Isaiah 50.4-9a; Philippians 2.5-11; Mark 14.1-15.47
This Sunday, the last Sunday in Lent, is a day of mixed messages and competing symbols. It’s not only because the day has two names: Sunday of the Passion and Palm Sunday. Today also has two moods and things switch very quickly between them. There is the festive side of the day with palms. We enact the triumphal entrance of our Lord into Jerusalem, wave our branches, shout, and sing “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” But the pageantry quickly gives way to the most solemn of worship acts: the reading of the Passion Narrative. This is the somber side of the day where we find ourselves at the foot of the cross, having questioned and examined and experienced the motives of a wide range of characters, even finding ourselves in the story. Voices that earlier shout ‘Hosanna’ now shout ‘Crucify’ and our voices are joined with theirs.
This is the essential Christian narrative. Christianity is the only major religion to have the suffering of its God as its central focus. All four gospels move toward this climax. All four of them give much more attention in the total number of chapters and verses to the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus than they do to any other part of his life. Jesus’ passion is the heart of the gospel, and everything else comes from it. And this is Jesus’ passion in every sense of the word—the older meaning of passion as suffering, and the sense of passion as a deep love and desire for someone—all displayed on the cross. And this is Jesus’ passion for you. “Christ…suffered for sins once for all,” says the letter of 1st Peter, “the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”
Underneath today’s solemn reading of the Passion from the Gospel of Mark, and behind St Paul’s summary of Jesus’ self-emptying love on the cross in today’s second reading, is the first reading from Isaiah, a vivid description of a Suffering Servant. “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard.” This servant—unnamed by Isaiah but filled with meaning is Jesus—is totally vulnerable, weak. Yet in the very next line he is totally vindicated, given life. “I know that I shall not be put to shame.” Somehow, this servant has taken the worst that people can do and has come through it in victory, not because of his own strength but because of the strength he is given in God. “Christ…suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”
All the verses that the Gospel of Mark uses to describe Jesus’ passion are summed up there. What this means for us is that our lives, and everything in them, can be taken to the cross and entrusted to God. NT Wright, in a devotional reflection on today’s reading invites you to bring your life to the cross and entrust your life to God. “Bring the hopes and sorrows of the world and of your life [to the cross]. Bring the millions who are homeless because of flood or famine or war. Bring the threat and terror of violence, perhaps even violence at home. The shame of failure at school or rejection by friends. The nasty comments that hurt you then and hurt you still. The terrible moment when you realized a wonderful relationship had come to an end. The sudden, meaningless death of someone you love very much. God has taken this upon himself in the person of his Son,” says Wright. “Christ…suffered for sins once for all…in order to bring you to God.”
In Jesus, and his servant life that leads to the cross, we see what God’s healing and forgiveness are all about. It doesn’t, for example, mean we look at something that happened to us or the ways we have hurt others and say, ‘It didn’t really happen like that,’ or ‘It doesn’t really matter.’ Rather, it is to say, ‘It really did happen like that,’ and ‘It really does matter.’ It’s for us to silence the odd attempts we make in the middle of pain to gloss over it and say things like, ‘It’s all good,’ when we know it’s not; aren’t there times when Jesus’ word from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” is the question of our hear, asked by us, too? It is to recognize the truth of our life: that each of us falls short of God’s desires.
Jesus’ passion is not about covering up the powers of evil, sin, and death in the world or in our lives but about confronting them—from the joy of the Palm Sunday procession to solemnity of the cross—and to confront those powers with the greater power of God And, in ways that stretch the imagination and limits of our hearts, minds, and faith, we trust that Jesus, in his passion, has taken it all in his body and bears it for us, with us. It’s through Jesus crucifixion, the gospels insist, that we see who Jesus was born to be: Son of God, as the angel tells Mary before Jesus birth; “He will save his people from their sins,” as the angel tells Joseph; the one who extends his arms on the cross is “God-with-us,” with us in all human suffering to bring us up with him through death into life. “Christ…suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.”
English writer and Puritan preacher John Bunyan, in his book Pilgrim’s Progress, tells of a character named Christian. On a long journey, Christian comes to a hill. At the top of the hill is a cross; at the bottom a sepulcher, an open tomb cut into rock. Throughout his journey, Christian had been carrying a burden on his shoulders, the heaviness of sin and brokenness wearing him down. As Christian gets up to the top of the hill, his burden falls off his back and tumbles down the hill and continues to tumble and tumble until it comes to the opening of the tomb where it falls in and disappears. “And I saw it no more,” says Christian. There, at the top of that hill and the foot of the cross, Christian discovers that he has been renewed in life and spirit. “Christ has given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.” Christian stood still awhile to look and wonder. It was surprising to him, he said, that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. “But ease him it did.” He was astonished at the joy and peace he found contemplating the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The mixed mood from the Palm Sunday procession to Jesus’ passion and death is, today, not so much a thing to be explained as an event to be entered. And enter it, we have. We have taken our parts and participated in the divine drama. But the greater truth is that God participates in our human drama. God participates in our lives, our world—and that makes all the difference. The one who comes to us humble and riding on a donkey shows us the life of God’s Kingdom. The one who is broken and betrayed is the living presence of God for us. In him is love without caution, regret, boundary, or breaking point—perfect love to the fullest and to the end. When you want to see a picture of what God is genuinely like, look to Jesus on the cross, the source and goal of our faith, our life and hope. “Christ…suffered for sins once for all…in order to bring you to God.”
This is God’s own story, every step along the way taken by the Son of God in his passion both as suffering and as a deep desire for you. And when you come on Friday to the top of a hill called Golgotha, and with John Bunyan’s pilgrim named Christian, find yourself at the foot of the cross, you, too, may be surprised by the joy and peace that come from contemplating the death and resurrection of Jesus and having your burden eased.
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