Christ Church

“All the people hung upon his words”

The readings at Morning and Evening Prayer on Monday in Holy Week complement in wonderful ways the Eucharistic readings. We hang upon the words of Hosea, the great love-prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures. He bids us tonight to “take with you words and return to the Lord,” having reminded us this morning of God’s words to us in our disobedience and folly.

I am the Lord your God
From the land of Egypt;
You know no God but me,
And beside me there is no saviour.
It was I who knew you in the
Wilderness,
In the land of drought.

But in our prosperity, he says, we forget God. It is from Hosea that we have the lines from 1 Corinthians 15 used in the Burial Office about “Death being swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” But God does not forget us. In the awareness of our sins we learn the love of God. “Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them.” These passages contribute to the beginning of Christ’s farewell discourse in John’s Gospel (ch. 14) which is really about preparing the disciples for his passion & death, his resurrection and ascension; in short, the radical meaning of Christ’s going to the Father and about our learning the love of each for the other. The Passion teaches us the radical meaning of Christ as “the way, the truth and the life” through our being gathered into his love for the Father. That is the underlying principle of the Passion.

These office readings inform our understanding of “the beginning of the Passion according to St. Mark” framed by the broken alabaster box of ointment of spikenard poured out upon Christ’s head – a sign of love in repentance – and by the tears of Peter at his betrayal of Christ. The focus is on Christ in our midst bearing the faults and follies of our betrayals whether explicitly like Judas and Peter or through our weakness in not being able to watch even one hour with him in Gethsemane. The alabaster box that is broken open prepares us for the breaking of his heart and body on the Cross. This beginning of the Passion convicts us of the limitations and the outright betrayals of our love of God and one another but only to move us to contrition and tears of sorrow. “Whoever is wise, let him understand these things.”

“All the people hung upon his words”

Fr. David Curry
Monday in Holy Week
April 3rd, 2023

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“All the people hung upon his words”

It is the challenge of Holy Week and of our lives in faith. We are to hang upon the words of the one who hangs upon the cross for the salvation of the world. The Passion of Christ is all our interest. The Passion of Christ crucified is the fullest attestation of the Incarnation. He suffers for us in what he has from us in body and soul. Redemption is not a flight from the world or the body as if it were evil. It is the redemption of the world and of our humanity.

We confront ourselves in all of the contradictions that belong to sin and evil. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of one long liturgy that culminates in the Resurrection. It marks the beginning of the intensity of the Passion through the reading of all four accounts of the Passion. We are meant to hang upon every word; in short, to listen attentively and to find ourselves in the madness of crowds. Like the exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews, we are meant to learn from the greater exodus of the Son to the Father. The Passion teaches us “two vast, spacious things,” as the poet George Herbert puts it, namely, sin and love. Both go together. The paradox of the Passion is the paradox of the Christian faith. It is only through sin that we know love. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5.8). Only so can we learn what it means to be human, to know even as we are known in the all-embracing love of God for us. But only if we hang upon the words of Christ who hangs upon the cross in love for us and for our redemption.

Palm Sunday highlights the deep meaning of the Passion by revealing to us the contradictions of our humanity. We who cry out “Hosanna to the Son of David” in exaltation and praise then turn about and cry “crucify.” “Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified.” We are in this story. It is a powerful and necessary indictment of our humanity, of each of us in the folly of ourselves. For in one way or another we all have an incomplete and false understanding of ourselves whether in overstating our faults or our virtues. On the one hand, we are too much with ourselves, and on the other hand, quite mistaken about ourselves. We see but “in a glass darkly.”

To be aware of this is the beginning of our learning. It is, to put it another way, to know that we do not know, even about ourselves. But that is a beginning. That is to know something which impels the greater journey of learning through the greater wilderness of Christ’s Passion. The greater wilderness is the wilderness of human sin in all of its wildness and violence, its confusion and disarray. Holy Week confronts us with the fullest and most compelling picture of our disorder and disarray. For only so can we learn the greater good of God’s love for us.

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