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| The Entry -- sketch on leather 1386 |
Liturgy of the Passion
In line with modern practice, the Sunday universally known
as Palm Sunday now has two names. Strictly, it is called ‘The Sunday of the
Passion: Palm Sunday’. This is because, uniquely, there are two Gospel readings
on one day. The first – in the Liturgy of the Palms – recounts Jesus
‘triumphal’ entry into Jerusalem, that bright moment when children waving palm
branches led him – fleetingly -- to be hailed as king. The second, the long
Gospel usually read or sung by several voices, recounts the dark sequence of
events that followed – betrayal, abandonment, intense physical pain,
humiliation and finally death.
Holy Week is framed by this narrative. It is taken from
Matthew, Mark or Luke (this year is Luke), and then repeated on Good Friday
(always in John’s version). The days in between are set aside for sustained
meditation on the meaning of Christ’s passion, an opportunity to help us
understand the full significance of the Resurrection properly.
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| Grunewald's Mocking of Christ |
The Palm Sunday readings are unusual in another respect too.
The Old Testament (from Isaiah) and Epistle (from Philippians) are the same
every year. In different ways they both underline an important fact. The
significance of death on the Cross is not to be found primarily in the terrible
suffering it involved. History tells of many heroes who died painful deaths
struggling gloriously for what they believed to be right. This is not Christ’s
Passion. Indeed, it is the precise opposite of a heroic death. Jesus died in
the most shameful and humiliating way that the ancient world was able to
devise, and did nothing to defend himself.
Isaiah makes this the ultimate test of faith. ‘I shall not
be put to shame’ because ‘it is the Lord GOD who helps me’. Paul finds still deeper
theological significance in the ignominy of it
all. It is precisely because Jesus ‘humbled himself, and became obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross’
that God so ‘highly exalted him’ and gave him ‘the name that is above every name’. This might
seem like some horrible sadism on God’s part, until we remember that ‘God was
in Christ’ reconciling Himself to the world. Here is the spectacular, and perplexing, truth that
the Resurrection confirms. It is in the figure of the humiliated, unheroic Jesus that the Source of Life, and hence the sacred, is to be seen most clearly.
See also: Passion and Palm Sunday 2012
and Passion and Palm Sunday 2011
See also: Passion and Palm Sunday 2012
and Passion and Palm Sunday 2011
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