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Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion, 03/29/2015

FINDING OURSELVES IN THE STORY
Sermon on Mark 14:1-15:47 (RCL), by David Zersen

This is one of those Sunday in which the optional reading of the entire passion history is so lengthy that worship leaders try to find a way to make the experience more acceptable to the reader. Sometime a liturgy is used involving actors and the whole congregation in reading the story so as to get everyone involved and avoid the need for a sermon. This is especially the case if a liturgy has already preceded the service involving the congregation in a palm-waving ritual as they approach the sanctuary singing “hosanna.” This is a good Sunday for drama because the events of Holy Week follow, surely the most profound and impactful moments in the Christian year. However dramatic the actions are, with palm waving, Seder participation, imposition of ashes, lighting of a Holy Saturday fire, etc., it’s all too easy to miss the real point in the actions and activities of Holy Week. Over the course of centuries in many different cultures, misguided meanings have involved everything from blowing up the Judas piñata in Mexican parades to carrying and being affixed to a cross in Spanish celebrations to rioting against the Jews in medieval remembrances. The real meaning can escape us because there are so many mini-stories in Holy Week bidding for our attention. It can also be lost to us simply because we are looking outward instead of inward and failing to ask ourselves where we are in the story.

Some think that the problem results from the church’s decision to read the many-faceted passion history on this Sunday instead of sticking with the basic Palm Sunday lesson. Others felt that when worshippers only attended the big Sunday celebrations on Palm Sunday and Easter, they never were exposed to the meaning of those events implicit in the stories of the Last Supper, the betrayal, the mock trials and the crucifixion. Celebrating Easter without having experienced the drama of Holy Week would be like attending a Golden Anniversary celebration for a couple you don’t even know. The meaning at the heart of the matter is missing. In any event, the annual reading of the entire passion history on this Sixth Sunday in Lent does at least two things for us: it summarizes the events of the week ahead of us and it gives us once again an opportunity to find our place in the story.

Getting the story straight

It may seem a simple matter, but for many the details of the story in Holy Week are vague. I used to make it a practice for my confirmands to rank in proper order the events of the Week on a test. Even though we had covered the material in class, it was surprising how many didn’t know if the crucifixion came before the betrayal or the Last Supper before the Palm Sunday procession. Why should such details be important to anyone? 

There are many examples in our society from which an answer could be given. Defendants of gun-carry laws in the United States love to point to the wording of the Second Amendment of the Constitution as the justification for their reasoning. Recently in tak ing apart a vacuum cleaner in order to install a broken belt I had to remember which part went where and which screws went in which holes. Last night on “Night Shift”, in the middle of a cardiac operation, it was discovered that a piece of a knife blade had been left in the body cavity and procedures had to be followed to get it out without rupturing the heart muscle. There are certain basic processes, events and understandings that are necessary in order for participants and practitioners to understand the whole picture. So it is with the passion story. If you don’t understand the progression of events in the story, the meaning is lost. More importantly, perhaps, if you don’t understand your own place in the story, you will miss the point of the narrative.

The problem with “us” and “them” in any story

Given our human nature, it is probably true that we tend to focus attention in stories on others rather than on ourselves. If I’m reading a story to children, it’s easy for the listener to understand why the stranger in the village is probably guilty of theft, especially when a girl claims that she saw him take the missing watch. What the child doesn’t understand, however, is that it’s all too easy to condemn people we don’t know or understand, especially if the girl in the story is lying. The listeners forget, without some interpretation, that they also sometimes lie, and that they also sometimes blame people when they are afraid to take responsibility for their own actions.

This is exactly what happens in the passion story and it’s also why it’s hard for us to find our place in the story. As in the game known as “Clue”, in which it’s the player’s job to guess whether the butler killed someone with a candlestick, we make it a mental exercise to decide who is really guilty in the betrayal, capture, trial, condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus. Was it Judas with his information to the Jewish authorities, Pilate with his need to appease the crowds, Herod with his unwillingness to oppose his critics, Caiaphas with his need to be seen as a leader, or Peter and the disciples with their cowardice in the face of accusation? The choices are interesting, but they all point in the wrong the direction.

