SERMON FOR SUNDAY, MARCH 28, 2010                                   SAINT ANNE’S

PALM SUNDAY, YEAR C                                                                  LYDIA HUTTAR BROWN

Luke 22:1 4 -23:56

I want to tell you three things about this story.

First, the Jews did not kill Jesus.
For too long the story of the passion — the suffering and death of Jesus — has been used to justify anti-Semitism.
Hatred, prejudice, even violence have been justified by selective reading of this story.
But remember – Jesus was a Jew. His disciples and friends were all Jews — good, faithful people trying to follow God as best they could.

The gospels were written for particular audiences, with particular objectives in how the authors framed the events, which details were chosen.
In a time of persecution, it was important that any Roman government officials who read or heard them would be assured that Jesus had not posed a threat to the government, but to the religious establishment.

The second thing I want to tell you is this:
The power of the story does not lie in seeing it as an account of a historical event, but in recognizing what it reveals about our humanity.
We are not so different from the people in the story.

Episcopal priest John Westerhoff reminds us that Jesus was executed for political reasons by the political authorities.
Then, as now, ambition and power can corrupt … can cloud a person’s vision and distort a person’s reality.

“The old story tells what happens today: leaders act to protect position and privilege; justice is corrupted; betrayal and cowardice are acted out; the victim is blamed and brutalized.”[1]

Mel Gibson, in his movie “The Passion” , portrays those responsible for Jesus’ death as evil, sadistic.
Certainly evil and intentional hurtfulness are part of the story.
But this view allows us to distance ourselves from the story,
to say it was “those people” who did it.  Westerhoff says:

“To tell the story faithfully we need to remember that it is more a story about the evil we participate in than about some particular evil people long ago. Those who crucified Jesus were confronted by complex moral issues and decided on what they believed to be best for all under unfortunate circumstances.  The most serious evil in this world is done by those who think they are doing good, or at least the best they can, in a less than perfect world.”[2]

The gospel of John records that the political/religious authorities were debating what to do about Jesus.
“What are we to do?” they said.  “This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”  But one of them, Caiaphas, … said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’”  (John11:47-50)

Short-term expediency, for supposedly long-term gain.
Decisions made not on what is right and good,
but on what will keep things the way they are.

In the headlines again these days is the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests.  That is horrific enough… but the deeper scandal is how those in power handled their knowledge.  Protecting some people and not others.  Safeguarding the status quo. Making decisions for short-term expediency.

But let’s not be too judgmental.  In our own lives, perhaps on a smaller scale, we face daily the same kinds of temptations.
Short-term expediency vs. long-term integrity.
Small compromises vs. the hard work of facing the truth and taking steps toward healing.
The story offers us the opportunity to recognize these tendencies in ourselves, and to learn to be the change we long for.

And that leads to the third thing I want to tell you:
The story reveals the nature of God — God’s magnanimous, extravagant, wasteful love that does not lash out, that endures, that is stronger than all the evil humanity can dish out.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes of Jesus’ apparent weakness, emptying himself, becoming obedient, even to death on the cross.
I used to be bothered by the word “obedient”,
as I came more and more to believe that God does not require blood, and that God’s plan is never for death.
But God’s nature is to never become anything other than pure love.
And so for Jesus, obedience meant being true to the divine nature that was in him.  That was essential to his being.

Abbott Andrew, of Three Rivers Abbey in Michigan, writes
“Jesus’ death makes it clear that if humans choose to respond to God’s call with violence, then God will suffer that violence.”[3]

No matter what evil humanity does, it cannot make God cease being God. It cannot make Jesus turn from his divine mission to love as God loves.
Nothing can compromise God’s unconditional love.

Martin Niemöller was a teenager imprisoned at Dachau by the Nazis during World War II.  He writes that what appears to be the weakness of God, seen in the crucifixion, is really the power of God, made known through weakness.
The power of the Lord, what is it? Nothing, it seems! At least, the power of his opponents [at his crucifixion] proves to be stronger than all he can do; and so he finishes his commission in suffering and death, in total defeat.

And yet, all… power of human pride and self-concern, of hatred and vindictiveness cannot overcome him, cannot make him use the same means of power and violence, not even in self-defense, cannot seduce him to the spirit and attitude of retaliation. …

Niemöller goes on:
In the last year of my imprisonment in one of Hitler’s ill-famed concentration camps, at Dachau, a gallows was transplanted … into the courtyard … of the prison inside the camp. And the upper part of this gallows looked into my solitary-confinement cell, through the window bars. How often has this gallows induced me to pray for my comrades who were hanged on it, and how often every day I had to control myself, when the idea arose: If these people will pull me out of my place here to that gallows, I shall shout at them, “You criminals, you murderers, wait and see – there is a God in heaven and he will show you!”
And then the torturing question: What would have happened if Jesus, when they nailed him to his gallows, to the Cross, had spoken like this and had cursed his enemies? Nothing would have happened, only there would be no gospel, no Christian Church, for there would be no message of great joy; for then he would have prayed against his enemies, not for them, and would have died against them and not for them.  Thank God! He prayed, he died a different way,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”[4]

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