2nd Gospel for March 24, 2024 (Liturgy of the Passion)

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Mark 14:1-15:47
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OBSERVE:

The climax of Mark’s Gospel approaches.  The growing and intense conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem reaches its culmination in the violent Passion of Jesus. Because the lectionary text for the Gospel of Mark is so lengthy, I must paint this scene with broad strokes.  But in so many ways, the Passion Narrative from Mark’s Gospel speaks for itself.

It has been noted by many Biblical interpreters that when Mark’s Gospel reaches the account of the Passion, there is a distinct change of tone and pace.  The first thirteen chapters of Mark move swiftly, almost breathlessly from one miracle to the next, one parable to the next.  For example, Mark uses the word immediately forty-one times — far more than any other book in the Bible — denoting action.  But thirty-eight of the occasions this word is used occur prior to chapter 14.

The pace slows down in Mark’s Gospel. The tone becomes darker. Mark lingers over these last few days of Jesus.

There are also contrasts here. There is an ominous sense of foreboding cast over these two chapters, as this passage begins with an introduction of the imminent feast of the Passover and the unleavened bread. The chief priests and scribes are explicit about their plot to arrest and kill him — but they are also cynical:

For they said, “Not during the feast, because there might be a riot of the people.”

But then there is the contrasting scene.  Jesus is a guest at the table of Simon the leper (presumably someone that he has healed?) Perhaps this was a feast of celebration and gratitude given by Simon.  And then:

a woman came having an alabaster jar of ointment of pure nard—very costly. She broke the jar, and poured it over his head.

When there is grumbling that this ointment was worth about a year’s wages for a farm worker and could have been put to use for the poor, Jesus defends her.  There will be other opportunities to help the poor, but his time is short.  Her deed is prophetic:

She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for the burying. Most certainly I tell you, wherever this Good News may be preached throughout the whole world, that which this woman has done will also be spoken of for a memorial of her.

Note that it is a woman who honors Jesus appropriately. In that patriarchal culture, a woman is more akin to a slave than an equal. And as we follow the narrative, note who is near when he is dying — and also who will become the first witnesses of the risen Jesus.

Now, the darkness grows deeper.  There is betrayal by one of his disciples, and collusion with the religious authorities who, as we already know, seek the death of Jesus.  Here there is irony.  As Jesus prepares solemnly for his death, the chief priests are described as glad and offer Judas Iscariot a price for Jesus.

Then there is the occasion of the Passover, which was normally an occasion of great joy as Israel remembered their deliverance from bondage in Egypt.  But this feast would be overshadowed by apprehension among the disciples, and the prescience of Jesus.  He knows what is to come, which they cannot know.

There is a kind of “secret signal” — two disciples are told to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water. (Normally, carrying water was a task assigned to women.)  He will lead them to an upstairs guestroom for their Passover meal.  All of this seems prearranged.

And at the supper itself, Jesus casts a shadow over the occasion by predicting his betrayal — by one of his own disciples!  What was normally a festive meal had certainly become depressing! Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t identify Judas Iscariot in Mark’s Gospel, leaving each of the twelve to search their own hearts, each asking:

“Surely not I?”

Jesus then transforms this historic and traditional Passover Seder into a sacrament that will be celebrated in the church until he returns:

As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body.”  He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.  Most certainly I tell you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew in God’s Kingdom.”

Here Jesus offers two predictions concerning his own fate — one concerning his tragic death, but the second concerning his ultimate triumph.  There is bitter death signified by the bread and wine — but there is also the promise and hope of ultimate and eschatological victory.  Jesus is able even now to look beyond his impending violent death toward his resurrection and eventual return.

However, the sorrow of the disciples is only begun.  Jesus predicts that they will all stumble because of him that night — more specifically he quotes Scripture, from Zechariah 13:7:

 ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’

This is precisely what is about to happen. And yet once again he also foresees his own resurrection:

 However, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.

Once again there is the contrast of his death and his resurrection — darkness and light.

Peter’s famous contention that he won’t leave Jesus’ side, no matter what, is met with brutal predictive honesty:

Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you, that you today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

We note that all of the disciples made the same protest that Peter did — that they would die with Jesus before they denied him. But of course Jesus would be proven correct by subsequent events.

The picture we have is that Jesus is wrestling with nearly everyone, including the priests and even his own disciples.  Only the woman who anoints his head with oil at the beginning of the scene seems to intuitively understand him.  The disciples, who have spent so much time with him over the previous short years, still don’t get it.

And on the Mount of Olives, in the place called Gethsemane, this struggle comes to a head.  (Gethsemane means olive press, because that’s where the olives were crushed into oil. How appropriate for the one whose body was to be broken and poured out!).

