“What mean ye by this service?”
It will be the recurring question for this week. It all begins today, Palm Sunday. It is the beginning of Holy Week, the week of the Passover. Christ is our Passover. But what does that mean?
Our liturgy shows us what it means. It all begins today and ends at Easter. It is one continuous liturgy. Christ crucified and Christ risen. The story captures the whole range of human emotions and experience, the whole range of sin and evil, the whole picture of human redemption. All of it is focussed on the figure of Jesus Christ. In a way, the whole story of Christ is concentrated in the events of this day and week. Palm Sunday makes us confront the paradox of contradiction that exists in our own souls.
“Hosanna to the King,” we cry, only to turn around and cry, “Crucify him.” The one, a cry of exaltation and delight; the other, a cry of violence and viciousness. This is what we cry. We are not merely by-standers. No. The whole point of Palm Sunday and Holy Week is that we are participants in the drama of human redemption. We are part of the unfolding of the spectacle of human redemption. It is the Passover of the Lord. We are in the story of this week.
But what does this mean? The ancient story of the Passover underlies the meaning of this week. Jesus enters triumphantly into Jerusalem. He does so to celebrate the Jewish Passover. Everything that transpires in the spectacle of this week relates to the Passover story.
“What mean ye by this service?” This is the question asked in the ritual of the Passover. It is a memorial service, a way of remembering and re-enacting the Passover, a way of participating in its truth. What is the Passover? Do we know the story? It is the story of the liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage under Pharaoh’s yoke. “Let my people go,” Moses said to Pharaoh. Let them go from what? Let them go where and to what? Let them go from the burdens of slavery. Let them go into the wilderness to worship God. Ultimately, it is a story that belongs to the spiritual identity of the people of Israel, the Hebrews, and, by extension, to the spiritual identity of Christians.
What will it take for Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go? A lot. The story of the Passover is the culminating event in a series of contests between the magicians of the Egyptians, on the one hand, and God, on the other hand, acting through Moses and Aaron. There is a series of plagues that befall the land of Egypt. In that series, a distinction is made between the Egyptians and the Hebrews. For example, a plague of flies descends upon the land of Egypt everywhere except where the Hebrews dwell. Literally, there may be flies on some of you guys but not on us in the land of Goshen! So too, with some of the other afflictions, like thick darkness upon the whole land except, again, the land of Goshen which remains in light. A distinction is made between those who define themselves by the forces of nature and those who worship a power beyond nature for whom nature is but the cloak of his glory.
The lessons here are not just against Egypt. They are also for Israel and through Israel for all people. That, of course, is part of the greater story both of the rest of the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament story of Jesus.
But the spiritual battle in Exodus reaches its climax in the story of the Passover. What is that story? It is the last of the plagues and the most disturbing of the plagues. Every time there is a plague, Pharaoh pleads to have it removed and promises to let the people of the Hebrews go, but, then, he hardens his heart and retracts his promise. Such are the fickle ways of human hearts. The hardening of the heart is by no means constrained to just Pharaoh. After all, as Jeremiah puts it, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17.9). This, too, is what we confront in the spectacle of Holy Week. We confront the spectacle of our deceitful and fickle hearts, our hearts of treachery and betrayal, our hearts of contradiction and folly.
But The Book of Exodus also says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Why? Because liberation and salvation cannot be allowed to depend upon any human action, even the actions of contradiction and sinfulness. Everything has to be brought clearly within the realm of God’s free and sovereign action. Moses and Aaron are not superheroes but faithful servants of God’s will. That will be the condition of liberation.
The last plague is the death of the first-born, both of man and beast in the land of Egypt. Only on the homes of the Hebrews, where the blood of a lamb has been daubed on the doorposts and lintels, does God, literally, pass over and spare them from the terror of the sudden death of the first-born. This may seem hard and curious. There is a logic to it, of course. Neither you nor I can tell just by looking at some one whether they are or are not the first born in their family. There is no DNA test to tell that. We can know empirically in particular circumstances with respect to what parents and others know from experience but overall and in general? No. This is a form of knowing that exceeds our human knowledge. It is a divine knowing. And that is the point.
Along with the commandment to the Hebrews to sacrifice the passover lamb and to place its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their homes, there is the provision of the passover meal; lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. Why unleavened bread? Because we have to be ready to leave in a hurry; there is no time for the dough to rise. Israel is commanded to keep this service in perpetuity wherever they go. And when it is observed, the children say to their elders, “what mean ye by this service?” The answer is that “this is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt” (Ex. 12.27). Pharaoh lets them go, only to chase after them, it is true, and that leads to the crossing of the Red Sea and the further defeat of Pharaoh’s host at the hand of God.
A defining story for the Jewish people, it has its further extension in the Christian story of human redemption. Christ enters Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. He will be the passover lamb himself. “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” It will not be by the blood of sheep and goats but by the blood of Christ that we will be redeemed from the greater enslavement to sin and folly, to wickedness and evil. Holy Week is about the Passion of Christ. He wills to put himself completely in our hands to do with him what we will. It is not a pretty picture. We are not nice. But even more, he puts himself into the hands of his loving father. He has “come to do the will of him who sent [him].” That will is the divine will which seeks our good in spite of ourselves. “God commendeth his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We are simply and completely sinners.
It will be our hardened and fickle hearts that will be on display in the spectacle of Holy Week. But even more, the heart of God will be revealed to us in the crucified Christ. His passover is for us.
We may not want to see this. Part of the hardness of our hearts is the way we cling to our own agendas and pretensions and to our own sense of ourselves. What Holy Week sets before us is the idea that we do not really know ourselves and that the true knowledge of ourselves is found in Christ. It is found in the deep love of God for us in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” so that we may keep the feast of our redemption. It means going into the Passion of Christ and learning “what mean ye by this service?”
“What mean ye by this service?”
Fr. David Curry
Palm Sunday, April 17th, 2011