Sermon for Palm Sunday, Evening Prayer
admin | 13 April 2014“All the people hung upon his words”
Here is the place from which our text for today and this week comes. It is Luke’s account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and about the reaction to his coming. You will note the paradox. Luke’s phrase about all the people “h[anging] upon his words” is the reason for Jesus’ not being taken captive immediately by those who “sought to destroy him”, namely, “the chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people.” Because “all the people hung upon his words,” he is protected by the people. And yet, the contrasts of this day reveal how he is betrayed by all of us. Somehow we have to hang upon his words which name our sins and betrayals and without which we ourselves are lost.
The lesson from Isaiah presents what is known as The Fourth Servant Song. The passage is rich in its allusions and associations. It is not hard to see how the images of Israel portrayed as an individual and as a righteous servant “afflicted” and “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities” comes to be associated with the figure of Jesus Christ. Isaiah’s imagery enters into the pageant of the passion. The suffering servant is not simply Israel; it is Jesus Christ who wills to suffer for us all, “pour[ing] out his soul to death,” being “numbered with the transgressors,” “[bearing] the sins of many” and “ma[king] intercession for the transgressors,” indeed, “mak[ing] many to be accounted righteous”; in short, the theological images of atonement and reconciliation.
The parallels between the Isaiah’s suffering servant and Luke’s account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover are unavoidably and richly suggestive. It is really a matter of how we see Christ and that depends entirely upon our hanging upon his words. Only so shall we be saved for we shall find ourselves enveloped in his love.
The conjunction of Isaiah’s Servant Song and the images of the Christ’s entry into Jerusalem provide us with a deeper way to think about the radical meaning of Christ’s Passion. There is a reworking and an intensification of the biblical imagery of the Old Testament; everything is intensely focused on the figure of Christ who recapitulates into himself all of the Old Testament images of service and sacrifice. At this point in the Passion, we consider how Christ is seen by others as well as how he sees the city of Jerusalem.
He weeps over it and rebukes the city for its ignorance, “because you did not know the time of your visitation,” just like in Isaiah, where the one who becomes the suffering servant is “despised and rejected by men,” “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” and “we esteemed him not.” At issue is precisely our failure to attend to what is holy and true, to the things of God in our midst. That failure results in the sufferings of Christ which are seen theologically as belonging to the divine will for our good. “It was the will of the Lord to bruise him” for “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” In hanging upon these words we learn the real meaning of our sins – they are made visible in the suffering Christ – and we learn the divine will for our good. In him, we shall be “accounted righteous” despite our failings and our sins. But only if we hang upon his words.
“All the people hung upon his words”
Fr. David Curry
Meditation for Evening Prayer
Palm Sunday, 2014