Sermon for Passion Sunday
“Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of,
and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Passiontide begins with two powerful and suggestive readings, not to mention the gradual psalm set to one of Bach’s passion tunes. We ignore them at our peril. The epistle reading from Hebrews lays out the profound theology of atonement and redemption. Christ is the Mediator of the New Covenant, the new understanding of the relationship between God and Man accomplished through Christ’s sacrifice. The gospel reading from Matthew relates a critical set of exchanges, first, between Jesus and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, secondly, with the sons themselves, and, then, with the rest of the disciples. The dialogue is altogether about two things: sacrifice and service.
“We go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus said, in the gospel read on the Sunday just before Lent, Quinquagesima Sunday. Not just I go up. Not just you go up, but we go up. In some sense that is the meaning of Christian pilgrimage. It is about a journey to God and with God. The meaning of that journey takes on an heightened sense of intensity with Passiontide. Suddenly more and more of what that journey entails begins to become more and more apparent. It challenges all our worldly aims and ambitions. It is not about success as the world counts success but neither is about being losers. No. There is altogether something here that is much deeper and grander. It speaks to our souls.
The Letter to the Hebrews is a theological treatise. It seeks to explicate the theology of God’s engagement with our humanity in Jesus Christ. Atonement is one of its major themes. Atonement simply means being at one; in this case, being at one with God. But the whole reality of human experience is about our estrangement from God. The story of the Fall is played out in each of our lives individually and collectively. We are not at one with the world. We are not at one with one another. We are not at one with God.
