The Gospel for Palm Sunday (April 4, 2004)
Luke 23:1-49
The whole assembly then rose, and they brought him before Pilate. They began their accusation by saying, ‘We found this man inciting our people to revolt, opposing payment of the tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be Christ, a king.’ Pilate put to him this question, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ He replied, ‘It is you who say it.’ Pilate then said to the chief priests and the crowd, ‘I find no case against this man.’ But they persisted, ‘He is inflaming the people with his teaching all over Judaea and all the way from Galilee, where he started, down to here.’ When Pilate heard this, he asked if the man were a Galilean; and finding that he came under Herod’s jurisdiction, he passed him over to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time. Herod was delighted to see Jesus; he had heard about him and had been wanting for a long time to set eyes on him; moreover, he was hoping to see some miracle worked by him. So he questioned him at some length, but without getting any reply. Meanwhile the chief priests and the scribes were there, vigorously pressing their accusations. Then Herod, together with his guards, treated him with contempt and made fun of him; he put a rich cloak on him and sent him back to Pilate. And though Herod and Pilate had been enemies before, they were reconciled that same day. Pilate then summoned the chief priests and the leading men and the people. He said to them, ‘You brought this man before me as a popular agitator. Now I have gone into the matter myself in your presence and found no grounds in the man for any of the charges you bring against him. Nor has Herod either, since he has sent him back to us. As you can see, the man has done nothing that deserves death, so I shall have him flogged and then let him go.’ But as one man they howled, ‘Away with him! Give us Barabbas!’ (This man had been thrown into prison because of a riot in the city and murder.) In his desire to set Jesus free, Pilate addressed them again, but they shouted back, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ And for the third time he spoke to them, ‘But what harm has this man done? I have found no case against him that deserves death, so I shall have him flogged and then let him go.’ But they kept on shouting at the top of their voices, demanding that he should be crucified. And their shouts kept growing louder. Pilate then gave his verdict: their demand was to be granted. He released the man they asked for, who had been imprisoned because of rioting and murder, and handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they pleased. As they were leading him away they seized on a man, Simon from Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and made him shoulder the cross and carry it behind Jesus. Large numbers of people followed him, and women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For look, the days are surely coming when people will say, “Blessed are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne children, the breasts that have never suckled!” Then they will begin to say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”; to the hills, “Cover us!” For if this is what is done to green wood, what will be done when the wood is dry?’ Now they were also leading out two others, criminals, to be executed with him. When they reached the place called The Skull, there they crucified him and the two criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.’ Then they cast lots to share out his clothing. The people stayed there watching. As for the leaders, they jeered at him with the words, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers mocked him too, coming up to him, offering him vinegar, and saying, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription: ‘This is the King of the Jews’. One of the criminals hanging there abused him: ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well.’ But the other spoke up and rebuked him. ‘Have you no fear of God at all?’ he said. ‘You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He answered him, ‘In truth I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’ It was now about the sixth hour and the sun’s light failed, so that darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. The veil of the Sanctuary was torn right down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice saying, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ With these words he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he gave praise to God and said, ‘Truly, this was an upright man.’ And when all the crowds who had gathered for the spectacle saw what had happened, they went home beating their breasts. All his friends stood at a distance; so also did the women who had accompanied him from Galilee and saw all this happen. -- The New Jerusalem Bible. 1995, c1985. Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y.
Glory and thanksgiving be to you, most loving Father,
for Christ in whom the world is reconciled.
Lifted on the Cross,
his suffering and forgiveness
spanned the gulf our sins had made.
Through that dark struggle death was swallowed up in
victory, that life and light might reign.
-- Eucharistic Prayer 3, The Scottish Episcopal Church Prayer Book, 1982
A Reflection
This Gospel overwhelmed me. My only response was emotion: prayer, tears, gratitude. No semblance of a rational study would start to form in my normally analytical brain. Fortunately, I was blessed to receive an advance copy of our rector's sermon for Palm Sunday, which he has graciously allowed me to reproduce for you. In that service, the lectionary for the service of Palms, the first Luke reading, will also be used in addition to the service of the Word for Palm Sunday. The first depicts, you will recall, the triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
The Rev. Ken Howard April 4, 2004 (Palm Sunday)
St. Nicholas Church Luke 19:29-40; Luke 22:39-23:1-56
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Crucify him!”
Ironic, isn’t it, that we read both of these texts not only on the same day, but in the same service? And while we know that in real life these words were uttered several days apart, the shift in them is still staggering. That pretty much the same crowd, in the space of just a few short days, could go from “Blessed is the king” to “Crucify him” is hard for us to comprehend.
But then, we weren’t there. If we had been, maybe it would easier for us to swallow.
Despite the impression you might take away from Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” Jesus was not the only person to be crucified that day so long ago. And I’m not talking about the thief on either side, either – though to Mel’s credit, he did show them. According to the writers of that age, every road into Jerusalem was lined with Roman crosses. And not empty ones, either. Every hundred yard or so, another crucified person. Some freshly scourged and nailed with Centurions still present. Others left to experience a slow and excruciating descent into death by a combination of dehydration and asphyxiation. Still others left to hang there, long after death.
