{"id":26099,"date":"2026-03-26T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=26099"},"modified":"2026-03-25T11:13:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T10:13:46","slug":"matthew-261-2766","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/matthew-261-2766\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 26:1\u201327:66"},"content":{"rendered":"

TRULY, THIS WAS THE SON OF GOD<\/strong> | Palm \/ Passion Sunday <\/strong> | 29.03.2026 | Matthew 26:1\u201327:66 | Paul Bieber<\/strong> |<\/h3>\n

TRULY, THIS WAS THE SON OF GOD<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly, this was the Son of God,\u201d says the centurion who commanded the execution party. But how can he say that? He probably didn\u2019t witness the betrayal and abandonment of Jesus, but he did see him scourged, struck, spat upon and nailed to the cross; he heard Jesus\u2019 cry of dereliction and watched him die. Somehow, out of all this comes his confession of who Jesus is.<\/p>\n

It would be far easier to understand if that confession of Jesus\u2019 divine Sonship came a little earlier in today\u2019s Liturgy. Palm Sunday \u2014 Passion Sunday is a day of contrasts, of glory and insult, apparent victory that doesn\u2019t last and apparent defeat . . . that waits until next Sunday for vindication. God\u2019s faithful servant comes in the name of the Lord and humbles himself, obedient to the will of the One who sent him.<\/p>\n

In this Liturgy we descend with Jesus from the triumphal procession punctuated with \u201chosanna,\u201d the cry of petition and praise, to the loneliness and anguish of Gethsemane, as Jesus wrestles with his destiny\u2014for our sake. After singing psalms with his disciples, Jesus prays alone, as on so many previous nights. Peter, James, and John are close by, as at the Transfiguration. But on this night they witness not glory but anguish\u2014to the extent to which they can stay awake.<\/p>\n

The disciples have been summoned to watch with Jesus as he experiences the loneliness and anguish of the human condition. In Jesus\u2019 prayer, the whole drama of our redemption is made present. In the face of the power of death, of the whole flood of evil, Jesus offers himself completely in radical acceptance of the Father\u2019s will. The Son\u2019s whole being is expressed in his \u201cnot my will, but yours.\u201d In coming to this attunement with the divine will, Jesus\u2019 human will is fulfilled, not taken away. His obedience unto death becomes the conquest of death itself.<\/p>\n

We, too, come to places in our experience when we are crushed under the difficulties of life. Whether we are wrestling with our own destinies or placed in a position where all we can do is watch another\u2019s anguish, we find that our own resources are woefully insufficient. Or what we have done or left undone is huge part of the problem. At Gethsemane, Jesus takes all of this on himself. It is at this point in Bach\u2019s Passion According to St. Matthew that he inserts the chorale which includes the words, \u201cAlas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.\u201d Our rejection of the gospel\u2014even though we may not have meant to do that\u2014brought Jesus to the cross, to die our death.<\/p>\n

The cross is the most radical expression of God\u2019s unconditional love. Jesus offers himself despite all rejection, taking our \u201cno\u201d upon himself and drawing it into his \u201cyes.\u201d Despite betrayal, rejection, and all the human cruelty he endures\u2014or because<\/em> of all these things\u2014Jesus brings the world\u2019s anguished cry at God\u2019s absence before the heart of God himself in his cry of abandonment. He identifies himself with all who suffer in the darkness of God\u2019s silence. He takes their cry, their anguish, all their helplessness (all our<\/em> helplessness) upon himself and in doing so transforms it.<\/p>\n

What would it mean for us to let the same mind be in us? Brought figuratively on this day to the foot of the cross we are asked whether we believe that his dying transforms our living. How can we know what his dying means? He has left us his Testament. In this we see the center of Christianity; we, too, can identify the one who dies this way as the Son of God.<\/p>\n

Not only the Son\u2019s enfleshment, but his incarnate obedience identifies him. In his self-giving, his sacrifice, he draws us to himself and wipes away our disobedience with his love even to death. Communion with him in his Supper draws us into the perfect worship he offers. Receiving him, our broken lives have new value as he draws our brokenness and insufficiency into his living sacrifice through the power of his holiness.<\/p>\n

We enter into the mysteries of this great and holy week as people transformed by Gethsemane, the cross, and the upper room. Taken up into Jesus\u2019 obedience as we hear once again the story of his passion, we who once were dead now live because of the mystery of his cross and rising. We participate in that mystery when we come to his table, empowered by the Spirit to live out in Jesus Christ the gospel we had rejected. Truly, the One we encounter at the cross and the holy table is the Son of God.<\/p>\n

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/p>\n

\n

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber, STS
\nE-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net<\/a>
\nRetired Lutheran Pastor
\nSan Diego, California, USA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TRULY, THIS WAS THE SON OF GOD | Palm \/ Passion Sunday | 29.03.2026 | Matthew 26:1\u201327:66 | Paul Bieber | TRULY, THIS WAS THE SON OF GOD Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. \u201cTruly, this was the Son of God,\u201d says the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,727,157,853,108,110,864,301,349,3,699,224,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-26099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-archiv","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-26-chapter-26","category-kapitel-27-chapter-27","category-kasus","category-nt","category-palmsonntag","category-paul-bieber","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26102,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26099\/revisions\/26102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26099"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=26099"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=26099"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=26099"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=26099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}