Sunday of the Passion – Year B (RCL) 2009
Isaiah 50: 4 – 9a; Psalm 22: 1 – 11; Philippians 2: 5 – 11; Mark 15: 1 – 47
St. Stephen’s Epicsopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Isaiah 50: 4 – 9a; Psalm 22: 1 – 11; Philippians 2: 5 – 11; Mark 15: 1 – 47
St. Stephen’s Epicsopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, April 5, 2009
WHITE SMOKE – WE HAVE A KING
Let us pray: Suffering Jesus, as you entered Jerusalem, you did not look like the Messiah that we expected, bouncing on the back of a donkey. Saviour Jesus, when you stood before Pilate and the Roman inquisition, you did not sound like the Lord of Lords, as you hung on the hard wood of the cross you did not look like the King of Kings, promised of Isaiah. Sanctified Jesus, help us to see you, even when you do not look like the God we thought we wanted. Give us the ability to see you as the God you are, rather than the God we would have you be. Amen.
(SUNG) NOW WILL YOU TRY AND TELL US, YOU BEEN TOO LONG AT
SCHOOL, THAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT NEEDED, THAT POWER
DOES NOT RULE. THAT WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER, THAT
YOUNG MEN SHOULD NOT DIE? SIT DOWN YOUNG STRANGER,
I WAIT FOR YOUR REPLY.
THE ANSWER IS NOT EASY FOR SOULS ARE NOT REBORN
TO WEAR THE CROWN OF PEACE, YOU MUST WEAR THE
CROWN OF THORNS. IF JESUS HAD A REASON, I'M SURE HE
WOULD NOT TELL, WE TREATED HIM SO BADLY, HOW COULD
HE WISH US WELL?
So, we reach once again the Sunday of the Palm and the Passion. There is a dichotomy in our liturgical celebration on this Sunday which marks the beginning of our Holy Week. We start with shouts of adoration and acclamation – our “hosanna’s”. Palm Sunday will always be marked for me as the start of that truly special week in our Christian journey as we recall to our minds and hearts the stories and events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth and God’s incarnational presnece among all of humanity that has been created in that God’s image and likeness. The memory of Jesus’ triumphal ride into Jerusalem is inextricably linked to the memory of our place in God’s Kindom where the Gospel of the crucified suffering servant is lived out in ministry, mission and faithfullness. After those shouts of “hosanna” and “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” – come the shouts which we as a community recalled in the Author of Mark’s retelling of the final days in Jesus’ ministry – the shouts of “crucify him”; the demand from the maddening crowd that the saviour of the world be nailed to hardwood of the cross.
Our faith then is a faith of dichotomies. We struggle to understand the ministry and message of this Jesus of Nazareth who refused to be molded into the image that God’s chosen people demanded their Messiah be. As we recall the events of these last days of Jesus’ ministry we are faced, once again, with the vision of our God come among us – who refuses to act as the God we envision; and that can be downright frustrating. We have so many things that we would like this Jesus to do. We have so many agendas that we would like this Jesus to live out. We have so many “sides” that we would like this Jesus to be on. Simply and silently the suffering servant lives out the will of God, without question or complaint – without agenda or label – Jesus takes on all of our pain, all of our guilt and all of our fear and hands them back to God in the ultimate act of sacrifice which changed the nature of Creation.
We are in a world which wonders, as it has for centuries I’m sure, why God would choose to suffer. If our God is great and good – then why are we given the example of the God come among us who was forced or accepted torture, pain and death? In our feeble human attempts to know the mind of God, we demand a God that thinks and acts and feels as we do. We are given just that God in the person of Jesus the Christ and then we want to question why God would choose suffering and death as the path to freedom from pain and eternal life! Yes, we want our cake and we want to be able to feast at the desert table.
(SUNG) THE ANSWER IS NOT EASY FOR SOULS ARE NOT REBORN
TO WEAR THE CROWN OF PEACE, YOU MUST WEAR THE
CROWN OF THORNS. IF JESUS HAD A REASON, I'M SURE HE
WOULD NOT TELL, WE TREATED HIM SO BADLY, HOW COULD
HE WISH US WELL?