This was the way the Romans occupied the place they called Palestine. This was the message to all who might think to challenge that occupation in even the smallest way: “Don’t even think about it. This could be you!” Making the day-long, uphill walk from Jericho to Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples would have seen scores of crucified victims of the occupation. And as they walked the last mile from Bethany, on the Mount of Olives, down into the Kidron Valley and up to the gates of Jerusalem, they would have seen several more, and a few extra at the Gold Gate itself, just for good measure. When Jesus entered the City of Jerusalem, he was under no illusions. He knew what he was up against. He knew the fate that likely awaited him there. Even as the crowds waved their palm branches and welcomed him as their long-hoped-for king, he knew.
The crowds knew what he was up against, too. During two centuries that the Romans occupied Palestine, fully one-third of the population died. There wasn’t one person in that crowd that hadn’t been touched in some way by the brutality of that occupation. Not one person who had not experienced the death of a friend, a cousin, a brother, a father, or – worst of all – a son, perhaps on one of those very crosses, perhaps that very week, or even that very day.
They lived and suffered under the thumb of a dictator – Pontius Pilate – who controlled every aspect of their lives at his whim. He was the ultimate Big Brother. Nothing happened in Jerusalem without his notice. His presence was felt everywhere. No one could be arrested without his permission and without his troops present. No trial could be held, no judgement made, no sentence imposed without his approval. No executions happened unless he wanted them to, and never, not ever, done except by his men. And when it came to executions, his were not only brutal but frequent, and often done capriciously and en mass. He was so bad, the Romans couldn’t stomach him, and eventually removed him for excessive use of force.
And as Jews they the suffered the ultimate indignity of having their high priest – like all top religious authorities in Roman occupied territories – approved by their occupiers. Ciaphas served as high priest only because Pilate allowed him to. The earliest Rabbinical writings do not speak with one voice on the subject, but they make it clear that Ciaphas and Pilate had reached some kind of understanding and that, in the eyes of many, his allegiance was, at the very least, suspect, and to some, a collaborator. And though his power was only what Pilate allowed him, he was a powerful man in Jerusalem and not universally well-liked by the people.
The crowd pinned their hopes on Jesus. They hoped against hope that he had the power to kick out the Roman occupiers. They hoped against hope that he had the power to stand up against religious authorities and call them to account. They hoped he had the power and that he would use it to set them free. And so they waved their palm branches in triumph, shouted out their hosannas, and said “You can be our king.”
But Jesus did not do what the crowd expected.
The crowd wanted a conquering king, not a suffering servant. They did not want someone who could “feel their pain” but someone who could erase it.
And so when Jesus stood silent before his accusers, when he turned his cheek to those who would strike him, when he turned his eyes and looked with love upon those who would spit in his face, the crowd did not see love. What they saw was weakness. What they saw was powerlessness. Their weakness and their powerlessness, writ large in Jesus. What they saw was the crushing of their hopes and the dashing of their dreams. It must have felt to them like a cruel joke and a bitter betrayal. And so, in their despair and in their anger, they turned their backs on him and cried out, “Crucify him!”
I hope you can put yourself in their shoes. Because you are in their shoes.
We did not do a dramatic reading of “The Passion” this year. We figured that Mel Gibson had done one for us in “The Passion of the Christ” and that one “Passion” a year was enough to reflect upon. But when do read “The Passion” on Palm Sunday, there is always something about it that makes us profoundly uncomfortable. When we get to the part of the crowd, the words of the crowd are not said by a few people on a stage dressed up in ancient Jewish costumes, but by the entire congregation. No one gets an “out.” All of us together shout out those horrible words.
“Crucify him!”
It is an acknowledgment that if we were there we would have done the same thing.
More than that, it is acknowledgment that our present relationship with Christ is not all that different from theirs. That we often pin our hopes on Christ. That we often have our own ideas about what we want Christ to do for us and to be for us. And that when our hopes are crushed and our dreams are dashed, we too in our despair often put distance between ourselves and God. Our love of Christ, our faith in God, is seldom strong enough nor constant enough to withstand the lash of our own despair.
“Crucify him!”
It would be a sad story if it ended there. A sad story of human weakness and the failure of our faith. But it did not end there. It ended with a resurrection. And according to Luke, to the writer of today’s Gospel, three thousand people being added to the body of Christ in Jerusalem alone, and in a single day. How many of those three thousand had been in that crowd outside Pilate’s palace? How many had shouted “Crucify him?”
God only knows. Well . . . God . . . and each one of them.
They could look back on that day with different eyes.
And when they looked back they knew . . .
What Jesus showed on that day was not weakness, but the power of God’s love.
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"God rides the lame horse,
he carves the rotten wood."
- Julian of Norwich
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The Rev. Ken Howard, Rector
St. Nicholas' Episcopal Church
14100-B Darnestown Road
Darnestown, MD 20874
Tele: 240-631-2800
Fax: 240-631-0136
Web: http://www.saintnicks.com
9:23:11 PM 
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