Sermon for March 28, 2021 – Passion/Palm Sunday

“Coming to terms with the awe-inspiring love of God for us in the incredible passion of Jesus Christ.”

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Holy God, we thank you for the gift of your presence in this time and place, and in each of the places that we are gathered this morning. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

You may have noticed, particularly if you’re not as familiar with this service each year, the not-so-subtle shift from the celebratory hosannas and palms to hearing about puppet trials, torture and the death of Jesus. You may almost be beginning to wonder if we have pre-empted Good Friday. Well let me assure you have we have not, but I’d like to explain it in this way.

Imagine if you are touring an art gallery and you don’t know a lot about art or about paintings in particular, but there’s one painting in the gallery that impresses you. You’re not really sure why – you just think it’s very good. But then the curator comes along and takes a few minutes to explain to you what makes this work a masterpiece – the little details with huge meaning, the ones that you had previously missed. Now, with that new information you look at the painting with much greater depth and you experience many more dimensions of what the artist is trying to say and communicate. Or perhaps you can recall a high school English class, back when you were in secondary school, and that day you were studying poetry. And you read a particular poem in the syllabus and - you like it -  but you’re kind of ready to move on to math or physical education. But the teacher insists on dissecting the poem, looking at its rhythm and meter and its use of imagery. And while you really don’t care if the poet skillfully utilized alliteration in the poem, when you read the poem again you are more fully grasped by what the poet is doing in that piece of work.

That is what we’re doing today with the passion gospel reading, so that when you do get to Good Friday, you can simply immerse yourself in God’s gift of the passion of Jesus Christ and let its power overtake you and sink to the depths of your being. So today we want to look at the details more closely, so we can appreciate them more fully on Good Friday.

Both the First Reading from Isaiah and Psalm 31 “set  up” the experience of Jesus’ abandonment by his supporters, his arrest and his torture, and his unflinching obedience to God through it all. We read in that first passage from Isaiah 50 – “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.” And then the psalmist continues some of this in Psalm 31, and stresses the same trust and obedience. He says, “But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord. I have said, “You are my God.”  My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies; and from those who persecute me. Make your face to shine upon your servant, and in your loving kindness save me.” So both of these set up the nature with which Jesus will also carry out this obedience to God.

In the Second Reading from Philippians, Paul moves forward from Jesus’ loving, selfless obedience to God and uses it as an example of the attitude that Christians are to have toward one another – letting God worry about our ego needs; or whether we’re getting what we deserve. And Paul expresses it this way, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

And now we turn to the Passion Gospel itself, from Mark.  I think it might be helpful for us to be aware, or be reminded, that the interpretation and the emphasis placed on Jesus’ arrest and execution, which theologians would say comes under the study of Christology, has been slightly differently interpreted throughout history. The very early Jewish Christians placed the emphasis on the notion of ‘sacrifice’ as being important, replacing the temple sacrifice with the living sacrifice of the Son of God. The ancient Gentile Christians stressed the victory of Christ over the worldly powers, and particularly oppressive Roman powers – and over death itself. Medieval Christians stressed the redemption from personal guilt and the forgiveness of sin. All of these, of course, are correct and faithful interpretations.

But now, what is important in a 21st century reading of Mark’s Gospel, because other Gospels emphasize different aspects of what Jesus has done. So first of all, Jesus is utterly abandoned by all human relationships in Mark’s account. At his arrest his disciples flee. In the verses just before today’s Gospel Reading, Peter, Jesus’s future leader and right hand man, denies even knowing Jesus three times! So Mark sets us up for some pitiful and gut-wrenching ironies. “Are you the king of the Jews?”, Pilate asks? And Jesus’ response does indicate ‘yes’, but no one takes it seriously. Pilate gives the crowd a choice about who he should release over the Passover from being jailed - Jesus or Barabbas, who is a murderer and a rebel. And, of course, the crowd chooses Barabbas. But do you know what his name means?  Barabbas means ‘son of the father’. The crowd choose a criminal over the real “Son of the Father.” Pilate continues to sarcastically refer to Jesus as ‘the King of the Jews’, and the crowd calls for this ‘king’ to be crucified – the harshest form of execution reserved for the lowest in society.  The soldiers mock him as being a king and ironically that’s exactly who he is. And on the cross everyone who witnesses his suffering and death, at least in Mark’s account, mock him – even the two criminals crucified with him.

What is happening to, and with, Jesus is continually misunderstood. Near his time of death, Jesus cries out, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And yet, when some of the bystanders heard it, they said, "Listen, he is calling for Elijah." Even at his most desolate hour, the people don’t get it. They don’t realize he’s quoting the first verse of Psalm 22.  Instead, they think he’s calling for Elijah.  It’s like a patient desperately ill in a hospital room in excruciating pain, calling for help and then those visiting her thinking that she wants something to eat! It’s that ludicrous.  And even the final words from the centurion, “Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was God's Son!" We typically interpret this as the words of one who is awestruck, and that could be. But it could also be the final sarcastic remark of one looking at what appears to be the epitome of “not-God’s Son” – a naked, bleeding corpse on a cross.

Now after we’ve gone through this wringer of empathy and biting irony we’re left with the huge question “why?” What is this?  Well fortunately Samuel Crossman, the author of the text of today’s Offertory hymn, “My Song is Love Unknown”, shared his response with us.  And together with John Ireland’s passionate tune, places the profound gift and truth deep within us.  So I invite you to take a look at it now.  It’s on page 9 in your service booklet. Reading verse one: “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me, love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. O who am I, that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh, and die?” Unknown love.  Just as Mark’s Gospel tells us nobody gets it - we are all ‘loveless toward him’. And the text tells us what it’s all about – that ‘they (we) might lovely be, for my Lord should take frail flesh and die.’ Verse two picks up the story that Paul describes in the Second Reading from Philippians, and Mark’s portrayal of no understanding. “All made strange and none the long-for Christ would know.” Verses three to five of the hymn basically rehearses the passion story as outlined in Mark’s Gospel. And then comes the climax in verse six. The author lays out the full purpose and effect of everything we have just witnessed. He expresses it this way, “Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine; never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine!”  Even if we don’t appreciate all the finer points of various christologies and soteriologies (that’s explaining how we’re saved) this is what we are meant to grasp and be grasped by. When we look at the cross, when we hear the story of Jesus’ passion, we are witnessing and experiencing the love of the Creator God for the whole creation, for all of humanity, and especially for you and me!  That is what counts right now. And not just the good, idealistic “you and me” – the people we wish we were.  But the real “you and me” – good and bad – good intentions and bad motivations and behaviour – the real person. This is who has been, is, and will be, by God, loved in Jesus Christ.

As Samuel Crossman so powerfully put it, “This is my friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend.” Amen.