Here we have this Jesus whom the crowds would love to proclaim as their King, and who instead insists that his Kindom is not of this world. This is the Jesus who so frustrates the authorities both religious and political of that time that they feel no other choice is available to them but crucifixion and death. The only way to silence this madman who speaks of love and forgiveness in the face of hate and judgement is to resort to the violence which the mob and its leaders demand. The often difficult part for me in this story is that I am the mob – I am the voice of crowd which demands the death of the prince of Peace whose birth and promise seems so short a time ago. This is the dichotomy of this day. This is the juxtaposition of palm and passion, of hosanna and hanging on a cross. This is the journey from Lent through to Easter the drama of which begins to unfold in earnest at the beginning of this Holy Week.
We will gather several more times in this week to live out the story of our Saviour who took upon God’s nature the fraility of our human expereince. We will journey with this Jesus who will gather in an upper room to share with those who are called to follow the passover feast which will feed forever. We will hear the cries of the crowd go from praise and adoration to death and destruction. As we once again take the journey from the gates of the Holy city to the place of the skull (called Golgotha) we ponder the folly of the cross which leads to our Easter celebration. The Church in her liturgy and ritual has mapped this way for us to live more deeply and fully into the events of the life, death and ressurection of Jesus the Christ, and I invite each of us to use this time to ponder in our own hearts the reality of the paschal mystery. What does the reliving of these events which happened some two thousand years ago mean for those of us who believe and for those of us who doubt? Thousands upon thousands of words on paper have been written to help explain the mysteries of this week. Several of us have been meeting in the weeks of Lent to explore those last days in the context of Marcus Borg and Dom Crossen’s insights about the powerful religious and political forces which pulled upon Jesus and the disciples during the events from the triumphal entry on the back of a simple beast of burden. The passion of the non-violent preacher of peace facing the reality of the violent Roman power of the time portrays a dichotomy which Jesus lived out in a profound and prophetic way. Those of us who would follow the example that this Jesus calls us to; struggle anew to understand the events of this week which speak to our minds and our hearts of the utlimate love of God for the creation and the created.
We hear the passion story retold this year in the account from the Author of Mark’s gospel, or good news. Most scholars believe that this is the first of the Gospel retellings of the final week in Jesus’ public life and ministry. The author’s of the subsequent Gospel retellings will rely on this version to inform their interpretations, and so it is with particular interest and enthusiasim that we listen and relive what Mark’s community lived and heard of the struggles and betrayals which marked the final days of the Messiah’s journey from Jerusalem to Calvary. In these stories and events we have found the hope and healing which Jesus offers by accepting the will of God and living out the destiny of humanity which would change death and destruciton to hope and resurrection.
(SUNG) THE ANSWER IS NOT EASY FOR SOULS ARE NOT REBORN
TO WEAR THE CROWN OF PEACE, YOU MUST WEAR THE
CROWN OF THORNS. IF JESUS HAD A REASON, I'M SURE HE
WOULD NOT TELL, WE TREATED HIM SO BADLY, HOW COULD
HE WISH US WELL?
The “passion” in Passion Sunday is understood to be taken from its Roman Catholic or perhaps more broad Christian understanding its latin root from the noun “passio” which means suffering. On this “suffering” Sunday, we can perhaps look deeper into the meaning of passion and see that it is this Sunday when we as a community of faith examine the “passion” of Jesus in terms of its suffering yes, but also in terms of its driving force for justice and righteousness which we also understand to be a meaning for “passion”. Jesus’ passion in the final week of public ministry and witness continued to be this total focus upon love and non violence in the face of hatred and institutional violence directed at him. If that is the lesson which we are able to discern and follow as disciples then evil is turned to good and pain is turned to passion.
