Palm Sunday
April 5, 2020

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew §1 – congregation is seated

Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, “Are you the King of [these people]?” Jesus said, “You say so.” But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer. Then Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?” But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed. Now at the festival the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” All of them said, “Let him be crucified!” Then he asked, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

Meditation I 

For those of you who are joining Emmanuel Church for worship for the first time, or for whom this is your first Palm Sunday with us, I want to explain that we made a decision in 2014 to stop engaging in the custom of reading the Passion Narrative on Palm Sunday as a play script with members of the congregation taking various dialogue parts, and the congregation as a whole representing the crowd. Although it may be edifying to understand that we too are capable of the denial and betrayal of Love, and of being bystanders while brutal and deadly force is used against others, I’d rather we not practice any of that bad behavior in church! I do not believe that it is at all edifying to re-enact the highly implausible scenario that Pontius Pilate or any other Roman authority would have even permitted a large crowd to gather in the occupied capital of an occupied country during the time of a great feast celebrating the notion of freedom from oppression, economic exploitation, and political enslavement. It is not edifying to pretend that a Roman governor would have given people a voice vote about whom to crucify. Biblical scholars and historians have known this for a long long time, and yet much of the Church blithely carries on this libel in the name of tradition or custom or piety, with deadly consequences to Jews.[1] 

My reason for dividing the Passion narrative into four parts is that an uninterrupted reading lets too much time pass after the libelous idea that the people as a whole and their children were guilty of Jesus’ torturous death. Matthew, alone, adds these dreadful details, cited ever since as a reason for Christians to blame Jews for the death of Jesus. Whatever Matthew may have been thinking, we cannot let our response be silence on our way to the dramatic conclusion of our Gospel. Today neo-Nazism is on the rise and Jews are being targeted in our own country and around the world. Anti-Judaism, even in subtle forms, is wrong, and we Christians must repent of the Church’s mistreatment of Jews.[2] We must never use ancient or modern Judaism as a foil. We must not make the Gospel of Love into a message of hate,[3] to paraphrase Jewish New Testament Scholar, Amy-Jill Levine. It’s not that Jesus’ blood is on Jews. Rather, it is their blood that is on our Christian forebearers and on us, their children. Let’s not get it on anyone’s children. Let’s take responsibility for ending Christian anti-Judaism. We have a great deal of agency and power to stop letting our Church offer its tacit support of anti-Jewish texts. Let’s use our agency and power for repentance and right-relationship. 

Passion Narrative §2 – congregation is seated

So he released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the [local people]!” They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross.

Meditation II 

Two details in this part of Matthew’s Passion Narrative call out to me.  The charge that Jesus was an insurrectionist was behind Pilate’s question of whether Jesus was a King. Was he a freedom fighter? A rebel? A guerilla? Yes, a “guerilla of grace.” Jesus was working without institutional authorization to “reclaim some territory, or some part of life, for a higher purpose, a truer cause,”[4] as poet Ted Loder has put it. As Jesus was being arrested, according to Matthew, one of those with Jesus on the Mount of Olives pulled out his sword and cut off the ear of a slave of the chief priest, earning a rebuke from Jesus to return the sword to its sheath, saying “all who take up a sword will be destroyed by a sword.” Jesus chides the group that came to arrest him saying, “You came out with swords and bludgeons to arrest me, as thought coming against a bandit? I sat each day in the Temple teaching, and you did not seize me.” The scarlet cloak that the governor’s soldiers put on him was a soldier’s tunic, which makes their disdain of his non-violence that much more pointed. According to Matthew, the robe was not the purple of royalty, even though they were mocking him as a king.

The other detail that calls out to me is the person of Simon of Cyrene, who was compelled or pressed into carrying the crossbar that would be used to crucify Jesus. The word that gets translated “compel,” is used only one other place in the Gospel of Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus taught about maintaining one’s own dignity in the face of oppression and violence. Jesus taught that if someone compels you to go one mile, go the second mile as well. This seems like a good time to remind you what the late Bishop Barbara Harris taught — that taking up and bearing a cross means carrying a burden on behalf of another for the love of God.

According to historians, Cyrene, or modern-day Libya., was home to a large Jewish population in the first century of the common era. This also seems like a good time to remind us all, especially with the dramatic rise of public white supremacy in our country and in Europe, that not one word of our Holy Bible was written by or about or to white people. (Indeed, the Romans prided themselves in being just the right shade of brown, not light-skinned like northern Europeans or dark-skinned like Africans.) This Simon of Cyrene, was most likely a faithful dark-skinned Jewish pilgrim, a bystander in the crowd. When pressed into dreadful service, he shared in and relieved the burden of another, and in that way, maintained his dignity in the midst of degradation and violence. This is something that every one of us can and must do — share in and relieve the burdens of others, maintaining our dignity and our integrity as we go. There is no time more pressing for this than the present moment to help bear one another’s burdens. Let’s use all the resources we have for repentance and right-relationship.

