Day: April 13, 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.

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“All the people hung on his words.”

It is a Palm Sunday word, a text from the second lesson at Evening Prayer, and yet one which expresses so much of the meaning of this special day and week. In a way, Luke’s comment captures the intensity of Holy Week – but only if we hang on the words of Christ.

That is where it all hangs, as it were. Holy Week, in the essential catholic understanding of classical Anglicanism, is about the fullness of the Passion of Christ. Hanging on his words is about paying attention to the accounts of his Passion as presented by all four Evangelists. Nothing expresses so concisely and completely the essence of reformed Catholicism.

Nowhere is it more concisely and completely expressed than in the pattern of Scriptural readings for Holy Week in The Book of Common Prayer. That is the challenge of this week: to enter into the Passion of Christ in all of its fullness. And so today, we have The Passion according to St. Matthew. On Monday in Holy Week, we begin the reading of The Passion according to St. Mark which we complete on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we read The Beginning of the Passion according to St. Luke, which is continued and completed on Maundy Thursday. On Good Friday, we read The Passion according to St. John. And, in and through it all, are the various liturgies that complement and reinforce the deep Scriptural logic of the reading of the Passions: Tenebrae and the Liturgies of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days, that concentrate the meaning of the Passion so powerfully and so wonderfully.

The intensity of Holy Week is nothing less than the intensity of the Passion as seen through the lenses of all four Gospels. No other Church provides such a fullness.

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