We wanted Jesus to come on a war horse – and instead we got a donkey. We wanted Jesus to go up to the captiol and fix the political problems, and instead we get the model of going into the desert to reflect and repent. We wanted this Jesus to get organized, get the forces mobilized and get the revolution going; and instead this Jesus gathered in an upper room with friends and broke bread and shared a common cup and told us to do the same in remembrance. We wanted this Jesus to use the power of prophetic voice to shout down the powers of injustice and oppression and instead we got three hours of hanging silence on a cross…and the final words “forgive them for they know not what they do”, and “into your hands I commend my spirit.” This is the dichotomy of the Passion and the Palm of this Sunday. As we wave our branches in praise we wave our fists in anger and this God loves us all the same; for “God so loved the world.”
Amen.
THE ANSWER IS NOT EASY FOR SOULS ARE NOT REBORN
TO WEAR THE CROWN OF PEACE, YOU MUST WEAR THE
CROWN OF THORNS. IF JESUS HAD A REASON, I'M SURE HE
WOULD NOT TELL, WE TREATED HIM SO BADLY, HOW COULD
HE WISH US WELL?
So, we reach once again the Sunday of the Palm and the Passion. There is a dichotomy in our liturgical celebration on this Sunday which marks the beginning of our Holy Week. We start with shouts of adoration and acclamation – our “hosanna’s”. Palm Sunday will always be marked for me as the start of that truly special week in our Christian journey as we recall to our minds and hearts the stories and events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth and God’s incarnational presnece among all of humanity that has been created in that God’s image and likeness. The memory of Jesus’ triumphal ride into Jerusalem is inextricably linked to the memory of our place in God’s Kindom where the Gospel of the crucified suffering servant is lived out in ministry, mission and faithfullness. After those shouts of “hosanna” and “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” – come the shouts which we as a community recalled in the Author of Mark’s retelling of the final days in Jesus’ ministry – the shouts of “crucify him”; the demand from the maddening crowd that the saviour of the world be nailed to hardwood of the cross.
Our faith then is a faith of dichotomies. We struggle to understand the ministry and message of this Jesus of Nazareth who refused to be molded into the image that God’s chosen people demanded their Messiah be. As we recall the events of these last days of Jesus’ ministry we are faced, once again, with the vision of our God come among us – who refuses to act as the God we envision; and that can be downright frustrating. We have so many things that we would like this Jesus to do. We have so many agendas that we would like this Jesus to live out. We have so many “sides” that we would like this Jesus to be on. Simply and silently the suffering servant lives out the will of God, without question or complaint – without agenda or label – Jesus takes on all of our pain, all of our guilt and all of our fear and hands them back to God in the ultimate act of sacrifice which changed the nature of Creation.
We are in a world which wonders, as it has for centuries I’m sure, why God would choose to suffer. If our God is great and good – then why are we given the example of the God come among us who was forced or accepted torture, pain and death? In our feeble human attempts to know the mind of God, we demand a God that thinks and acts and feels as we do. We are given just that God in the person of Jesus the Christ and then we want to question why God would choose suffering and death as the path to freedom from pain and eternal life! Yes, we want our cake and we want to be able to feast at the desert table.
(SUNG) THE ANSWER IS NOT EASY FOR SOULS ARE NOT REBORN
TO WEAR THE CROWN OF PEACE, YOU MUST WEAR THE
CROWN OF THORNS. IF JESUS HAD A REASON, I'M SURE HE
WOULD NOT TELL, WE TREATED HIM SO BADLY, HOW COULD
HE WISH US WELL?
Here we have this Jesus whom the crowds would love to proclaim as their King, and who instead insists that his Kindom is not of this world. This is the Jesus who so frustrates the authorities both religious and political of that time that they feel no other choice is available to them but crucifixion and death. The only way to silence this madman who speaks of love and forgiveness in the face of hate and judgement is to resort to the violence which the mob and its leaders demand. The often difficult part for me in this story is that I am the mob – I am the voice of crowd which demands the death of the prince of Peace whose birth and promise seems so short a time ago. This is the dichotomy of this day. This is the juxtaposition of palm and passion, of hosanna and hanging on a cross. This is the journey from Lent through to Easter the drama of which begins to unfold in earnest at the beginning of this Holy Week.
