Year B 6th Sunday in Lent Palm/Passion Sunday 1 April 2012
Isaiah 50: 4-9a Psalm 31: 9-18 Philippians 2: 5-11 Mark 14:1 - 15:47
Palm Sunday is the week before Easter, where we hear the passion of Jesus being read.... the whole sad story. It begins in triumph with the church singing “hosanna” in the same way as the ancient people did as they welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem riding on a donkey.
“Hosanna” means “God Save now” or “save us now” and although it is a prayer request it had become a proclamation of praise.... like a faith filled statement – a prayer for God to help, yet praise because God is sovereign and we acknowledge him as such and therefore able to save. I wonder if we ever realize this as we say the word ourselves. “God save us now”! – It becomes praise because we know that God has saved us already.
There is so much to be said about such a long reading that we can sometimes just get lost in the familiarity of the story. Something that stuck me as I read the readings was this verse from Isaiah:
Isaiah 50:4 “4 The Sovereign LORD has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.”
We live in a time of great education. We’ve considered education so important that it is compulsory for our children. So we all have an ability to have a well instructed tongue and an awakened ear. Our tongue is able to pass on truths that we learn by listening and listening involves inner listening to the wisdom of others through the study of other people’s words. The important thing to note about the verse from Isaiah is the purpose of our education, and that is, to sustain the weary.
I was commenting to a friend this morning that our generation is doing a great disservice to our children because we have brought them up to be concerned about their education and career and in doing so taught them to look out for themselves only and their own needs. We wonder why they don’t know how to have successful relationships, but the answer is simple - A relationship requires thinking and caring about the other person before thinking about ones own wants.
Our verse puts learning into perspective. If we have knowledge it is not just for our own benefit, but is for the benefit of others.
We see this important aspect in our second reading also, in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians;
Phillippians 2:5-8 “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”
We discover that not only did Jesus serve others but he endured humiliation for the sake of others. Being crucified meant that Jesus appeared to be a criminal. Can you imagine? Jesus was proclaimed as the messiah and the son of God at his entrance to Jerusalem that week, but was then humiliated in the eyes of all by being crucified as a common criminal. He would have seemed a fraud to so many. For surely, many of these people did not know the full story that we read about Jesus, but would only know of his reputation, and that reputation would now be like that of the disgraced television evangelist.
There are times in our lives when we experience the disgust of people who think that we are too fundamentalist in our beliefs.
We can stay silent and all people will think how nice we are and how easy to get on with, or we can speak out and risk the “hostile stare” – or worse.
The truth about Jesus is not always going to be popular. It wasn’t popular even for Jesus and although we know the eternal salvation that his life brought about, it sure didn’t seem that way to so many of Jesus’ contemporaries.
Jesus was crucified because the truth. He claimed to be the Son of God – the messiah – God incarnate. Although he didn’t say it in those words, we know that the implications of his actions screamed this fact to those who were familiar with the scriptures – the Pharisees and religious. There were really only two logical actions that they could take; believe in Jesus and proclaim him “LORD” or reject him, and that would mean proclaiming him guilty of blasphemy. This is what they did.
Today, these are still our only logical choices. You can’t say that Jesus was a prophet. He was not crucified because he was a prophet.
Mark 14:60-65 “Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
They all condemned him as worthy of death. Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, “Prophesy!” And the guards took him and beat him.”
These people decided that Jesus was a liar. Have you ever told the truth but no one believed you? It is a horrible feeling and must have been the most humiliating and frustrating thing for Jesus to be so publicly proclaimed as such by his death on the cross.
And so the story continues and we read about the crucifixion of Jesus. While many hurled abuse and scoffed at his lack of power in the light of his previous claims, there was the centurion who witnessed the way that Jesus died and made up his mind that Jesus was indeed the Son of God:
Mark 14:30-39” At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”
Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”
The evidence of the truth about Jesus was overwhelming and still is, but people will refuse to believe, not because of logic, but because they don’t want to.
The words that Jesus cried out while on the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are a quote from psalm 22. Those who witnessed Jesus death who knew the scriptures should have seen the amazing prophecy being fulfilled by being reminded of this psalm. The psalm describes being mocked for trusting in God and exactly the words that people were saying about Jesus. It also describes his hands and feet being pierced and people casting lots for his clothes. Yet the psalm ends with a proclamation of God’s saving and that this grace of God will be proclaimed to a people yet unborn.
But wait, there is more! There are other prophecies in the scriptures that relate to Jesus and should have been obvious to those familiar with scripture. From our first reading:
Isaiah 50:6-7 “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame.”
At this point in time we have free will. We can freely choose to respond to the truth of Jesus or reject it. Even if we reject the truth, the truth remains. Gravity is a truth that impacts upon us whether we believe in it or not. If we live in denial of this truth we will be hurt.
In the same way, we have an historical man, Jesus. He was crucified because he claimed to be the messiah – the Son of God – God incarnate. He rose from the dead. We can live in denial but the fact remains – and that fact has a huge impact on our lives whether we acknowledge it or not, but one day we will have to face the truth and our instructed tongue will need to proclaim this truth:
Philippians 2: 9 “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
In our hearts most of us say, “Amen” to the truth about Jesus, but do our lives bare witness to the “instruction” and the “learning” that we have or do we live as though we do not believe it? We are given this instruction for the purpose of “sustaining the weary”.... we are meant to pass the instruction on.... A record number of suicides in Mackay in the last week indicate that we need for every believer to really think about our responsibility and respond.....
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