Triumphal Entry, Betrayal and Death

Palm Sunday, the first day in the holiest week of the Christian year, is about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the holy city of God and all that follows during the coming week.  Triumph, majesty, glory, and joy.  The crowds had gathered to welcome Jesus into the gates of Jerusalem.  They shouted, “Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  They paved the way with branches of palm and threw their cloaks on the road.  All this is a prelude to betrayal, human weakness, suffering, trial, and death.

For centuries the Christian Church has dramatized this grand entry into the holy city.  We have done the same thing today.  We sang the majestic hymn, “All glory, laud, and honor,” and we asked God’s blessing on these palm branches that signify to us the victory of Christ on this great day.  All glory, praise, honor, and blessing to the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  A cry of joy from the faithful, a triumphal entry fit for a king.

From today’s moment of joyful shouts and triumph we move in just a few brief days to an ugly and emptying cry of death.  The crowd stands before the governor who asks, “What shall I do with this man Jesus?” and they shout, “Crucify him.”  And soon that is exactly what happens.

In his new book, Christ Actually, the author James Carroll writes, “we have seen how Mark unfalteringly – and unflatteringly – portrays a profoundly fallible Peter, and we assumed the author of the text did so because he was addressing a beleaguered people for whom good news could only take the form of a message of acceptance, despite every failure.  The people were afraid.”

Recall that during the Passover meal, the Last Supper, Jesus said, “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”  After that they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives, where Jesus said, “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”  Peter said to him, ‘Even though all become deserters, I will not.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.’”

Peter was a close friend of Jesus.  Jesus depended on him.  And yet Peter turned out to be unreliable.  When asked by a servant girl if he was with Jesus, the man from Nazareth, “Peter denied it, saying, ‘I do not know or understand what you are talking about.’”

James Carroll writes, “The threefold character of this betrayal – in the courtyard, on the porch, by the fire – makes the point that it comes from Peter’s moral center.  In that sense, the act is paired as an ethical twin with the coldly premeditated sellout of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, although nothing in the narrative puts Judas in a place of intimacy to compare with the way Jesus had repeatedly entrusted himself to Peter.  That’s what makes Peter’s treason worse…. His blatant faithlessness had to be by far the most grievous blow.”

The point Carroll is making is that “the Peter story shows that moral failure is a mark of the insiders as much as of the outsiders.  Human weakness is universal.  Jesus knew it, and he was not put off by it.  That’s why his mantra was ‘Be not afraid.’”

“After his gross treason Peter ‘went outside and wept bitterly,’ because when Jesus looked at him just as the cock crowed, Peter saw the ghost of their love – and felt the shock of his having betrayed it.” 

Holy Week, this very week in which we are the participants, is a somber time, a time marked by our human weakness, our unfaithfulness, and our need for repentance. It is a time to enter as best we can into Jesus’ experience of suffering and being betrayed by his followers.  This Holy Week, as we observe the Last Supper on Thursday and the suffering, trial and death on Good Friday, is a time to be attentive, imaginative, and empathic as we seek to know more fully the heart, mind and will of God.

This is a week for us to involve ourselves into the events of the final days of Jesus’ earthly life.  We are called to repentance, to the observance of the Passover meal, the Last Supper, to the garden of Gethsemane and the crucifixion, and finally to the glorious day of Resurrection.  Through Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection we are given the strength to advance the mission of Christ that is grounded in the hope of a new life of compassion and peace for everyone.  Amen.

Stories from our Tradition

This past week a few of our Diocesan clergy met to discuss results of storm damage to our church buildings and to share some thoughts about an article from “Leading Ideas,” published by church leadership.com.

Many of our Diocesan church buildings have had storm-related problems.  Ours is rather significant as water damage has come through the ceilings and walls around several windows.  There is damage at the entrance to the office and parish hall downstairs, in the storage room at the back of the parish hall, around the lancet windows and in the ceiling in the Sacristy.  More damage is in the organ loft although the organ itself is fine.  The most significant damage is at the rear of the nave in the wall next to the stained glass window.  The back wall is also in need or repair as is the high ceiling at the rear of the center aisle.

We have initiated insurance claims and it is clear the repairs will cost thousands of dollars.  I ask for your patience and support as your Vestry takes the necessary steps to make all the repairs.

In the article we discussed from “Leading Ideas” the concluding paragraph states, “The renewal of mind…means inhabiting a story in which our identities are a gift, …a story in which the liberating God of the Bible is up to something in our midst today, a story in which the Spirit of God is continually bringing forth new life, even out of death.  It draws us deeper into the tradition and its rich stories and practices, deeper into our histories, and deeper into relationship with our neighbors in a posture of humble inquiry.”

Our scripture readings this morning are about two of the stories that are deep within our tradition.  The first story is from the Book of Numbers.  As they wandered through the wilderness the Israelites were impatient and spoke against God and against Moses.  They asked, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."  Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. … So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”

God answered Moses’ prayer and said he would provide healing through a symbol, a bronze snake on a pole.  Those who looked at it and believed in God would be healed and live.  This is a story about leadership, specifically what Moses had to do.  Moses struggled to be an effective leader.  The bronze serpent was preserved and worshipped until it became a symbol that was separate from the worship of God.  In the late 700s BC it was smashed during the reign of Hezekiah.

