Crowds and mobs
Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain –
a Middle Eastern vortex with its geographic center in
Jerusalem
The world has been hopeful for political change
but rarely is it entirely successful.
Listening to the voices in the Cairo square now
reveals the edges of disillusionment.
Palm Sunday represents delusional hope.
There is a good parallel with another Gospel story:
just after Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah
we then hear Peter rebuking Jesus for his passion prediction.
No! No, not that kind of Messiah!
We disciples see the Kingdom of God coming
when Jesus will be recognized as Son of David, heir to the throne,
and we will have 12 thrones of our own to judge the nations.
See how those Romans like them apples!
Palm Sunday represents, we could say, delusional hope.
There were all sorts of assumptions about what this parade
would accomplish: hopes for the future, yet delusional hopes.
Some had the hope that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah
the one who would free them from foreign oppression.
As I said, the disciples hoped for the Kingdom of God to come.
Some hoped that the Romans would see Jesus as a revolutionary
and would arrest him and get him out of the picture
so that they could return to a safer status of coping with and living with
the enemy in their midst,
so that they could manage to carry on with the upcoming Passover festival
in the oppressive shadow of the occupying military forces.
Passover – the celebration of the oppressors’ defeat by the Hand of God
and the liberation of the Israelites from slavery.
And the Romans, they hoped to keep spontaneous demonstrations and riots
from erupting in the city square, and to hold onto control.
Recent events in countries ringing Jerusalem would indicate that
the ancient hope of political power and control will only last so long.
Whether for an oppressive dictatorship or for a popular uprising
the outcome rarely turns out to be what was hoped for.
And how many times do we watch the oppressed throw off their chains
only to become themselves oppressors of others.
Palm Sunday represents delusional hope.
We are beginning a week of liturgical events
that if we were to pay attention to them
they could take us out of the confinement of our current understanding,
our current religious confinement,
and would open our awareness to vastness of life
and all of its liberation, empowerment, joy, and love
which is our inheritance in Jesus.
I will unabashedly urge you to attend all the liturgies of this week,
and most especially what we call the Triduum, the 3 Days:
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.
This is the central week of the whole church year, our highest holy days.
What we do this week in liturgical form is to place ourselves into the story,
and thus we can come first of all as a faith response
to what the Epistle reading from Philippians refers to as
the self-emptying, the self-giving of Jesus.
As you take part in this holy week’s events, drop religion.
Drop the compartmentalizing of seeing this only as liturgical observance,
a narrow slice out of our whole life experience.
Drop religion and all its side interests
that can be so self serving, and therefore subject to politicizing.
Instead what assumptions and hopes do you have in your life that get battered?
How are they shown up as empty and disillusioning?
Whereas Palm Sunday represents delusional hope,
Good Friday is then the collapse of all our delusional hope,
crushed and nailed to the Cross.
That is where we are going at the end of today’s liturgy.
But when we read together the Passion Account for St. Matthew ,
be willing to look at the hard words of that Gospel
full in the face,
and as much as lies in us to be conscious of what we see. Pay attention!
Brothers and sisters, this story of Jesus’ death is not a tragic account
of suffering beyond all measure.
Jesus knew what he was doing;
this was the outcome he anticipated for the parade.
And he knew that what he was doing was essential,
all in service for you, for me, for every living being.
Good Friday is the necessary and beneficial collapse of all our delusional hope.
And then the Resurrection is the transcendence of this collapsed, delusional hope.
Easter is a revelation which could not be anticipated.
But we can’t get to Easter, to resurrection, by any other way
than through the collapse of delusional hope and the Cross of Good Friday.
From delusional hope to transcending that hope with what cannot be anticipated
that is what’s up for us these next few days.
I guarantee to you that if you come and take part
in all these liturgies of Holy Week,
with a willingness and trust to bring all your own
hopes and sorrows, shame and pride, suffering and inner questioning with you,
that Love of God, Love which is God, will be at work in you,
transforming wounds, bringing healing, and revealing to you great truth.
Let your participation this week
be simply responding in faith,
trusting wholly in what Jesus did for us,
surrendering to the completeness of what he did.
In our devotional response to Jesus
there is no self aggrandizement,
no need to prove a point or make a statement,
no status attained for having participated in all the worship of the week,
just humble acceptance and the expression of our hearts.
As we heard in the Epistle reading for today from Philippians,
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
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