An account of the passion comprises the major part of each of the four Gospels and was the earliest portion of the Gospels to be carefully written down and edited. The early Christian community quickly realized that apart from the passion, the Gospel would not be “good news”, and that the life and teachings of Jesus would likely become an ephemeral historical footnote whose significance quickly faded under the harsh reality of human existence. The road to Easter leads through despair, degradation, and death. There is no quick and easy bypass around the passion.
The spring air was full of the fresh breezes of hope as Jesus and his followers, along with countless other pilgrims from every corner of the land first entered Jerusalem. A change for the better seemed to be imminent. It was a custom for people arriving for Passover to greet each other and wave branches of palms. In such an atmosphere it was so easy to get caught up in signs of encouragement and change for the better. Excitement fed veraciously on itself. However, things soon turned ugly. Jesus did not live up to expectations. Those, who had long felt threatened by Jesus, successfully manipulated the crowd. Disappointment turned into anger. A kiss became a sign of betrayal. Cowardice and duplicity trumped integrity. Demands for a deliverer became insistence on delivering up a scapegoat.
As we look back on it, the shouts of hosanna, the assurances “we are with you, hail the one who comes in the name of the Lord, we will follow you onward and upward, march on, march on in majesty, we are right behind you,” all seem hollow if not hypocritical. Why didn’t the disciples see what was coming? How could they have failed to understand? Why, oh why in the night of Jesus’ final hours did they disperse and run for cover rather than hold fast? It is so easy for us to shake our heads at their weakness. Yet the great danger as we hear these words is to deny that we are just like them. It’s so easy for us to protest that we would not have wavered; we would never have sought loopholes, or have hidden behind escape clauses of extraordinary circumstances.
Not so fast, the passion insists. We, like the disciples of every age, are exactly like them. Yes, we would like to bypass what the passion reveals about us, but such a bypass inevitably puts us on a yellow brick road that comes abruptly to a dead end and leaves us exhausted, a derelict in an abandoned Oz.
Every year after we parade and wave the palms, we are beckoned to follow the painful way to Calvary. For if we would see God at work in this world, we need to acknowledge the cross. We may certainly try to isolate ourselves from it, but the pain and inhumanity of the world will still continue, and when ignored will just recycle in more virulent forms. I am not simply OK, you are not simply OK, and we all are not simply OK, for at sometime or another humanity gets into a hole where there seems to be no point in struggling on and when death seems to be the only option. When our hope has been totally crushed we will cry “Where is God in all this? Oh God, have you forsaken me?” It is the passion that answers us: “Go to the foot of the cross, and there you will find God hanging. Whatever hole you find yourself trapped in, God has been there and God is there now when there is nothing more you can do and no one else is left.”
Hence every year before Easter, an account of the passion is read. The passion keeps whispering, “Were you there when our Lord was crucified, were you there?” This time, do we acknowledge that the passion story is at some level our story, too, and that only God’s love can free us from our worse selves? The road to Easter leads through despair, degradation, and death. The road to Easter leads us first to the cross. There is no quick and easy bypass around the passion.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
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