Passion//Palm Sunday – March 28, 2021
We can have certain expectations of people,
and when those expectations are not met, we can be tempted to
dismiss them and,
perhaps, even turn against them. Sometimes the expectations we have of someone
are very
reasonable, and that person’s failure to meet those expectations
reflects badly on them. At other times, our
expectations of someone do not do
justice to the person in question. and our negative reaction to those
expectations not being met can be saying more about us than about the person in
question.
Those who welcome Jesus with great euphoria
went on to jeer and mock him as he hung from a Roman cross. Why
such a sudden
change of attitude? When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was welcomed as one who
would usher in
the ‘kingdom of our father David’. Here, it was believed, was
the king who would restore the fortunes of King
David and rid the land of Roman
occupation. This was the people’s expectation. However, within the space of
a
week those expectations were shattered. Their king would end up on a Roman
cross. Whereas people wanted
victory, the cross spoke of defeat; whereas they
looked for a power greater than Rome’s, the cross spoke of
weakness; whereas
they had hoped for a wise leader, the cross spoke of foolishness; whereas they
looked to
Jesus to demonstrate God’s powerful presence, the cross spoke of
God’s absence. The shattering of their
expectations turned their jubilation
into hostility.
Yet, there were a few people who saw the
horror of Jesus’ crucifixion with very different eyes. A pagan
soldier, the
Roman centurion who looked on at how Jesus died, exclaimed, “This man was a son
of God.
” A prominent member of the Jewish ruling council took the bold step of
going to Pilate because he recognized
that this man was worthy of a dignified
burial, rather than being thrown into a common grave, the normal fate
of the
crucified. The woman disciples who looked on from a distance took note of where
Jesus was buried and
went away to prepare spices to anoint his body at the
earliest opportunity. These two men, a pagan and a Jew,
and this group of woman
saw with different eyes and behaved in a fashion that was noble and generous.
The story we have just heard invites us to
identify with those who looked beneath the surface of the broken
and bloodied
body on the cross and glimpsed there something of God. When we look upon the
cross with the eyes
of faith, we see a divine love that is stronger than sin, a
divine light that shines in all our darkness,
a divine power that brings new
life out of all our deaths, a divine poverty that enriches us at the deepest
level of our being. We have just heard the story of Jesus’ last journey in the
space of ten minutes. This
Holy Week, the church invites us to travel that
journey at a much slower pace, day by day as it were. This
is a good week to
read through Mark’s account of Jesus’ passion and death slowly and prayerfully,
a little
every day. As we read we are invited to travel that journey with
Jesus, to travel it with the eyes of faith,
with the eyes of the centurion, of
Joseph of Arimathea and of the women. We look beneath the surface of what
is
happening, we listen deeply to all that is taking place, so that we see and
hear the God who so loved the
world that he gave his only Son so that we may
have life and have it to the full.
Blessed are your eyes because they see,
and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets
and
righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear
what you hear but did not
hear it.
Fr. Don, cp