”
From his cross Christ loves the betrayer…the violent…the God killer in all of us.
- And he will not even lift a finger to condemn those who put him up there.
- Because it is only a God unlike us who can save us from ourselves.
The suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross is not about us.
- It is for us.
- God is so for us that there is no place God will not go to be with us.
- Nothing separates us from the love of God in Jesus.
So…two parades or processions are in focus today:
- In the first…we welcome Jesus into our city and…for a moment…
- Dare to dream of the completion of God’s Kingdom of justice and peace here and now.
- The second is Jesus’s slow…agonizing trek to Golgotha.
- The Via Dolorosa…the street through which Jesus walked to Calvary.
The processions of today are re-enacted every day in our own lives:
- The first invites us to hope and possibility.
- The second makes us cringe with embarrassment.
- We are players in every passion story.