Emptiness as Salvation – 20 March 2016 – Palm/ Passion Sunday

As you begin to ponder what the sermon on this highly charged Sunday ought to contain, let the wisdom of writers from Homily Service in 2007 dealing with the Passion story serve as yeast for your thoughts.

Luke 22:14–23:56 or 23:1-49

In no place in the passion according to Luke, as set forth in our lectionaries, do we even come close to getting a clue as to why some authorities in Jesus' day wanted him out of the way. . . The Gospels (Luke included) routinely offer exaggerated impressions of sizeable crowds and high drama in the events leading up to the cross. This exaggeration is to be expected. The authors are convinced that the death of this man had cosmic significance. If that significance had not been apparent to the immediate witnesses, why should the Christians of the evangelists' communities recognize this either?

Instead, the far more realistic image is of a small man, from an insignificant part of the nation, with a small group of followers, caught up in a conflagration and put down because of it with no thought or hesitation on the part of the Roman occupation forces. In no way does the more realistic image necessarily subtract from the cosmic and atoning significance of Jesus' death.

I suggest, instead, a more modest account of the passion allows us to appreciate the incredible interpretive task undertaken by the earliest communities of Christians. The audacity of reading their scriptures as having been fulfilled in the life and death of this man! The audacity of God in using the death of this man to teach humanity the impotence and utter vacuousness of scapegoating and sacrifice! – Jeffrey VanderWilt

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Isaiah frequently pursues the story of Israel, humiliated, exiled, and now restored to its imperial ambitions. This “reversal of fortune” story implies also a theology of atonement. . . [which] may have a substitutionary character—Israel suffers and bears a God-given burden so that the nations do not have to. . . .

Christians found this theology of atonement, implicit to the story of the servant of God who suffers, strongly and compellingly attractive as they tried to put together the pieces of the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the healing rabbi, who proclaimed the restoration of the kingdom of God, and yet who suffered and died so grievously so that, when his fortune was reversed in resurrection, the nations would turn and glorify the God who saved Jesus. – Jeffrey VanderWilt

Philippians 2:5-11

Here is the One who emptied himself, who humbled himself, who became obedient. In letting others do what they would to him, this is what Jesus did: He chose the identity he would have as others did their worst. He emptied himself to take the form of a slave, when by all rights he could assume full equality with God. He impoverished himself for the sake of his fellow human beings. He offered himself.

And we, too, are called to offer ourselves, to “let the same mind be in” us as we choose our personal identity in this world, to think as he did when others would do their worst to us. . . .

Here is the One who, on the cross, offers words of forgiveness for those who crucified him, words of promise for those who trust in him, words of commendation to the Father whose will he obeys. Here is the One who eats and drinks with sinners, the One whom death cannot hold. . . .  

He gave himself for us. In what wounded him is our healing. In what nailed him to the cross is our freedom. In the offering of his life is our life, eternal life. – Paul G. Bieber

Paul Bieber is pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church, San Diego, California.  

Jeffery VanderWilt, author of Communion with Non-Catholic Christians (Collegville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003) teaches at Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Southern California.

Homily Service 40, no. 5 (2007): 3-20.

Ecstasy and Execution – 29 March 2015 – Palm/Passion Sunday

Questions: Is this a day for rejoicing while parading around with long green leaves from exotic climates in outrageous joy? Or is it a day for bracing ourselves to hear the story of horrible injustice?

Answer: Both.

Unless we hold the extremes together in our hearts and minds, we cannot get past either our desire for a victorious knight on a white hourse coming to save us or God’s foolish way of showing us ultimate love. True power is in weakness. True power is in dying. 

Today is not simply both because “some people” won’t come to hear the Passion story on Good Friday (a convenient explanation). Rather, we honor two realities at one time at the start of Holy Week so that we can better recognize what we human creatures repeatedly mistake for wisdom. When the rabbi we love rides on a donkey into the city of ultimate power, it is not a moment to breathe a sigh of relief but to hold our breath.

Some believe the triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem is modeled on the Roman triumph, yet the triumphant processional entrance of a king or conqueror to take possession of “his city” is well known to nearly all ancient societies. . . . Julius Caesar enters marked with sacrificial blood, a “god for a day” . . . accompanied by armies, banners, music, and horns.

Jesus’ triumph could hardly be more similar and more different. Jesus is not yet marked with sacrificial blood, but will himself become a sacrificial victim. He is not accompanied by conquering armies, stallions and chariots, but rides a colt. As homilists, we should help our congregations see how Mark has traced a continuous path for Jesus’ triumphal steps: into the city, into the temple, out of the city, and into a tomb. – Jeffrey VanderWilt

Palm – Mark 11:1-11

Passion – Mark 14:1-15:47

Erik Erikson, the theorist who wrote about eight stages of human development, described the first crisis human infants confront: trust versus mistrust. Babies see and feel their caregivers holding, feeding, bathing, and comforting them, and they begin to understand that they can rely on these other beings. It is the caregiver’s touch, smile, and eye-to-eye contact—the caregiver’s face—with which the infant connects most intimately.

. . .  Martin Luther, about whom Erikson wrote a psycho-historical biography, suggested that the best benediction to use at the end of Mass is the Aaronic blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace” (emphasis added). We see—and touch—the face of another, and in so doing learn to trust the other.

When Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he echoes Psalm 22, but he also expresses the cry of any person who has felt the searing pain of abandonment. There are times when the darkness is unbroken by the kind face of a caregiver.

On the Sunday of the Passion, particularly in the Year of Mark, we behold an abandoned, frightened, and ultimately defeated Jesus. And he beholds us in our own abandonment, our own despair.

. . . We don’t pretend on this day that we don’t know the end of the story. Even in Mark’s gospel, which ends with Jesus’ followers running in fear from the news of the empty grave, we are given the hope of resurrection, the promise of Christ’s face in the darkness. – Stephen Crippen

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Suffering Servant gives us a stark image of the victim, the one being bullied, the one who has no voice and cannot find justice. It is the image of the crucified one and also the creatures–human and non–who stand little chance of thriving where there is no champion to take their side. This image can help us see how important it is to “contend” alongside the one who is abused.

How we are to stand with those in need is the concern of the epistle to the church in Philippi.

Philippians 2:5-11

The key phrase is “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (2:5). It links the exhortation to good behavior (e.g., v 3, “Do nothing from selfish ambition”) to the nature of Jesus as one who could have been equal to God, but “emptied himself.” The Greek concept is kenosis, or “pouring out,” a reference to a divestment of power, authority, or status. – Jeffrey VanderWilt

Stephen Crippen is a psychotherapist and a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Washington.   

Jeffery VanderWilt, author of Communion with Non-Catholic Christians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), teaches at Santa Margarita Catholic High school in Southern California.

Homily Service 39, no. 5 (2006): 9-17.