Why,
of all the Sundays of the year, is this the one when we do this long dramatic
reading of the gospel? Why is this the
one where the congregation enacts the parts?
It’s not for educational purposes.
This is not a historical re-enactment, as there are all kinds of
historical problems with the passion gospels.
For one thing, the different versions don’t agree about the details of
what happened. For another, the authors obviously
shaped their telling of these events to minimize the fault of the Romans and accentuate
the guilt of the Jews; and the problems go on from there. We also don’t do this for entertainment. With apologies to everyone who read a part—please,
don’t misunderstand me, you were terrific—this wasn’t great theater.
But
there is a reason for doing it, and I’ve been thinking about it again this
year, it has struck me that it must be because this story is the climax of each
one of the gospels, and in each case it drives home the gospel’s central
message—that we are involved. All of us are
responsible. Now there’s been a tendency
over the years for the church to give that responsibility a particular color,
the color of guilt. It has insisted that
just as the Jews are guilty, we are too.
This happened to Jesus, the thinking goes, because you pulled your
little sister’s hair, and now don’t you feel terrible? But, while I’m not saying that we should
rule out guilt entirely as one response to this story, I’m not sure it is the
only or even the best one. And I don’t
think it’s the one that Jesus had in mind.
I
imagine Jesus wanted us to be responsible, not out of guilt, but out of
faith. He wanted us to take
responsibility the way that he did, by playing the unique part that each of us
has to play, that part that only we can
play in the great unfolding drama of God’s salvation of the world. And taking responsibility like that is something
you can only teach by example. So in the
final week of Jesus’ life, he didn’t just sit teaching in the temple, taking on
all comers and refuting his opponents with his wisdom and his wit. Because when your mission is to completely deconstruct
the way that people understand holiness and power, and give them a radical new
vision of God, it’s not enough to make convincing arguments.
He also performed a number of symbolically-potent
acts, to demonstrate what he was talking about in an unforgettable way. He made gestures that people could
re-experience again and again until they began to re-imagine themselves and the
world from his vantage point, to understand what he was up to, and be inspired
to play their part in carrying on his work.
So the church doesn’t just remember those events—like the parade with
the waving palms and the king riding through the gates on a donkey, or the
bread and wine and the washing of feet at the supper, or the vigil in the
garden, or the way that leads through the streets of the city to the cross—it
also participates in them. It makes these
deeds of Jesus central to its teaching and practice, so that the power of his acts,
and his imagination, could live in us and set us free.
The
drama in the story pivots around the question of who Jesus is—is he the
Messiah? Is he the King of Israel? Jesus’ knows that the only true answer he can
give to those questions is to do the will of God. Deeds will give the answer, and in the process
completely redefine the terms of the question. I don’t think Jesus ever intended to become
king of Israel in the political sense.
He didn’t call himself “Messiah” and rally people around his claim to
the throne. He didn’t mobilize the crowds
to storm the temple by force. And yet I
do think he saw himself as having a unique role to play. He felt called to go to Jerusalem and enter
the city in the way that he did, called to go to the temple, and on his own
authority to issue a challenge to the rulers of Israel. He confronted them with a radical alternative
vision of what it meant to be the people of God, and he did not pretend that his
was just another opinion, compatible with theirs.
In
fact, it was a vision that was his and his alone, or only his and God’s. Even his closest disciples didn’t get it. The crowd in the streets certainly didn’t—they
just wanted to be a part of something big, popular, and unstoppable. As for Pilate and the Chief Priests and
scribes, all they knew, or wanted to know, was that anyone who put forward an
idea of how the world ought to be that was different from theirs, let alone
taught it to others and inspired them with its truth and power, was an
existential threat. He had to be
eliminated—swiftly, efficiently, publicly, and as brutally as possible, as a
warning to others.
So
Jesus went alone. One man who, alone of
all the people, understood God’s will for the nation. That knowledge could not be taken from him by
betraying him, mocking him, spitting in his face, scourging him, or nailing him
to a cross, because it came to him from God.
That is why, after spending the entire Gospel of Mark telling everyone to
keep it a secret, it is at the moment when he stands, a prisoner, before the one
man who alone may enter the Holy of Holies and represent Israel before God, and
the High Priest asks him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus finally
says “I am.” It is here that it is
unmistakably clear that only one of these two men has any idea what that really
means.
Jesus
is king of Israel because he has consented to be Israel: Israel suffering under the humiliation of foriegn
idolatry and oppression; Israel sold out by a cynical, self-serving elite;
Israel beset by false messiahs preaching violence and hate; Israel abandoned
and sentenced to death, yet still crying out for justice to her God. Jesus takes personal responsibility, in this hopeless
situation, for hope: hope the moral strength to bear witness to the truth in
love; hope in the ultimate victory of God over evil and injustice; hope that
the smallest act of a single person, done with integrity, freedom, and loving
obedience to God, has more power to change the world than an entire nation of fearful
men who are just following orders. Jesus
is powerful because you don’t have to be powerful to do what he does. You only need faith, and hope, and love.
Not that you have to go riding into Jerusalem
at the head of crowd, or hang upon a cross.
But you can’t know ahead of time, one you start on the way of Jesus, exactly
where it’s going to take you. And even
in our everyday, comfortable, middle-class American lives, in our relationships
with spouses, and parents, and friends, in our roles as workers, as church
members, and as citizens, there are times when we don’t say what needs to be
said. There are times we are passive
when we know we have to act. We don’t
ask for what we need, or stand up for what is true, because we’re afraid to be
rejected or abused, and because we doubt ourselves. We doubt our worth, and whether we deserve
what we’re asking for. We doubt our own
authority to know what we know. And we
doubt we have the power to make a difference.
But
the gospel of the passion of Jesus invites us to speak up, to act out, for his sake. He is worthy, even if we are not. His words are true, even if ours are
not. His is the power and authority of
the Christ, our true king and great High Priest, and he shares his office with everyone
who walks the way of his humanity. We are
citizens of his kingdom, not because of any particular group we belong to, or
belief we espouse, or rule of life we follow, but by faith in the grace of God.
The
grace of that faith is the strength, the patience, the willingness to play the
part that is ours alone, that no one else can play for us. Jesus put that faith on public display for us
on the cross, and so we dedicate our effort, our suffering, our gifts, and our
achievements to the merit of his unsurpassable self-offering. We honor him as Christ and Lord, because that
is the role God chose him for, and his faithfulness in playing it out, all the
way to end, is our inspiration and our goal.