Hope Rising from Grief

Today is a solemn day, a holy day and an awesome moment in human history.  We have processed with branches of palm while singing “All glory, laud and honor.”  Our emotions rise to an incomprehensible level of triumph and hope.  But then, through the dramatic reading of Luke’s gospel, our emotions plummet to feelings of rejection and frustration.  We are left to envision grief-stricken images of suffering and death.

The gospel account of Jesus’ crucifixion tells us that “all 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 disciples, the women who followed Jesus, and all the people stood by.  What were they feeling?  Were they in shock?  Were they traumatized by what they were seeing?  It must have been an unbelievable and horrifying experience.

What really happened?  What does it mean?  Why was Jesus killed?

Luke’s account of the crucifixion is based on earlier remembered events translated from Aramaic into Greek, and augmented with his own theological interpretation of the events.  The gospel writer gives us an interpretation of the meaning of those events and inspires admiration for Jesus the innocent sufferer who went to his death willingly on behalf of all humanity.

There are two points to stress about Jesus' death.  They are stated well by Marcus Borg in his books, The Meaning of Jesus, and The Heart of Christianity.  The first point is that “the passion stories are not straightforward historical narratives.  They are a mixture of history remembered and early Christian interpretation….Whatever happened was not witnessed by Jesus’ followers; they had fled and were not there…. Peter followed from a distance…. The events were essentially hidden from public view until the crucifixion itself.”

Jesus was executed under Roman authority, and crucifixion was commonly used for two categories of people: political rebels and chronically defiant slaves.  Both of these groups shared a systematic defiance of established authority.  It follows that Jesus was crucified as a political threat to Roman order.

The second point refers to our understanding of the gospel stories as "passion narratives."  Passion means suffering, "but it has an additional meaning as well.  The death of Jesus, his execution, was because of his passion for God and God's justice.  And because we see Jesus as the revelation of God, we see in his life and death the passion of God.  He discloses both the character and passion of God." 

During his life an ministry Jesus was passionate about justice.  He was a social prophet and was killed because of his criticism of the domination system that was so unjust to the poor, to women, children, widows, orphans, and all the outcasts of society.  Jesus was killed by the Roman oppressors because of his passion for God's justice.

Today we stand centuries away from the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.  Jesus’ followers were so stricken by his death, and they were so oppressed and persecuted for political reasons both by Roman occupation and their own Jewish authorities, that they had to find a way of making sense out of what happened.  The gospels tell us about their historical memory, their theological interpretation, and their profound hope rising out of their grief.  That hope is the hope we live with today as we move through the events of this coming week and wait for the good news and joy of the Resurrection on Easter Day.  Amen.