The three closest disciples (Peter, James, and John) can’t even stay awake while Jesus prays, even though he has told them how troubled he is.  All of the disciples have been charged to pray for him. Yet he is alone with the Father.

It might be said that this moment in the Garden is the climax of his struggle, and that he is perhaps even wrestling with God the Father.  But we note that he addresses his Father as Abba.  Many scholars suggest that this is the familiar and intimate term of endearment that a child might call his father, like “daddy.”

But we see also that despite his preference that he not endure the cross, Jesus surrenders his will to the purpose for which he has come:

He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.  He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire.”

There is a pattern of threes in this passage.  Jesus tells Peter he will deny him three times. Jesus finds his disciples sleeping three times. He is on his own. He says of them:

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The third time it is too late for them to pray. Jesus senses that Judas and the mob are coming.  We marvel at the hypocrisy of Judas Iscariot, who says to the chief priests, scribes and elders that he will identify Jesus with a kiss, and then calls out to Jesus with the honorific title “Rabbi! Rabbi!”

Jesus knows that this stealthy, shameful arrest by night is an act of cowardice on the part of the religious leaders:

Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to seize me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you didn’t arrest me. But this is so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.

There is some violent resistance by one of the disciples, but it is brief.  After one cuts off a servant’s ear, the disciples all flee into the night. Their escape is so panicked that one of the young men’s loose robe is torn from him by those seeking to arrest him, and he flees into the darkness.  Some early commentators speculated that because this detail is unique to Mark’s Gospel that the young man was John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark himself.  We just don’t know for sure.

Somehow, despite the terror of the arrest, Peter follows the procession of this mob to the court of the high priest — from a safe distance.

Again, there is a fascinating contrast — two trials, if you will.  Jesus is on trial for his life before the council — the Sanhedrin.  Meanwhile, Peter’s integrity and loyalty are on trial in the courtyard while he warms himself by the fire.

The accusations made against Jesus are false and contradictory.  No legitimate court could convict based on spurious testimony.  However, it is the words of Jesus himself that seal his fate:

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.”

From the perspective of the high priest and the members of the council, this is blasphemy and heresy.  The description that Jesus offers of himself is apocalyptic and Messianic.  When he calls himself the Son of Man he is alluding to the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. But surely it cannot have been lost on some of these Hebrew scholars that when Jesus says I am, that phrase evokes the holy name of Yahweh from Exodus 3!  Not only is he claiming to be Son of Man, but he is also claiming to be Son of God!

The consequences are dire. The high priest tears his clothes, which is a sign of deep mourning — but the high priest was never to tear his robe, according to the law (see Leviticus 21:10).  This suggests the intensity of the priest’s reaction to the words of Jesus.

Then there is the beginning of the brutal violence and contemptuous humiliation that rains down upon Jesus.  This will not stop with these council members and officers of the temple guard. He will be abused also by the Roman legionnaires.  As prophesied in Scripture, Jesus would be beaten, spat upon, lashed, mocked — all prior to his actual execution.

Meanwhile, Peter’s “trial” was also reaching a climax.  A maid accuses him of being with the Nazarene and then begins to harangue him to others nearby — presumably so that some of the officers might arrest him.  Peter fails the test but fulfills the prophecy of Jesus. Before the rooster crows twice, Peter has denied Jesus three times, finally becoming quite vehement:

he began to curse, and to swear, “I don’t know this man of whom you speak!” The rooster crowed the second time. Peter remembered the word, how that Jesus said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” When he thought about that, he wept.

Because Israel (known as Judea in Palestine at that time) was under Roman authority, there was a clear division of powers. The Jewish religious authorities could manage their religious affairs, but only under the close supervision of Rome. Therefore it was necessary to seek a civil judgment against Jesus.

When the night is over, Jesus is hailed before Procurator Pilate.  Pilate’s question does not relate to any religious significance of the claims of Jesus. He is concerned with only one thing:

Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

The implications are clear. Pilate must find a political pretext to execute this prisoner.  Religion is irrelevant, since the Jews had a special dispensation from Rome to preserve their own religious traditions. But a king who might raise a rebellion against Rome? That’s another matter.

Jesus won’t satisfy Pilate with an answer, except an enigmatic one:

He answered, “So you say.”

Pilate’s attempt to find an escape clause to this dilemma backfires. When he offers the people a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, they choose Barabbas. This is a disaster for Pilate. As far as he is concerned, Jesus is merely a religious fanatic who gathered a crowd in the countryside. But Barabbas was the modern-day equivalent of a political terrorist:

There was one called Barabbas, bound with his fellow insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

He, and the two men who were to be crucified with Jesus, may well have been Zealots who advocated a violent uprising and overthrow of their Roman occupiers.