In a church that my wife and I regularly attend in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the largest Tiffany stained glass window ever made always catches my attention, especially when the light is coming from the East. Christ is entering the Preaetorium to be tried by Pilate. Tiffany chose to have him enter majestically, in a white robe, the focal point of the crowd thronging from all sides. Hundreds of bodies and faces look toward Jesus, some with curses on their lips, some with fear and others with awe. “Where am I in this picture,” I often ask myself. It is a fair question for us to ask ourselves about the crowds in the passion story.

Why is this question so important? Because there is something about our human nature we need to understand. It is something that is happening with us and people like ourselves in the world all around us but we don’t really pay attention to it. If a controversial incident occurs, people take sides, and we join the crowd in condemnation, based on our preferences. In the recent Netanyahu election, when Jewish voters were encouraged to get to the polls because the Arabs were voting in droves, U.S. Republicans tended to lambast Obama for pointing this out and Democrats lambasted the Republicans. Americans took sides, mostly by following a crowd, whether it was a Republican or a Democratic one. This is not a political observation, but a sociological one. When Paula Dean was accused for using racial language, the forums on the internet raged in two crowds, for and against. We love to take sides, convinced that we are very good at knowing who is right and who is wrong. There is a reason for this. Our human nature makes us quick to determine fault, to decide who must pay. We like to be with the accusing crowds because it makes us feel that if others are in the wrong, we are surely in the right.

This need to seek a scapegoat is a tricky business when it comes to the passion history. Currently, it very faddish to say that the Jews as a whole were surely not at fault (that would be anti-Semitic), so attempts are made to show that only Roman law could have made appropriate accusations and punishments. However, this is to miss point of the story. The real question is not whether the accusers were Jews or Romans, Norwegians or Estonians, but “Where were you in that story on that day and where was I?”

Because of who you and I are as humans, it would have been easy for us to join with any crowd in finding a scapegoat for the disturbances in the society of the day encouraged by followers of Jesus. And when Muslims in Kabul recently stoned a woman to death because she was accused of attempting to burn a Koran, those were not just Afghans who were looking for a scapegoat. Any humans could have fallen into that trap. And when police in New York recently tightened their grip on an asthmatic black man who had been caught in one too many petty crimes, those were not just members of an angry crowd called “New York’s finest.” Any humans could have been in that crowd.

The challenge with failing to read the passion story on the Sixth Sunday in Lent is not that we might miss out on learning how badly Jesus had to suffer for us (as Mel Gibson portrayed it in “The Passion of the Christ”). The challenge lies in failing to discover what we would do to Jesus, even today. In the passion story we are encouraged to find ourselves in the many crowds who take negative stands against others in social situations, in anonymous internet forums, in cheap jokes and even in voting against people for the wrong reasons. We feel comfortable in knowing that there are scapegoats in our society who can take the blame which should be ours, or in which we should take some part.

In fact, we may even feel comfortable in knowing that Jesus can be our scapegoat, the one who hears our vituperative remarks against others, who knows we secretly blame members in our family and circle of friends for which we find it difficult to assume responsibility. Do you remember what happened in the passion story—as Jesus was accosted, accused, punished and killed? As the wonderful Spiritual put it, “He never said a mumblin’ word!” He did not fight back. He had no need to blame others and to seek fault with those who used him as their scapegoat—who, in fact, willingly accepted the role of scapegoat.

And it is God who in the final words at the cross, “It is finished,” is saying to those gathered in crowds in Holy Week, “There is no need for this kind of scapegoating ever to happen again.” In other words, it is time for us to learn from Jesus and his non-violent ways. When he hear people say things, our first reaction need not be a negative response taken from that crowd to which we too easily identify. When we have been hurt by words or deeds, as Christians we are called to follow Jesus’s example and not retaliate, seek vengeance, cause physical or emotional harm. As Christians, we learned to recite with Luther’s explanation to the Eighth Commandment, we should not “deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.” This is the new being in Christ who can enter Holy Week, find himself and herself in the crowd, consider the negative reactions that lead to defaming and crucifying others, and come away knowing that new possibilities await him or her.

The lengthy outline of the passion history on this Sixth Sunday in Lent encourages all of us to find ourselves in this story and to ask that new insights about our human nature and the new possibilities God gives us in Jesus may lead to live a new life.

In essence, we are praying today that in this Holy Week before we may discover the destructive tendencies within us which need to be crucified so that on Easter Sunday we may claim the power that gives us new possibilities in a resurrected life.