Palm Sunday

Readings: Mark 11:1-10; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

The story is familiar:
we hear it every Palm Sunday and Good Friday;
we might reflect on it in the stations of the cross
or the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary.
But for all its familiarity,
the story of Jesus’ death
remains shocking in its brutality,
disturbing in what it reveals
about our human capacity
to inflict pain on one another.
It begins slowly,
with Judas’s kiss of betrayal
and the arresting soldiers’ clubs and swords.
It gathers momentum
with lies carefully crafted to ensure Jesus’ death,
with spitting and fists,
Peter’s threefold denial
and Pilate’s injustice.
The cascade of cruelty becomes unstoppable
as Jesus is beaten and mocked and stripped
and nailed to a cross:
placed on shameful display.

To make it through the day,
I force myself to forget
what cruel beasts we humans are,
the ferocity with which we tear at each other,
our capacity to crush the weakest
and to destroy the human spirit.
I don’t want this to be true about us,
about me.
But year after year the passion of Jesus
confronts me with the truth of human cruelty,
a truth that is on display all around us,
if we will simply open our eyes to see it:
in prisons and slums,
on battlefields and city streets.
It is a truth that I must own as my truth:
I, too, have my share in that rage to destroy,
to inflict pain, to humiliate, to kill.
I, too, join Peter in his denial,
Pilate in his cowardice,
the crowd in its cries
of “crucify him,
crucify him.”
At home,
at work,
in the voting booth,
in the church pew,
I, too, let myself get caught up
in the careless cascade of cruelty
that courses through human history.

But even as it confronts us
with the cruelty of our species—
with our own cruelty—
the passion of Jesus
confronts us also with God’s love.
Golgotha, the place of the skull,
the place of supreme brutality,
is only a few short steps from the garden tomb
in which Joseph of Arimathea will lay the body of Jesus,
a few short steps from the place of hope,
from which new and unending life will spring.
A few short steps,
but a distance that can be spanned
only by the infinity of God’s love.
For love of us, Jesus hurls himself
into the cascade of human cruelty,
to bear our hatred and break its power,
to rise triumphant
from the tomb of brutality
and offer us a new life to live,
a new story to tell,
a new path to walk,
the path of God’s infinite love.
In the days ahead,
in this most holy of weeks,
let us walk together
on that new path
and let God’s love carry us
those few short steps
from cruelty into compassion,
from the cross into the new creation.

Palm Sunday

Readings: Mark 11:1-10; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

On Ash Wednesday, as Lent began,
many of us received a cross of ashes on our foreheads
with the words, “remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
We began our Lent marked with the sign of Jesus’s cross
and a reminder that, however long our life might be,
death is a reality from which none of us escapes.
Now, as Lent is ending, we return to the cross
and the story of how even Jesus, the incarnate Son of God,
entered into the mystery of death.

And what has happened in our lives
between Ash Wednesday and now?
Some of us, perhaps many of us,
have prayed and fasted and given alms.
Others of us have done other things:
remodeled our kitchens, lost loved ones,
been sick or hospitalized, attended funerals,
watched the third season of House of Cards on Netflix,
started or ended relationships, gone on trips,
gone to work, shoveled snow,
attended school or church or the symphony…
all of the stuff of life that doesn’t stop happening
just because it is Lent,
just because we have been marked
with a reminder of the reality of death,
just because we are supposed to be preparing
by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
to celebrate Jesus’ saving death and resurrection.

Whether we have experienced Lent
as a time of intense preparation for Easter
or simply as five weeks of ordinary life,
or as—what is most likely—something in between,
the love revealed in the cross of Jesus
has still embraced our lives,
even if we have let it slip from our minds
as we celebrated and grieved and worked and rested.
Now we stand at the threshold of Holy Week
and the invitation is renewed to let our lives be marked
by the mystery of divine love
revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
If you have fasted and prayed and given alms this Lent,
then let the liturgies
of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil
crown your noble efforts
with the priceless gift of God’s grace.
If you have let the everyday concerns of life
sweep you along,
forgetting that you are dust,
barely noticing that it was Lent,
much less praying or fasting or giving alms,
then even more let the grace of these celebrations
sweep you up into the mystery of God’s love.

We have the holiest days of the year ahead of us,
and God is inviting all of us,
whether we have kept Lent well or badly,
to embrace these days and let them embrace us,
so that we might hear resound in the depths of our hearts
the good news that though we are but dust
the breath of life can be breathed into us once again.

Palm Sunday

Readings: Mark 11:1-10; Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

What a waste.

An entire alabaster jar of expensive perfumed oil

broken and poured upon the head

of an obscure rabbi 

from one of the more distant and impoverished districts.

It could have been sold

and the money spent for some practical purpose.

What a waste.

In a few days he would be dead anyway.

What a waste.

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem to the joyous cries of the crowds,

ready to accept him as their king, as David’s heir.

Now could have been the moment

when he leveraged his political capital

and brought change that we could believe in.

What a waste.

He squandered that political capital

by claiming to be more than a king,

by claiming to be the Christ, the son of the Blessed one,

by claiming that God is his Abba, his father.

And now he is publicly tormented in a shameful death.

What a waste.

“Though he was in the form of God,”

the eternal Son, fully sharing in divinity,

“Jesus did not regard equality with God 

something to be grasped.

Rather, he emptied himself,”

pouring himself out like the perfumed oil 

from the woman’s alabaster jar,

“taking the form of a slave, 

coming in human likeness, 

humbling himself. . .

becoming obedient to the point of death, 

even death on a cross.”

What a foolish, senseless waste.

But the foolishness of God is wiser than worldly wisdom.

“The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced;

I have set my face like flint, 

knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”

Because he willingly poured out his life

for love of God 

and for love of each and every one of us,

“God greatly exalted him,”

raising him up and revealing him 

to be the Lord of creation;

raising him up so that the lives of all those

who have poured themselves out 

in the cause of love,

like precious ointment from an alabaster jar,

might rise also with him,

their lives not wasted

but truly found, truly saved, even unto eternity.