Palm Sunday C

[cappie]

What do we mean when we say that Holy Week is about the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ? In the secular world, there are many people who devote their lives to re-enacting historical events or dressing up as well-known figures and celebrities. But our commemoration of the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is about something different. t is not just about us imagining we were there, or mimicking the events described to us in the gospels. Liturgical commemoration is vastly different from secular re-enactment.

As we commemorate something liturgically, we enter into a place where God can use the movement, music, words, and drama of the liturgy to draw us into the saving mystery we celebrate. It’s not about us merely imagining, creating, or fabricating a memory. Rather, it is about placing ourselves in Christ’s presence and allowing him to touch and move and change us as we are drawn more deeply into his life.

Secular re-enactment is about casting our minds back to an event in past time, which is external to us. Liturgical commemoration, by contrast, is about being drawn into a reality that is not separate from us, but which we discover lies at the heart of our being in Christ and gives our whole life meaning.

The unfolding of the story of God’s tragic love revealed in the Son needs no embellishments. This is a story of abandonment, of trust and rejection. Listen to the power of the verbs:

They brought Jesus before Pilate…

Pilate sent Jesus to Herod…

He questioned him…

They mocked him…

They blindfolded him…

They kept heaping insults on him…

The Lord of the Universe allows himself to be moved from place to place, to be questioned by politicians, to be mocked by a mob. Just a few days ago, they were praising him as he entered Jerusalem. How quickly praise turns into abuse and celebration into tragedy. Now the mob, spit on him and slap him on the face. Isaiah’s words find their painful realization: “ I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle. .” We are horrified.

And then we remember Paul’s words to the Philippians:   “though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death– even death on a cross.”

We watch as the evangelist continues his description of Jesus who is not responding to the mockery, not calling on his followers to defend him, but allowing the evildoers to continue their march as they push him to the cross. Up to the point of his arrest, he has been in charge of the drama; now he relinquishes his power. We watch the abandonment, the loneliness of the Lord as he is being led to his death. Throughout the long, terrible night of Thursday, we feel his love for his friends at their last supper together, we see the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and hear his question at his arrest: “ Am I a brigand, that you had to set out with swords and clubs? When I was among you in the Temple day after day you never moved to lay hands on me. But this is your hour; this is the reign of darkness.” We too enter with him into the darkness that seems to triumph throughout the night and the day that follows.

And so, we enter Holy Week, as participants, not observers. Let us watch and let us listen. We too are feeling the weight of darkness in a world torn by strife and hatred. We wait. We hear his words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But we also hear the words of utter faith as he dies: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Through the Week we are about to celebrate, we emerge different, transformed, and fundamentally changed in a way that cannot to be laid aside or dropped as we enter back into the world in which we must work and live.

Christ calls us through our celebration of the Passion to be changed, to encounter him, and to have our limited understanding of human existence to be open by his love once more.

 

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by cappie