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First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Isaiah 50:409a |
|
Philippians 2:5-11 |
Mark 14:1-15:47 |
On this Sunday, we have partly reenacted, as well as retold, the story occurring around a certain Passover that Christians know as the Passion. In Jesus’ era this holiday brought back historical memories of past glories that contrasted with the considerably more humble, if not miserable, situation under the Roman occupation. For the governing authorities, it was an uneasy week when radicals could easily blend with the crowds of pilgrims and were looking to stir up unrest and encourage rebellion, however futile.
Mark’s Gospel offers more than an account of Jesus confronting and confounding religious and secular officials within the broad sweep of history. The Passover holidays were a hectic and stressful time for most everyone. The ideal for every pious Jew would be to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. That involved advance preparation of travel and lodging for those who didn’t live near the city. For those who lived in Jerusalem or in its suburbs it inevitably meant a houseful of relatives and friends. There were many ordinary people working hard, doing the best they could behind the scenes and out of history’s notice.
As the disciples were beginning their journey to Jerusalem, an argument had broken out over who was the greatest among them and they appeared to boast to Jesus of all the important things they expected to do. I doubt that the Gospel writers missed the irony. Jesus doesn’t speak of either he or his disciples doing great things. Instead, he sends two disciples to make sure the preparations had been made for the Passover, just as he sent two disciples to fetch a donkey for him to ride into the city. At the final meal with the twelve disciples, he tells them one will betray him and all the rest of them will desert him in fear. He tells them to keep awake while he prays, but they fall asleep.
Then, as he had warned, there was the arrest, the dismay and dread that follow. A passerby is forced to carry Jesus’ cross. Finally during the final hours of agony were Mary of Magdala, Mary, mother of James and Joseph, Solome (probably the mother of the sons of Zebedee), and other unnamed female followers from Galilee. In the evening after Jesus had died, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, took the body and placed it in a tomb. There was nothing more his friends could do.
The Passion is an earth shattering event for people of faith, but it is not the account of a triumphal Jesus and his followers doing great, earth shattering things. It is the story of Jesus the Christ who “allowed” and “needed” to be ministered to, who welcomed small kindnesses, who expected no extraordinary heroism. Jesus like most us at some time in our lives, knew what it meant not to be in charge, to have lost his strength and power, and to be helpless in an extreme situation. Presumption, arrogance, recrimination, and certainty are all absent by the cross.
One of the great contributors to spiritual exhaustion and withering of hope is to fall into the trap of believing that God demands that we accomplish big, heroic things. We become so agitated and anxious when it seems as if all depends on us and there is no one to help us. No one else understands.
The Passion is showing us God incarnate, the paradox of a savoir who could not save, a messiah, the Christ, the anointed one of God, who needed to be and allowed being ministered to. Orthodox Christianity was never embarrassed that Jesus really suffered. Contrary to later Gnostic sects, the Gospels make it quite clear that there was no secret story that softened or denied the awful reality of the crucifixion. We are invited to be there at Calvary, to weep, lament and ponder. We are invited to follow Jesus to the foot of the cross, to wait and to offer what seem to be trivial, ordinary, things of decency.
The great paradox of the passion is that by Jesus showing us how to graciously accept small gifts in the last moments of life, he showed us how we may generously give all our lives. Jesus by showing us how to act when he was not in control, showed us how to exercise power with compassion and integrity, when we are in control.
Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, Amen.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
