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The Storm
Before the Calm
by the Rev. Rich Smith
Palm Sunday, April 1, 2007
Luke 23:32-38, 44-49
For my own times of study and reflection over these
past few weeks of Lent, I have been reading the recent book by Marcus
Borg and John Dominic Crossan, THE LAST WEEK: A Day-by-Day Account of
Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem. When my wife observed this she
commented, “How exciting is that? Don’t you already know how it will
turn out?”
Well, of course we do! Those of us who have been in the church most of
our lives have heard the stories of the events of Holy Week almost as
much as we have heard the Christmas stories. We know that Palm Sunday
turned into Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and then Easter. What we
usually forget is that there is much more to this week, that these
stories take up to one third of the Gospel pages, depending on which
Gospel you read. We also do what we tend to do with the Christmas
stories, that is, in our minds we mesh the four different and unique
accounts into one. We even do this liturgically – for example, we
recall the “Seven Last Words” from the cross, the seven times Jesus
spoke during those agonizing hours. The trouble is, you have to put the
Gospels together to come up with seven, as any one has no more than
three: three in Luke, three in John, and one that is in Matthew and
Mark.
But even more seriously, the Passion story is one that we really don’t
pay much attention to at all. Good Friday is no longer a very strong
tradition in this country, especially among us congregationalist types,
as opposed to what Alejandro tells me is the custom in Mexico, where
everything stops for the day and the people gather to listen to the
story in church and re-enact it in the streets. We do observe Maundy
Thursday, when Jesus gathered his disciples for a last supper together,
took them to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray and await his betrayal
and arrest. But even that service is not heavily attended, and many of
us go from the triumph of the Palm Sunday parade to the even greater
triumph of the Easter parade a week later, missing all that lies
between.
Borg and Crossan remind us that the Easter parade really makes no sense
without first going through the events of the final week, all of them,
which as I said, take up to one third of the Gospel narratives. In
their book, they use Mark’s gospel to illustrate this, for it is not
only the earliest of the four – closest to actual history – it quite
nicely divides the week up into its days. And it’s really quite amazing
to me to realize how many of the events of Jesus’s life are set in that
last week.
Just to summarize:
On Palm Sunday Jesus enters Jerusalem with a parade, riding a donkey,
hailed with hosannas and palm branches, a parody, really, of another
parade that was going on at the other end of town. Pilate, you see, was
entering in a full blown military procession, so that he would be there
to keep watch over the Passover, in a surge that would leave no room
for doubt who was in charge, with all the pomp and circumstance of
imperial power. And it is the contrast between these two parades – the
one representing the kingdoms of earth and the other the kingdom of God
– that is the lense through which all the events of holy week must be
seen. For Jesus came to Jerusalem to challenge the powers of Rome, and
it was this conflict that led to his death.
Monday - Jesus curses a fig tree for not providing fruit to satisfy his
hunger, kind of odd since figs were not in season at the time, but
symbolic of what’s in store for those who do not bear fruit themselves.
He then, in a famous scene, goes to the temple and drives out the
merchants, those who collaborated with the Roman authorities in
collecting their tribute. It was this activity that polluted the temple
– not simply money changing hands or commerce taking place, but
commerce on behalf of the imperial powers. Once again - conflict!
Tuesday is the busiest day of the week, further highlighting Jesus’s
long running conflict with the temple authorities, and he spends a lot
of time teaching. There is the parable of the vineyard, the question
about paying taxes to Caesar, a question from the Sadducees about
whether marriages on earth are valid in heaven, the Great Commandment
(love God with all your heart and strength and mind, and your neighbor
as yourself); a warning to beware of the scribes, the story of the
widow’s offering (the one whose giving of two copper coins was greater
than that of all the rich folks), a prediction of temple’s destruction,
and finally, descriptions of the “last days.”
On Wednesday there is discussion of the need for a traitor. Then the
woman with the alabaster jar, who bathes Jesus in expensive perfume,
and Judas’ objections (which we heard about last week), setting up what
was to come the next night.
Thursday is known as Maundy Thursday, from the Latin “Mandatum” or
commandment. That’s because in John’s Gospel this is the day where he
gives the teaching to “love one another as I have loved you.” The day
revolves around the passover meal, it’s preparation and how it became
what we commonly call the “last supper, ” where Jesus shared the bread
and wine and called them his body and blood. Whether or not he intended
to institute a sacrament, re-enacting this breaking and sharing has
become the central act of Christian worship. And while it has many
meanings – ranging from honoring Jesus’ radical custom of the “open
table” to a way of experiencing the real presence of God – it has
principally been thought of as observing Christ’s sacrifice of his life
for the redemption of our sins. That understanding didn’t really take
hold until the 11th century however, and there is another way to
approach the communion table, another "spin" we can put on this, which
actually is a much earlier understanding. Some scholars believe that
Jesus himself may have never intended that what we call the "Last
Supper" should be observed in a backward-looking way, a way of
commemorating an event in history. They suggest that Jesus grew up in a
Jewish sect known as the Essenes, the people who created the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and who had a custom of celebrating a meal of bread and wine
known as the messianic banquet. These were people brutally oppressed by
the Romans, and they looked forward not only to their day of liberation
and freedom, but to the day when the Messiah would appear, and God
would arrive and the human community, indeed the whole earth, would be
transformed and released from bondage. And so whenever they ate this
meal, this messianic banquet, they were looking forward, they were
celebrating the kingdom as if it had already arrived, as if the messiah
were already present, a foretaste of the world to come.
