Palm Sunday

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

Last year, the philosopher Agnes Callard
published a column in the New York Times
reflecting on the phenomenon of social media pile-ons,
or what are sometimes referred to as “Twitter mobs.”
Someone says something 
that others find in some way offensive,
and critique cascades into denunciation, vilification,
and even death threats
as more and more people join the chorus,
convincing themselves that the offending party
must be shamed and somehow expelled 
from the realm of public discourse 
in order to restore purity
to the community constituted
by right-thinking people.

In her column, Callard counsels her friends
that, if such a thing should ever happen to her,
they should not rush to defend her from the mob,
as consoling as she might find such a defense.
As she provocatively puts it,
“If you care about me, 
let them eat me alive.”

She says this because of her conviction
that there is no way to argue a mob out of its rage,
out of its passion to shame and vilify,
since the logic of the mob is an illogic,
an irrational conviction about 
the unique evil of a single person
and how the elimination of that person 
will purify the world.
The mob convinces itself that it represents 
the right-thinking people of the world,
when in fact it isn’t thinking at all.
To act collectively against the mob,
to try to shout down its angry cries,
is simply to enter the mentality of the mob,
to succumb to its contagion.
As Callard puts it:
“You imagine that you are fighting against the mob, 
but actually you are becoming a part of it. 
Within the mob there is no justice 
and no argument 
and no reasoning, 
no space for inquiry or investigation. 
The only good move is not to play.”
The only good move, we might say, 
is to let the rage of the mob 
burn itself out.

Jesus seems to agree.
Throughout the story of the Passion,
Jesus refuses to play the mob’s game.
His actions fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy:
“my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.”
When one of his followers draws a weapon
to defend Jesus from the large crowd
who have come with swords and clubs to arrest him,
Jesus says, “Put your sword back into its sheath,
for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
When questioned by the high priest’s council,
which has transformed itself
from an instrument of justice
into an agent of mob violence,
Jesus remains silent, except to quote scripture:
“From now on you will see ‘the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of the Power’
and ‘coming on the clouds of heaven.’”
When dying in agony on the cross,
with the crowd reviling and mocking him,
he again speaks no word but God’s word, 
crying out in the voice of the psalmist:
“My God, my God, 
why have you forsaken me?”

Of course, there is a key difference 
between the mob Agnes Callard is speaking of
and the mob Jesus confronts in the passion story.
Callard’s mob is a virtual mob,
and its threats, by and large, are virtual threats:
the prospect of public shaming
and expulsion from the realms
of right-thinking discourse.
You can stoically resign yourself to such shaming
and wait for the mob’s anger to burn itself out.
But the mob Jesus faces does not want 
to shame or “cancel” or “de-platform” him.
It wants to kill him. 
The silence of Jesus,
his refusal to defend himself
or let his friends defend him,
is not simply a strategy 
of waiting out the mob’s rage
by enduring its shame.
For the rage of this mob will consume him,
not simply metaphorically,
but literally. 
The irrational, unjust, cruel conviction
that he must be removed 
from the realm of life itself
crashes over him and crushes him.

Stoic patience and resignation cannot save him.

Resignation cannot save him,
but resurrection can.
“I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
Jesus faces the mob, defenseless and silent,
for he knows that humbling himself
for the cause of God’s kingdom,
“becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross,”
is the prelude to glory.
The ultimate answer 
to the violence of the mob,
to its irrationality, injustice, and cruelty,
to the contagion of sin that affects our race,
is God’s vindication of Jesus

by raising him to new life,

so that every power 
on heaven and earth and below the earth
would bow down before the humiliated one
now glorified.

As we enter this most holy of weeks,
let us set our faces like flint,
walking with Jesus 
on his silent, defenseless journey
from the shame of death 
to the glory of resurrection.

Palm Sunday (Fourth Sunday in Corona Time)

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 27:11-45

It is surely a function
of the extraordinary times in which we find ourselves
that the word that leaps out to me,
in both the Palm Gospel and the Passion narrative,
is the word “crowd.”
The scene of residents of Jerusalem
jostling together with Passover pilgrims
to hail Jesus as the one who has come
in the name of the Lord
fills me with a not-so-vague sense of unease.
As I picture the scene I feel an irrational impulse to yell
“social distancing!” and “stay at home!”
and to try to make the crowd disperse.
Of course, the fact that it is also a crowd
that cries out for Jesus’ crucifixion a few days later
suggest that this is not simply an irrational fear.