The second story is about God bringing new life out of death, and it comes from the Gospel of John chapter 3 verse16.  It is perhaps the most often quoted verse in the Bible: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  We need to examine this verse in its context.  The verse just before it says, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  

The Son of Man was lifted up on the cross so that those who trust in God will receive God’s gift of eternal life.  This is about participation in God’s life in the age to come.  John’s Gospel was written about three generations after the time of Jesus.  John wrote, “All who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.  But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”  This entire passage is about the light of life, the eternal life that is the victory of the Cross.

These stories are our stories.  They are two stories about the liberating acts of God “in which the Spirit of God is continually bringing forth new life even out of death.” 

Martin Smith, an Episcopal priest in Washington, D.C. has said, “We are to trust a strange analogy with the contemplation of Jesus hoisted up on the cross.  In an utter paradox, this vision for the believer is radiant with healing power. Those who gaze on it experience a burning away of all denial of human brokenness and their own share in it, and at the same time see the cross as the display of God’s limitless healing compassion.  God lifts Jesus for us on the cross, and lifts him to vindication in the resurrection, and we are drawn with him into intimacy with God.”  Amen.

A Sacred Family Relationship

In the Book of Genesis there is a little story about our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah: “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’ Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, ‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.’”

Think about this.  Here was Abram, just about 100 years old when God said to him, “I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”  Abram fell on his face, he was doubled over with laughter.  Imagine being a hundred years old and told you would become the father of many nations.  It’s laughable, ridiculous.  But what did God do?  He made a covenant with Abram.  He blessed Abram’s elderly wife, Sarai, and they had a son.  His name was Isaac; the rest is history.

The covenant with Abraham was the first.  Later on, when the Israelites were freed from bondage in Egypt, God made a new covenant with the people.  In the book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, the author says, “A good case can be made that the making of the first covenant is one of the most important moments in the exodus from Egypt.  The event took place when the twelve tribes of Israel arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai.  It was there that they entered into a new relationship with God and began receiving divine instructions for how they would worship him.  Indeed, according to Scripture, the primary reason for the exodus from Egypt was precisely so that Israel might freely worship God.  As God commanded Moses to tell Pharaoah, ‘Israel is my first-born son…. Let my son go that he may worship me.’… The exodus…was about establishing a sacred family relationship between God and the people by means of a covenant.”

God’s covenant connects Abraham, Sarah, the Israelites, and all descendants across the lines of geography, race, and culture.  In this spiritual heritage, congregations through the ages have responded to the God’s covenant with praise.  As the Psalmist said, “I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him. The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek the Lord shall praise him (Psalm 22:24-25). The covenant between God and people of every generation sets the standard by which God acts to organize a just and compassionate society.  When God’s covenant is followed, society and the nations are transformed and a sacred family relationship is established.

Problems occur when the people do not adhere to God’s covenant.  In the Gospel of Mark we are told that Jesus taught his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected, killed, and three days later rise again.  Jesus’ friend, Peter, could not accept this, and he took Jesus aside to rebuke him.  Jesus then told Peter that he was “setting his mind not on divine things but on human things.”

The point is that as good as the covenant with Abraham and his descendants was, Jesus invited his followers to a transformed covenant.  It was a covenant of life available to those with courage to face death.  As the Rev. Whitney Rice, from the Diocese of Indianapolis, has written, “Jesus promises that if we give our lives wholeheartedly to him and… to serving our neighbors, we will have rich and abundant life flowing through us, welling up to eternal life.”

We need to remember that during the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire was occupying and ruling the Israelites.  The Jewish community was under attack; Jesus and his followers were being watched.  So Jesus said to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake…will save it.”

Physical death is inevitable, but there are other deaths as well.  As Whitney Rice states, “We will face the death of our pride, the death of our comfortable ideas about what God is calling us to do and be, … and the death of our ambition and slavery to success. The covenant to which we are invited has very high stakes.”

The high stakes of keeping the covenant, of maintaining our sacred family relationship with God, depend on faith.  St. Paul, in his letter to the early Christian community in Rome said, “It depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed.” 

Faith that moves through death to a new resurrected life carries with it a risk: it is the risk of living a transformed life.  It is what Jesus taught through his life and ministry.  It comes with a commitment to abide by God’s covenant.

Remember what happened to Abram and Sarai.  Following their initial disbelief they committed themselves so thoroughly to God that he blessed them as parents to the generations that followed.  They were so transformed that even their names were changed: “your name shall be Abraham,…you shall call her Sarah…. You shall be the ancestors of a multitude of nations.”

How we understand our covenant relationship with God is the focus of our journey through this Lenten season.  Jesus taught that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, killed and after three days rise again.  What a remarkable transformation.  Our transformation happens in accepting that God is with all who suffer in this earthly life.  God’s promise through the death and resurrection of Jesus is that new life is possible, a life of justice, compassion, and love.  It is about our sacred family relationship with God and one another.  It is about taking up our crosses and following Jesus. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”  Amen.