Embracing the whole story
Palm/Passion Sunday A | Matthew 21:1-11, Matthew 26:14- 27:66
This is Palm Sunday! The day you get handed a leaf from a palm tree and then spend the next hour trying to figure out what to do with it. Do I hold this thing the whole time? Am I allowed to set it on the pew?
In the old days when we shuffled between the bulletin, the prayer book, and the hymnal, Palm Sunday was a real juggling act. Because: four things, two hands.
It is also the start of Holy Week. The time we remember the last days of Jesus’s life and prepare for the resurrection on the third day.
And since the 1950s, in the Roman Catholic tradition, this also became Passion Sunday. And, while many will offer theological reasons why we ought to do palms and the passion at the same time, it is a recent evolution of an older concept of Passiontide, which included the fifth Sunday of Lent as Passion Sunday.
This combining of dates now seems to come more out of a distrust for the people. That we cannot possibly keep Holy Week, well, holy.
For me, the sin of all of this is even greater.
We haven’t simply elevated the Passion in our patterns of life. We have, for centuries, stripped the Passion of its context and then dared to claim it can speak for itself.
We have abused our scripture to distill an easy theology of the cross. One that matches our cultural priorities, of course. And then pretend that it speaks louder than Christ himself.
Keeping A Holy Week
How do we do this? By removing half of the story from our liturgical life of Holy Week. And then, on top of that, truncating the story so that people don’t even have to learn or experience it.
So, what then would it look like for us to keep Holy Week holy?
Sunday would be Palm Sunday, of course. We’d celebrate the Triumphal Entry.
Then, it gets a little messy because each gospel tells it a little different. But for the ease of the church, we’d devote Monday and Tuesday to the Temple.
Perhaps on Holy Monday, we’d cover the infamous “cleansing of the Temple” story. And on Holy Tuesday, we’d talk about the teachings. But there are a ton of teachings, so it wouldn’t be easy.
Then on Holy Wednesday, we’d cover the anointing of Jesus for burial.
Maundy Thursday: Last Supper and the preparation for the Passion.
Good Friday: Obviously the Passion.
Holy Saturday: Nothing. To embrace the absence of the second day.
Finally, Easter, resurrection, and celebration.
What does this restore?
I think we all can get why both the Temple and Table teachings of Holy Week get shoved to other parts of the year. We’re focused on the action of the main event, right?
Except that these teachings aren’t generic or universal. And they aren’t special because they are the last things he teaches.
They are all particular to the Passion context. This isn’t just discipleship stuff. It is the manna they will live on in the desert without him and the means of understanding what’s about to happen!
There is little wonder that he teaches about the cruelty of powerful earthly forces in Matthew, the hypocrisy of their leaders in Mark, the universalizing power of God in John, and the oppression from the Temple in Luke.
Jesus teaches them about empire, destruction, and human evil that will consume us and overwhelm our desires. That stuff that makes it easy to scapegoat and demonize a people because of who they are. From there it is easy to slide into justification.
Whether that’s our ancestors with anti-semitism or our neighbors with racism or gender-based hatred. The will to justify violence against a whole people becomes easier when the context is stripped from us.
Restoring Holy Week is essential to eradicating racism and anti-semitism.
Anyone who reads and meditates on the whole story doesn’t walk away blaming Jews for Jesus’s death. They won’t blame their neighbors at the synagogue if we’re reading about the evil of empire, the murderous order of the state, and Jesus’s commitment to stand with those oppressed by the powerful. Not if the whole story is what we offer.
Showing up on Sunday and jumping from Palms to Passion though? What else do we expect to happen?
This is more than a week.
Of course it is. When our lectionary routinely leaves us criticizing the Pharisees, or in John: “the Jews,” we are left with episodic reminders like we’re attending worship around the show 24. That fantasy show in which everyone’s a terrorist and torture actually works. We can show up week-to-week and get a new installment with another reason to hate somebody else.
The liturgy can speak for us. Scripture can speak to us. But we can also misunderstand it when we don’t remember what the whole thing is about.
We can’t just get to these teachings later. Or pretend the narrative isn’t important. What if we watched The Lord of the Rings up to Bilbo’s birthday party and then picked it up halfway through Return of the King? Well, that’s the essential story they say. No it’s not!
The Passion doesn’t speak on its own. But if we also don’t have the guts to deal with the whole story, it’ll speak things Jesus doesn’t want.
What we miss this year
Year A, is urgency. After Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, he heads to the Temple and overturns tables of the money-changers and dove-sellers. He challenges Temple leaders for selling out their faith for power. He teaches about expanding the circle and bringing in people the comfortable don’t want.
He denounces the powerful and warns of the destructive power of empire.
And then he teaches his followers about urgency. With dark parables of dysfunctional power.
It is all heavy and frightening. But then Jesus ends with the opposite. He teaches us how we might know our place with God in the end: if we’ve served the poor. Literally. With our own hands. If we’ve served the hungry or hurt. With our own hands.
All of that darkness and worry — none of that matters to us if we have shown love to people who need it. Here. Now. If we’re following Jesus, we have no reason to worry! Because this is what we will be doing. We know the way because we’ve been heading there the whole time.
And then later, they are in Bethany. A woman comes with an alabaster jar. She pours its contents on Jesus to anoint him. Judas argues—too extravagant and wasteful!—but Jesus rebukes him. And says:
“Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”
-Matthew 26:13
What to do. What glory in the face of God looks like. That’s what Holy Week is about.
That’s what we skip every year. The very thing Jesus says will come “wherever the good news is proclaimed.” In remembrance of her. The mystery woman who anoints Jesus for burial on Holy Wednesday. The gospel is her story.
Purpose
All our preferences, expectations, and traditions that come with us into Holy Week each year are rewarded by skipping the hardest work of Holy Week. Our tradition, and its obsession, not of Holy Week or even with the whole of the Passion, but of the cross—of death—is blind without the rest.
Our theology is not born on the cross. Nor is it born in the empty tomb. It is born in Jesus. In his life, his teachings, his mission. And in his very substance. A substance that lives and dies and lives again and ascends.
We follow a baby who is born, a teacher who guides, a healer who transforms, even something we have no theological language for. A wizard or elementalist who can control the weather. And an alchemist who can turn water into wine.
He is the host who can feed everybody at the party. And raise the dead.
He could do all these things and he told us to follow him with our crosses. Because we are called to do this work too. We are called to be miracle-workers. The kind he describes way back in chapter 5. Peacemakers.
Trying to distill Jesus’s purpose in life down to dying on the cross for some metaphysical human reward is a betrayal of our lives in Christ.
We are called to be part of so much more.
The Kin-dom. Here as in heaven. Now. Whether we’re ready or not. With us. Because we’re the ones who are here.
This is the work of Holy Week.
So that when we arrive at the Passion we aren’t just prepared for the loss. We are prepared for doing the work without him.
And then, when we arrive here the following Sunday, we can be, once again, surprised to rejoice in his presence. That he isn’t gone. He continues to be with us. Here.
He makes us see that we are never alone. Ever. Ever. We always have neighbors. And we always have him. Whenever and wherever we gather.
God continues to reanimate old bones with new life. And we have so very much more life yet in us.