Passion Narrative §3 – congregation stands 

And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the [local people].”Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’” The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way. From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.”  At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink.  But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” 

Meditation III

In the Gospel of Mark, the story is that Jesus was offered a narcotic myrred wine, but Matthew describes the drink offered to Jesus as mixed with gall, which is a reference to Psalm 69:21 (they gave me vinegar to drink). Jesus refused the narcotic in Mark, and had a taste in Matthew and then refused. It’s important for us to remember that this is not eyewitness reporting but theological interpretation. Matthew is concerned through and through with Jesus’s life and death as a complete testimony to Holy Scripture. Everything that Jesus said and did, everything that happened to Jesus reminded the writer of Matthew of words and songs of sacred texts.[5] 

According to the Gospels, Jesus’ crime was written and affixed to the cross so that everyone would know that he had been accused of insurrection.  According to historians, this was in keeping with the Roman law, but it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone took the time when mass crucifixions were going on. Mercifully, the garish mid-day sun was darkened so that no one would have been able to see the charge or Jesus’ humiliating and excruciating death.[6] For Matthew, all creation testified to Jesus’ importance, beginning with the star at his birth and the total eclipse of the sun and the shaking of the earth at his execution. Matthew is writing about a grief so profound that it was as if God’s universe was remembering the formless void, longing for the time before light. It was lights out on the show of hideous power the government was putting on, trying to frighten the population to submit. It was lights out to protect the women who were watching and waiting from seeing too much. The darkness was Love’s way of stealing the show, Love’s way of countering the “theatrics of terror” of public executions, a sign of Love’s immense displeasure with the executioners, and a sign of hope for Jesus’ followers that his brutal execution was not going unnoticed by the sovereign of the Universe. In Matthew’s view, the universe was using its resources for repentance and right-relationship.

Passion Narrative §4 – congregation stands 

Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.  At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.  The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.  After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.  Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”  Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus.  He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.  So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock.  He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

Meditation IV

One of the most frequent topics of conversation at Emmanuel Church is about the tension between science and religion. I often say that I think we need the interplay between knowledge and faith to make meaning and to make sound moral choices. One without the other is insufficient. What I want to re-assert here is that resurrection is art, not science. This portion of Matthew’s Passion Narrative – this stunning description of the immediate consequences of Jesus breathing his last breath and of his resurrection (the resurrection of many) is describing what has been called an utter temporal-spatial collapse, or time-space folding.[7] I like to use the example of a Jackson Pollock painting. You know, when you look at a Jackson Pollock painting, you’re not likely to ask, did that really happen? Is that true? Can it be proven? I believe that we should also refrain from those questions about resurrection, because resurrection is art, and not science.  Resurrection is art. Resurrection is not science. Matthew has painted a picture for us – his scene of the death of God’s beloved Son, is not to be proven or disproven. We must ask, what do we notice? What speaks to us? What difference does it make in how we will live? We must ask, “what music comes to mind?” and sing it or play it. We must ask this right now, in the midst of a pandemic, in which scientific information and fidelity to Love are both essential to make meaning and to make ethical choices, to offer fullness of life and freedom from oppression, even the oppression of death.

I cannot end without mentioning Mary Magdalene. This is the first time in the Gospel of Matthew that Mary Magdalene is mentioned — here at the cross with two other women, among many women who provided for Jesus – financially, emotionally, ministerially. The verb for what these women offered is from the same word from which we derive the word deacon. Mary Magdalene was the leader of the women who provided for Jesus. She was the leader of the women who stayed at the foot of the cross when the others had fled. These women were the ones who heard Jesus cry out his despair that God had forsaken him. These women were the ones who saw him die, and these women were the witnesses who saw where Jesus was buried. These women stood by the cross; they sat by the tomb. Matthew doesn’t record their words. They don’t have speaking parts, but their actions speak loudly. And although the stories they told were not explicitly attributed to them, the account makes it clear that they were the key witnesses because the others had fled. These women model for us fidelity and courage, and above all steadfast love. If we keep our eyes on them, they will show us how to navigate whatever comes our way, in Holy Week, and all the weeks to come. They will teach us about repentance and right-relationship.

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