So it is possible that when Jesus and his disciples sat down to dinner
together during the last week of his life, at the time of Passover, by
using the bread and wine of the Essene observance, Jesus changed the
focus of the meal from backward-looking to forward-looking. It became a
meal of anticipation, not of memory. By this interpretation, it was not
really a "Last Supper", but a "First Supper" – intended to start a new
movement, in essence to say, the kingdom of God is arriving; the
kingdom of Rome is on the way out!
After supper, they move out to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus
prays in such earnestness that his sweat becomes like great drops of
blood. “Remove this cup from me, but not my will but yours be done.”
Rising from prayer, he finds the disciples asleep, failing once again.
Finally, Judas enters, with a hostile crowd that includes Roman
soldiers. He betrays Jesus with a kiss. The disciples flee, along with
a nameless young man whose tunic is torn from his body so that he runs
away naked. (He shows up again on Easter morning, at the tomb, in a new
tunic!) Then there are the scenes of interrogation, condemnation, and
Peter’s denial that he even knew Jesus, with the cock crowing three
times.
Friday is divided into three hour intervals. Beginning at 6 a.m., Jesus
faces Pilate. There is the famous scene when the crowd is given the
choice between releasing Jesus or releasing Barabbas, a rebel in his
own right. The crowd, of course, chooses Barabbas to go free and Jesus
to be crucified. And we usually see this as an example of the
fickleness of the people – how easy it is to shout “Hosanna!” on Sunday
and “Crucify!” on Friday – but Borg and Crossan point out that they
were actually different crowds. All during the week Jesus had been
surrounded by “the people” – his supporters, oppressed Jewish
peasantry, and their presence actually prevented the authorities from
doing anything. They kept Jesus safe. The crowd on Friday, on the other
hand, was not the same people, but rather a smaller group who supported
the authorities. Ordinary people would not have had access to Pilate’s
courtyard at all. Kind of like when the President goes out on the
stump, and faces only a handpicked audience. So they know what they
have to do. Then there is the crown of thorns, and Jesus is led away to
the place of crucifixion, stumbling as he attempts to carry his own
instrument of execution, so that one Simon of Cyrene is conscripted to
carry the cross for him.
At 9 a.m. the scene unfolds at Golgotha, where Jesus is nailed to the
cross, endures mocking, including the sarcastic sign identifying him as
“king of the Jews,” as well as taunting by the two others crucified
along with him – not criminals or thieves, by the way, but fellow
dissidents – not from his movement, but as far as Rome was concerned,
they were all the same!
At Noon- darkness comes across the whole land. In antiquity, it was
thought that the sky, the cosmos, offered signs. The rising of a star
could signify the birth of a future king or important person. Darkness
meant the universe itself is distressed by what is happening.
Between 3 and 6 p.m. Jesus breathes his last. The curtain of the
temple, which separated the holiest place from the area where ordinary
people could go, is torn in two. The centurion – the representative of
Roman power, one who actually helped carry out the execution, is left
to confess: Certainly this man was innocent (in Luke) or “this man was
the Son of God” (in Mark.) It seems to be over, and so the crowds go
home. “But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed
him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.”
At 6 p.m., Joseph of Aramathea, not a disciple, but a good man
nonetheless, goes to Pilate and requests Jesus’ body. Unusual, because
normally crucified bodies were left on their crosses until scavenging
animals – vultures and wild dogs – did their thing and there was little
left to bury, a final humiliation of anyone who would dare to question
imperial power. Joseph is granted the body, dresses it in cloth
(reminiscent of his birth?) and lays it in his own family tomb. And
again, the women watch.
And there you have it - a storm of activity before the calm of the
Sabbath day. Some forty-four separate incidents, each one of which
could make the basis of a whole sermon, and indeed, many of them are
preached about, but spread throughout the year. A storm of activity, of
emotion, of conflict, and even though we know how it turns out – and
maybe now we know a little better all that went into it – the question
is: How is it going to turn out? For we still face the same conflicts
in our world, a world where imperial power still holds sway, and where
we still face the choice of which parade to be in. It is still, as it
always has been, the conflict between the kingdoms of this world, and
the kingdom of God, between (as William Sloan Coffin used to put it)
“powerless love and loveless power,” between the values of this world
and the allegiance to the One who came to show us another world, a
better world, a more just and loving world, and who gave his life to
make it even a possibility for the rest of us. We may know the end of
the biblical story that we recall again this holy week. But as for our
story and our own struggles with God’s claims and the world’s
enticements the question remains: how is it going to turn out? And in
more ways that you might imagine, you can affect the answer!
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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