(Audio)
As we lay down branches before Jesus as he proceeds into the Holy City it is right and just that we be joyful. Yet we don't fully understand exactly what is happening or what we are celebrating. We don't entirely grasp the scale of the sufferings about to unfold, or how complicit we ourselves are in that suffering. This joyous instinct is correct, yet it needs to be tempered with great humility.
“Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
Perhaps Jesus was indirect here in order to make all of us consider whether it was we who would betray him. He knew that he was speaking about Judas in particular. But he also that each of his disciples and each of us had the potential to do what Judas did. All too often, in fact, we prefer what we can get from Jesus to Jesus himself. We try to avoid following him when the path appears arduous and long. We focus on superficial rewards of Christianity, of looking Christian, of feeling Christian, anything other than acting as a real Christian, a real follower of Christ.
Peter said to him in reply,
“Though all may have their faith in you shaken,
mine will never be.”
The whole passion narrative is a great cautionary tale of how not to be a good friend to Jesus. We start off poorly when we are too self-assured, to certain that we stand firm and that there is nothing that could make us fall. Because Peter was so self-assured he was unable to gain strength from Jesus. Without that strength he fell to the temptation to deny his friend Jesus to preserve his own life and freedom.
Then Peter remembered the word that Jesus had spoken:
“Before the cock crows you will deny me three times.”
He went out and began to weep bitterly.
It is not enough to be merely pragmatic in our response to Jesus. If we try to maintain a studied indifference to avoid making a decision ourselves we will end up on the side of the opposition. If we are unable to take a definite stand for Jesus we will eventually find ourselves complicit in his killing.
When Pilate saw that he was not succeeding at all,
but that a riot was breaking out instead,
he took water and washed his hands in the sight of the crowd,
saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood.
Look to it yourselves.”
Instead of these, let us imitate Simon the Cyrenian and help Jesus to carry his cross. The cross is actually, in the last measure, our own. But only when it is offered to us by Jesus and for Jesus can we support the weight of it.
As they were going out, they met a Cyrenian named Simon;
this man they pressed into service
to carry his cross.
When we realize what the cross truly means we already begin already even here below to pass into the resurrected life. We already experience the joy of being united to the sacrifice of Jesus himself, and in particular the joy of the love that is unleashed thereby.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (see Colossians 1:24)
With the women at the cross let us keep watch. Let us not run from this terrible event we fear. Let us look deeply into Jesus drawing all to himself. Let us see how it is precisely here that he is glorified. If we can begin to see this our whole relationship to suffering, and indeed to this whole death-directed life, can be changed forever.
Let us remain with the women at the tomb, even after all rational hope has ended. Let us trust that this, whatever this is for us today, is not the end, and cannot be. We know who Jesus is, and we hope in him.
But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
remained sitting there, facing the tomb.
If we keep watch at the tomb in patience and in love, if we set our own faces like flint, we will be the first to see the joy of the resurrection.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
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