We will gather several more times in this week to live out the story of our Saviour who took upon God’s nature the fraility of our human expereince. We will journey with this Jesus who will gather in an upper room to share with those who are called to follow the passover feast which will feed forever. We will hear the cries of the crowd go from praise and adoration to death and destruction. As we once again take the journey from the gates of the Holy city to the place of the skull (called Golgotha) we ponder the folly of the cross which leads to our Easter celebration. The Church in her liturgy and ritual has mapped this way for us to live more deeply and fully into the events of the life, death and ressurection of Jesus the Christ, and I invite each of us to use this time to ponder in our own hearts the reality of the paschal mystery. What does the reliving of these events which happened some two thousand years ago mean for those of us who believe and for those of us who doubt? Thousands upon thousands of words on paper have been written to help explain the mysteries of this week. Several of us have been meeting in the weeks of Lent to explore those last days in the context of Marcus Borg and Dom Crossen’s insights about the powerful religious and political forces which pulled upon Jesus and the disciples during the events from the triumphal entry on the back of a simple beast of burden. The passion of the non-violent preacher of peace facing the reality of the violent Roman power of the time portrays a dichotomy which Jesus lived out in a profound and prophetic way. Those of us who would follow the example that this Jesus calls us to; struggle anew to understand the events of this week which speak to our minds and our hearts of the utlimate love of God for the creation and the created.
We hear the passion story retold this year in the account from the Author of Mark’s gospel, or good news. Most scholars believe that this is the first of the Gospel retellings of the final week in Jesus’ public life and ministry. The author’s of the subsequent Gospel retellings will rely on this version to inform their interpretations, and so it is with particular interest and enthusiasim that we listen and relive what Mark’s community lived and heard of the struggles and betrayals which marked the final days of the Messiah’s journey from Jerusalem to Calvary. In these stories and events we have found the hope and healing which Jesus offers by accepting the will of God and living out the destiny of humanity which would change death and destruciton to hope and resurrection.
(SUNG) THE ANSWER IS NOT EASY FOR SOULS ARE NOT REBORN
TO WEAR THE CROWN OF PEACE, YOU MUST WEAR THE
CROWN OF THORNS. IF JESUS HAD A REASON, I'M SURE HE
WOULD NOT TELL, WE TREATED HIM SO BADLY, HOW COULD
HE WISH US WELL?
The “passion” in Passion Sunday is understood to be taken from its Roman Catholic or perhaps more broad Christian understanding its latin root from the noun “passio” which means suffering. On this “suffering” Sunday, we can perhaps look deeper into the meaning of passion and see that it is this Sunday when we as a community of faith examine the “passion” of Jesus in terms of its suffering yes, but also in terms of its driving force for justice and righteousness which we also understand to be a meaning for “passion”. Jesus’ passion in the final week of public ministry and witness continued to be this total focus upon love and non violence in the face of hatred and institutional violence directed at him. If that is the lesson which we are able to discern and follow as disciples then evil is turned to good and pain is turned to passion.
We wanted Jesus to come on a war horse – and instead we got a donkey. We wanted Jesus to go up to the captiol and fix the political problems, and instead we get the model of going into the desert to reflect and repent. We wanted this Jesus to get organized, get the forces mobilized and get the revolution going; and instead this Jesus gathered in an upper room with friends and broke bread and shared a common cup and told us to do the same in remembrance. We wanted this Jesus to use the power of prophetic voice to shout down the powers of injustice and oppression and instead we got three hours of hanging silence on a cross…and the final words “forgive them for they know not what they do”, and “into your hands I commend my spirit.” This is the dichotomy of the Passion and the Palm of this Sunday. As we wave our branches in praise we wave our fists in anger and this God loves us all the same; for “God so loved the world.”
Amen.
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