Year: 2021

“Behold thy king cometh unto thee”

The joy of this day is equally our pain. We wave branches of palms and sing “Hosanna to the Son of David.” We hail a king who enters his royal city. There is joy. Everyone loves a parade. Palm Sunday, we might say, is Christ’s parade. There is a sense of euphoria that belongs to the celebration of liberation or at least its anticipation.

And yet, the one before whom we wave branches of palm and to whom we sing “Hosanna to the king”, we also shout “Crucify, Crucify.” We nail him to a tree. The one whom we hail as king we mock and deny his rule in our souls and so deny our souls as well. We cast him out of his royal city and find ourselves the outcasts of all creation. In every way we make the parade of this day a parody of his way. We confront a contradiction, a contradiction within ourselves, a contradiction which we hardly know or see until it is pointed out to us, until we are made to see what we will not see. “They [we] shall look on him who they [we] have pierced.”

This is what we do. We make a parody of God’s way. Yet God makes something more. He makes a procession of redeeming love out of our parody of his parade. We shall find that our first notes of joy and euphoria are more true than at first we thought or knew. But only if we enter into the dark hell of Holy Week and into the heart-rending pain of the Passion. Only in passing through the parody of God’s parade can we even begin to hope to come into the procession of his endless love which bursts forth in the Resurrection. And only then might our joys more truly begin. We go from joy to sorrow and from greater sorrow to an even greater joy. Such is Passion and Resurrection.

Yet, perhaps, this must seem all a bit too much. How is it that you and I are present at all in these events, whether singing “Hosanna” or shouting “Crucify”, whether hailing or mocking one who is and who is not a king? The intent of our liturgy – and this week is really one long liturgy, from Palm Sunday to Easter Day – places us in these events, in the midst of these happenings. But again, what does that mean for you and for me and how can that be? Because these events confront us with ourselves. We confront something of ourselves in the presence of God.

We confront the mysteries of sin and death in the greater presence of the God who is love and life. But only through the parade of his Passion. The events of Holy Week compel us to look at ourselves anew, not simply with some greater degree of psychological insight but in the increased awareness of the presence of God. We are drawn into love by repentance. We are drawn into worship by holy fear. We are drawn into joy by sorrow. But why?

(more…)

Print this entry

“For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant”

For centuries in the Western Churches, the Passion Sunday Gospel was from John 8. 46-59. That passage highlighted two things: the identity of Jesus with the revelation of God to Moses as “I am Who I am” (Ex. 3.14); and the rejection of Jesus by the Jews. “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they took up stones to throw at him” (Jn. 8. 58,59). That conclusion of the chapter complements its beginning in the story of the woman taken in adultery which is a critique and an attack on Jesus through her. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (Jn. 8. 7). The images speak to the deeper realities of human sin. We are meant to see ourselves in the beginning and the end as those who condemn others and reject God; in short, as sinners. That ancient Gospel reading also complemented the Epistle reading from Hebrews to highlight the nature of Christ as the Mediator of the new covenant. As Mediator he is both God and Man.

The thematic idea that lies at the heart of the Passion is atonement, the idea, as Paul puts it in 2 Cor. 5, “that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (vs. 19). That idea continues in the Gospel reading which is the Matthean  account of the Gospel from Luke read on Quinquagesima Sunday about going up to Jerusalem. With Matthew the focus is on two things: our knowing and unknowing about what we truly seek and desire, on the one hand, and the sacrificial service of Christ who has come “not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mt. 20. 29), on the other hand.

Atonement belongs to the rich seam of reflection about human redemption. It concerns the relation of the divine and the human, of God and the world, of divine justice and mercy, of human sin and evil. Thus it belongs to the core elements of theological thinking. Passion Sunday inaugurates deep Lent which is our attempt to ponder the mystery of human redemption as divine love, the love which seeks the reconciliation of all things to God. But this can only even begin to make sense only if we take seriously the idea of sin which is really about taking seriously human agency and divine truth. The awareness of our separation from God belongs to a deeper reflection about the reality of the human experience in a world of uncertainty and confusion and of our own hearts in disarray. The radical nature of this separation is the infinity of sin, if I may put it this way. Sin creates an infinite barrier between us and God and between ourselves, our world and one another. By infinite I mean a chasm, an abyss, which we make and cannot unmake, a negative infinite.

(more…)

Print this entry