Even apart from epidemiological concerns,
we are all familiar with the dangerous mob mentality
that can overtake groups of people,
whether this happens in a physical crowd,
like the mob in the Praetorium calling for the death of Jesus,
or, as is equally likely today, a virtual crowd,
like Twitter mobs that “cancel”
those guilty of various transgressions.
There is a kind of anonymity in a crowd
that seems to give license to people
to give free rein to the worst impulses
of fallen human nature.
A mob mentality can lead me to do or say things
that would otherwise be unimaginable,
because I can lose myself in the crowd
and convince myself
that somehow it is not really me
who is doing or saying these things.
Surely the mob that calls for Jesus’ death
was not composed of uniquely evil people.
And the mob can make us think
that we are somehow immune
from the consequences of our actions.
There is something deeply chilling
when those calling for Jesus’ death
cry out, “His blood be upon us
and upon our children”
because it shows a scoffing disregard
that seems to think that the mob absolves us
from any real moral responsibility.
It is almost as if the crowd is responding
to the idea that they could be held accountable
for murdering an innocent man
with a collective “whatever.”

But not all crowds are murderous mobs.
The deadly and demonic crowd
is only one possible form
that groups of people can take.
Even as we might currently feel unease
at the very thought of large groups of people
congregating in one place,
there is in us still a healthy longing to gather,
a desire to be a part of something larger than ourselves,
to find our place among a multitude.
Mobs may become murderous,
but there are also life-giving assemblies of people,
the crowds of humanity that we miss terribly in these days.
This includes the crowds who assemble
for sporting events or concerts or lectures.
For Christians it above all includes
that supernatural assembly that we call “church.”
Indeed, in these coming holy days
we are not simply recalling and celebrating
Jesus shedding his blood for each of us as individuals,
but also how, through his death and resurrection
and the giving of his Spirit,
he has called to himself,
as John sees in his apocalyptic vision,
“a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”

This crowd is no mob,
but rather those gathered
by an unimaginable divine goodness
that inspires us to act in faith, hope, and love.
This is the crowd for which we long.
The Christian doctrine of the communion of the saints
says that neither time nor distance
can break the bonds
that the Spirit has forged between us.
Jesus has died and risen
and given us his Spirit
so that we can remain united with him
and with each other
even when we are physically separated.
So let us celebrate the holy days of this week
with hearts renewed in hope,
even as we long for that day
when we see each other,
no longer dimly as in a mirror,
but face to face.
And may God have mercy on us all.

Palm Sunday

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2: 6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

For most of us, it is an old story,
a story we have heard year after year,
whose sharp edges have grown a bit dull with familiarity,
and which we cannot but hear in light of its Easter sequel.
No shock.
No horror.
No sense of, “how could this possibly happen?”
It is a story that we hear and nod our heads,
“Yes, that’s how it happened.”
But if we are attentive to what is happening in our world,
it is a story that we hear year after year,
day after day,
in new guises,
shocking and horrific guises.

Just this past Monday, Fr. Frans Van Der Lugt,
a Jesuit priest from the Netherlands
who had lived in Syria for nearly fifty years,
was beaten and shot to death in the city of Homs.
He had spent his life there working with both Christians and Muslims,
particularly with young people with mental illnesses and disabilities.
In recent months he had spoken out
about the suffering of the people of Homs,
who live amidst violence and deprivation
as a result of the Syrian civil war.
In a video message to the world, he said,
“We do not want to die out of pain and hunger.
We love life and love living it.”
Yet when he had the opportunity to be evacuated last January he refused.
He set his face like flint, unwilling to leave behind
the people to whom he had devoted his life.
Not surprisingly,
the government blames the rebels
and the rebels blame the government for his death.
And in that death he joins the more than 150,000 Syrians
who have died in this war.

In his death, however, he also joins Jesus.
His story presents us once more with the passion of Christ,
who emptied himself and took the form of a servant,
who went to his death because he refused to abandon the cause of God.
In Fr. Van Der Lugt’s passion
we see displayed before us the passion of Jesus,
because he suffered his passion out of love for Christ crucified,
and in the faith and hope that no matter what his fate,
it was already redeemed,
already transformed,
by the death of Christ.

As a Jesuit, Fr. Van Der Lugt would have had the experience
of praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.
At the end of the first week of those Exercises,
after seven days of reflecting on one’s sins,
Ignatius says to imagine oneself
before the crucified Jesus
and to ask:
What have I done for Christ?
What am I doing for Christ?
What will I do for Christ?
Fr. Van Der Lugt answered those questions
with his life and with his death,
and re-sharpened for all of us
the cutting edge of this ancient story.
What will I do for the one who loved me enough,
even in my sins,
to endured the shame and suffering of the cross?
How will I give my life
to the one who gave his life for me?