This Week: Sunday of the Passion (Year B)
Gospel: Mark 14:1-15:47
With the Passion, there is plenty to preach on and most preachers have ideas. The one I steer clear of is this: “let the Passion speak for itself.” This is a lamentable argument and offered by the faithful who are most skeptical of their neighbors.
While it is certainly true that the Passion speaks loudly, and tradition has, at times, encouraged a forgoing of preaching, it is another leap to say that this is actually a good idea.
Here are five significant reasons for helping the Passion speak.
1. The Passion can speak antisemitism.
I’m not going to debate the nature of scripture or what counts as antisemitic. What is abundantly clear is that parts of the Passion narrative are problematic. And doubly so when read from John. It doesn’t matter what it says. Our saying it and our hearing it transmits it.
As Amy-Jill Levine reminds us, all our attempts to deal with the text are insufficient.
“Each of the typical approaches has problems. The best solution would be to change the lectionary.”
— Amy-Jill Levine
It is precisely because we are proclaiming something and saying this is what matters. So if we then act like it matters and then say nothing, what are we even doing?
2. The Passion can misinform the gospel.
This is a hot take, I know, but hear me out. The Passion, for all of its familiarity, detail, and cinematic quality, reveals much about the last moments of Jesus’s life. But it shares very little directly about how we are to respond to it.
The Passion doesn’t just happen. When read all of the chapters leading up to it first, we get more than a vision of sacrificial love. But the willing rejection of the world’s preference for assuming power by crushing one’s enemies. Without the wider context, the story being revealed doesn’t fit the mission Jesus fulfills.
To even know that he is the savior, let alone a different savior, requires more than the Passion. It won’t speak to this.
Instead, we can labor under the impression that this is only about Jesus and not the world.
3. We’re in a post-Christendom era.
The idea that the gospel is effective in communicating by itself is an intellectually fascinating point of conversation. And yet, as many of us can attest, the reading of the Bible doesn’t mean people “get it”. This is increasingly difficult in the present era after Christendom when we can’t expect people to know things.
4. We need more why.
The action of the Passion is on clear display. But not the why. Context is always key. Yet we scrub that from the lectionary around the Passion and relegate much of it to late in Ordinary Time.
Even this, however, isn’t obvious. The most obvious reason we should see the problem of this is historical:
5. Christians blame Jews and refuse to blame the Roman Empire
Even the gospel narratives themselves, particularly from John and Matthew, guide our attention to an entire people. But they at least make it clear who actually kills Jesus and why. That Rome kills Jesus. And the most obvious motivation is that Jesus is a troublemaker.
Historically, death by crucifixion was only for insurrectionists. People don’t just get crucified for stealing stuff or, in Jesus’s case, Jewish heresy. It was a means of keeping people in line and not threatening the power of Roman occupation.
Therefore, many Hebrews in leadership feared that Rome would come down on all of them if they didn’t control their own. But of course, you wouldn’t know this if you are sitting in a pew and hearing the Passion.
For seventeen centuries, the church has mimicked the sin of those chief priests and protected themselves by covering for empire.
And we still do.
Maybe this isn’t what you want to preach.
And I would understand completely. Preaching an anti-empire sermon tends to hit too close to home for many.
But I think you have to preach something. Because saying the Passion is effective by itself is like saying TV is an effective babysitter for children. In one sense, it is true, but in another…not so much.
The Passion has rich themes to explore. And most of us really do need to hear them again.