Meditations for Palm/Passion Sunday - April 14, 2019 - The Rev'd Elise Feyerherm & the Rev'd Jeffrey Mello
Meditation - the Rev'd Elise Feyerherm
Today we embark on a journey, a journey that we take every year. Because the route is so familiar, our attention sometimes falters, and we are traveling on auto-pilot. We know how it goes: Jesus is arrested, and sentenced to die by crucifixion. We have to get through this part in order to get to Easter. The details smudge and blur like a landscape viewed through a window streaked with rain.
But let’s not do that this time. Let’s force ourselves to consider the details that Luke in particular sets before us – not because these are the “facts” as a journalist would lay them out, but because it is in this year’s particular telling of the last days of Jesus’ life that, this year, we find ourselves and the ways we need to be broken open. Next year, the evangelist Matthew will walk beside us, and the year after that, Mark. Today, Luke is our guide, our judge, and even our tempter.
Notice how Luke has a vision of reconciliation – between Pilate and Herod, between Jesus and the repentant thief. Wonder how unexpected reconciliation might enter into your life and change the people you hang out with. Notice, also, how Luke tends to let Pilate off the hook, and even Herod, and ask yourself if for the sake of avoiding trouble, we absolve those with power and blame those who are oppressed. Not even the gospels are free from the distortions of self-preservation. Remember, above all, that this is not a story of Christians versus Jews, but a story of the terrible blindness that fear and blame create in all of us. Listen, not for villains, but for the power of love.
Luke 23:1-25 - Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.” Then Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He answered, “You say so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.” But they were insistent and said, “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.”When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.
Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people,and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him.” Then they all shouted out together, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!” (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.” But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted.He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.
Meditation - the Rev'd Jeffrey Mello
Mob mentality at its very worst. Jesus is just the target everyone has been waiting for; the one who will stand in for the crowd’s anger and for Herod and Pilate’s shaky hold on power. In this exchange we don’t hear accusations of miracles and healings, of creating a community of love, but rather that this man, Jesus, was threatening the harmony between oppressor and the oppressed. Everything was fine until Jesus came along and started teaching and preaching a return to God that put the crowd who followed him at odds with the crowd who didn’t want to cause any trouble.
How often do we sit with the truth that something is not right, something is not just, but we remain silent for fear of the tension it will bring, the attention it will put on us and the risk we would have to take to speak our truth to our friends in the crowd, and to those who hold power over us? How often do we blame those who dare to speak the truth for upsetting the status quo. How often do we persecute those who make us uncomfortable in the court of public opinion. How brave do you have to be to put truth over comfort, justice over complacency?And how quick are we to separate ourselves from those who speak truth for fear we will be lumped in with them, made to carry the same burden of the crowd’s wrath as they do? Get a little too close and they might just lay the cross on you.
Luke 23:26-32 - As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.
Meditation - the Rev'd Elise Feyerherm
Suffering, like joy, has a way of leaking out of every container we try to put it in. Sometimes those who love us choose to help carry the suffering that spills out of us, and there is always grace and blessing in that. It is also the case that evil – and the pain that results from it – always spills out, inflicting collateral damage. There is no such thing as precision bombing; not in war, and not anywhere else. The coercion of empire that sends Jesus to the cross pulls everyone in the vicinity into its wake – Simon of Cyrene is seized, and the cross laid on him, that he might carry it behind Jesus. It is part of the terror that you never know when you will be next, and that you can never protect yourself by “playing it safe.”
There is a contrast here, perhaps, between the callousness of Rome and the empathy of the women who follow Jesus to Calvary, beating their breasts and wailing for him. Rome does not care what innocent victims it ensnares – in fact, that is part of the plan. Those who weep for Jesus receive the message that we are all connected, that Jesus’ suffering is their suffering, and that we carry it together just because we are all human. Empathy is a heavy burden, but it is far lighter than the burden laid on us by callous hearts and ruthless systems. Better to weep, not only for ourselves but for all who are caught, together, in the net of human greed and violence. Better to weep than to feel nothing; better to be talking with Jesus about it as we walk together along the hard road.
Luke 23:33-43 - When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Meditation - the Rev'd Jeffrey Mello
It is hard for me to imagine, watching a person die in public, nailed to a cross. In our culture, executions happen out of sight in dark rooms of the prison system. Or they happen slowly, subtly, delivered through systems so carefully designed we no longer recognize them for the executions they are.
We pay great attention to the last things people say and do before they die. Many of us remember the last words spoken to us by a loved one. We try to follow last wishes. Even the prison system gives weight to last requests and meals to be eaten. Jesus’ words from the cross are his final acts of public ministry this side of the resurrection. And they are words of forgiveness. In his final act, his last chance to show what God in human form looks like, he speaks only love, only forgiveness. From the cross he forgives the soldiers who nailed him to the cross and who continue to taunt him. He forgives Pilate and Herod. He forgives the crowd. He forgives both thieves, the one who cries for Jesus to do something, and the one who simply wants to be remembered. Jesus tells him that he won’t simply be remembered in paradise. He will be with him.
In forgiving from the cross, Jesus gives words to God’s desire made known in the stable in Bethlehem; God is desperate to be in relationship with us. It is why God created, it is why God came to live among us, it is why God chose forgiveness from the cross. If public execution on a cross couldn’t push God to the limit of God’s love and bring forth wrath and punishment for those who stood by watching, what makes us think anything we can do, or say, or be might? God only wants to love us. Even if it means forgiving us when we do the very worst to God we can imagine.
Luke 23:44-49 - It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.” And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
Meditation - the Rev'd Elise Feyerherm
“Certainly this man was innocent.” Not the Son of God, as the centurion says in Mark and Matthew. Instead, it is Jesus’ innocence that is proclaimed. It’s not either/or for us – we don’t have to choose between Jesus’ divinity and his innocence. It’s just that this year, we are asked to wrestle with the suffering of those who have not inflicted cruelty, but challenged it, or those who refuse to step aside when those with power want to come through.
The Greek translated here as “innocent” means “righteous” or “just.” To be righteous doesn’t mean to be perfect, but rather to be aligned with God and God’s purposes. “Certainly this man was righteous, just.” As Jesus commends himself into the hands of his Father, he aligns himself with God’s purposes, God’s dream for the world, the source and wellspring of all that is.
This is no deathbed conversion – this is a declaration of an entire life and death rooted in God’s righteousness. Long before the sun’s light fails and darkness comes over the land, filling our hearts with dread, Jesus shows us the righteousness of God. In this most Holy Week, Jesus invites us and the whole world to face the darkness, not alone, but commended tenderly into the hands of God.