Year C,
Palm Sunday
March
24, 2013
The
Reverend Dr. Brent Was
“Certainly this man was innocent.”
Those are the words of the centurion
overseeing the execution of Jesus Christ.
Innocence. What a word. It conjures images of unspoilt childhood, of
quaint naïveté. Innocence implies
preciousness, something that can be lost, and once it is lost it is gone
forever. Then there is the innocence of,
“I didn’t do anything wrong”, of innocent until proven guilty. When it comes to Our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ, it would seem that that centurion had it comprehensively right,
“Certainly this man was innocent.” But
then again, I do suppose innocence is in the eye of the beholder.
Everywhere Jesus Christ went He healed
people, cast out demons, fed the hungry, taught the meaning of law and
prophecy, had and encouraged deep relationships with people and had and
encouraged deep relationships with God.
He even raised someone from the dead.
Everywhere He went He did the right thing, He was blameless, innocent,
even.
Did Jesus do anything wrong? I mean not in a “without sin” kind of way,
but in a guilty-of-anything-in-the-eyes-of-man kind of way? He ticked people off, pretty much continuously,
but was that wrong, was He guilty of anything?
His glorious procession into Jerusalem, the procession we remembered
with our foot steps this morning, sure it slowed traffic and certainly would
have annoyed some merchants whose business would have been disrupted by the
commotion, and civil/military authorities despise anything unexpected or
unpredictable-seeming, but wrong, guilty?
The money changers might have a case, Jesus certainly violated decorum,
tradition and probably law in driving them out of the Temple, but disobedience
to laws, civil, religious or otherwise, is only wrong if it is applied to just laws.
Jesus was guilty of nothing. He was not leading people astray from society
or the faith. He was not preaching
against the Law or the Prophets. He was
not advocating violence or an overthrow of the standing government or religious
authorities. He certainly did not speak
or act against the sovereignty of God.
Yet even at his birth, people, powerful people largely, sought to
suppress Him, silence Him, kill Him.
Beginning with Herod’s pogrom against infants and toddlers, the
slaughter of the innocents, through the horror of this coming week, everywhere
Jesus went, He was met with hostility, with anger, hatred and open
violence. His own people, the people of
Nazareth tried to throw Him over a cliff, the demoniacs all cried, “Leave us
alone,” the authorities came under cover of darkness to take him away, and the
crowd screamed “Crucify him!” One writer put it, “He came with the gathering
love of a mother hen, yet was met with deadly resistance.” Everywhere He went He met resistance to not
just what He said or did, but more importantly, to what, to who He was. Why is it that we hate the innocent so?
I do mean we. This story, the life and
ministry of Jesus Christ, this day’s raucous Yippie-like political theater, a 1st
century Occupy Zombie March into the capital, the agony of the Passion; this is
a reflection of our nature, our very broken, our very sinful, our very human
nature. We reject the naïveté of “it is
simply the right thing to do” in public policy and in how we live our
lives. We disallow as simplistic,
radical notions of Sabbath, gift and cooperation. We shun honesty and in doing so, condemn the
honest; we shun the disruptive, so we reject the agitator, often the bearer of
simple, blatant truths. We marginalize
those who offer mercy and those in need of mercy. And why? Why do our own agendas become the
most important? Why do our own needs trump the needs of others? Why do our desires and even dreams seem to be
more important than others’ ability to survive?
Why do we sacrifice, or consent to the sacrifice of the innocent that we
may not be put out or inconvenienced? Or
more directly put, why do we think it is ok to be a bystander?
The violence of National Socialism was
unveiled in 1938’s Krystallnacht. Across
Germany religious buildings, businesses and homes of Jews were ransacked. Dietrich Bonheoffer, the great Reform
theologian was a witness to this terror, and notated the haunting 74th
Psalm in his personal Bible with the words, “How long, O God, shall I be a
bystander?”
The cross is a bitter symbol. It is disgusting. Dirty.
Filthy. It is obscene, really. And in its obscenity it demands our
attention. It represents the torturous
execution of the innocent at the hands of corrupt priests, collaborationist
leaders and their Imperial overlords, it doesn’t get any worse than that. Well except for adding us, the throngs of
bystanders along the edges of this scene, bystanders passively watching it all
happen. The cross refuses to allow us to
be bystanders. That is the agonizing
mystery of the symbol of our faith. We
may not, on pain of a death estranged from God, be bystanders any longer.
As we immerse ourselves in the agony
of this week, in the horror of the Passion, imagine what Jesus and His friends
were going through. Imagine not knowing
that Easter was immanent. Imagine not
knowing that this story was going to end up OK.
Imagine not having the blessed assurance that the light shines in the
darkness. truly. Imagine what the world
would look like if we were not just bystanders to the slaughter of the
innocent, if we were not bystanders to the crucifixion of the innocent like our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Imagine
what that would take? Imagine. That is our task this Holy Week. AMEN
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