It is important to remember that the cross was a form of execution normally reserved for sedition or treason — like the violent insurgents who had committed murder — or a man who claimed to be a king.  This is why, when the Roman soldiers mock Jesus with a purple robe of royalty, and press a crown of thorns onto his head, they hailed him as King of the Jews.  That mockery, and the cross itself, was a sign to the population of Jerusalem — “this is what Rome does to royal pretenders. The only true power here is Rome.”

Flogged, beaten, sleepless, Jesus carries his cross to Golgotha.  Mark doesn’t tell us that Jesus falls, or is too weak to carry the cross because of a loss of blood.  Floggings were often a death sentence in themselves.

The soldiers command a foreigner in the crowd to carry his cross.  His name is given — Simon of Cyrene. Again, this is a fascinating detail. Cyrene was a Greek and Roman city in modern day Libya — North Africa! This doesn’t suggest that Simon was a Gentile — there were Jewish settlers in Egypt as well as all over the ancient world in the Mediterranean area and the Near East.  And it would not have been unusual for a Jew to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover — especially bringing his sons.

And the mention of his sons, Alexander and Rufus, is also fascinating. Mark seems to assume that they are known to his readers.  Some scholars speculate that they became a part of the Christian community after witnessing the horrors of the cross. The names Alexander and Rufus do appear in some of the Epistles.

It was at 9:00 a.m. that they arrived at the very public hill of execution called Golgotha (that is, the place of the skull). Again, we are reminded that this execution is a public example, and a deterrent to would-be insurrectionists.  The charge against Jesus, inscribed above his head, made this clear:

 THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Our translation says that the other two crucified with him were robbers, but other translators suggest that they were actually Jewish rebels or insurgents, arrested with Barabbas after the recent riots in Jerusalem.  Again, Mark spots the fulfillment of Scripture, this time from Isaiah 53:12:

 “He was numbered with transgressors.”

This reference to Isaiah 53 points to the famous passage describing the Suffering Servant, which the church has come to see as a vivid picture of Jesus as the Messiah who suffers vicariously for all sinners.

Now Jesus is completely abandoned — almost.  In Mark’s Gospel, people passing by on the road taunt him.  The chief priests and scribes demean their own dignity and mock him. And in Mark’s Gospel, both of those crucified with him also insult him.  And after darkness falls on the face of the earth (from about noon to three o’clock), it seems that Jesus feels abandoned even by his God, quoting Psalm 22:

At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The taunts of the spectators, and the only words uttered by Jesus on the cross in Mark’s Gospel, are a little problematical.  The mockers are actually on the right track. Jesus did promise to rebuild the temple, but in their wooden literalism they fail to understand he spoke of his own resurrection — which would occur in three days. And in a paradoxical sense, when the religious authorities said “He saved others. He can’t save himself,” they were correct.  If he saved himself by coming down from the cross, he would be unable to save others. By losing his life, he saves billions upon billions.

And when Jesus cried out to God, was it truly a cry of desolation or a prayer of hope? (For a more complete treatment of this dilemma, please see: https://soarlectionarybiblestudy.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/gospel-for-april-9-2017-liturgy-of-the-passion/).  We are reminded that Jesus is dying slowly of asphyxiation on the cross. He hasn’t the breath to recite all of Psalm 22, which seems clearly to describe the effects of a suffering victim, with eerie similarity to a crucifixion. He certainly can’t hold out until the verses near the end of the Psalm, that ring with hope:

You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! 

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:23-24).

Typically, Jesus is misunderstood by those standing nearby. They think he is calling Elijah to rescue him.

The only other utterance from Jesus seems to be a cry of either agony — or triumph:

 Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit.

We are told that the veil of the temple was torn in half, from top to bottom.  The veil in the temple was not a mere sheer curtain. According to the ancient historian Josephus, the veil in Herod’s temple was as thick as a man’s hand (about four inches thick) and 60 feet high and 20 feet wide.

This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.  The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go.  The following items were in the Holy Place — the table for the showbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in the book of Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.  The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus the true high priest has opened the way into the presence of God.

Perhaps a massive earthquake, such as was described in Matthew 27:54, might have caused such a rupture. No wonder the Roman centurion said:

 “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Perhaps there were a combination of factors that contributed to this startling confession of faith by a Gentile. The natural phenomenon must have moved him — the deep darkness over the land for three hours, the earthquake. Or perhaps there was something he saw and felt as he watched the Son of God die.

Earlier, I wrote that everyone seemed to have rejected or abandoned Jesus — the spectators, the religious authorities, and some would say even God (although I disagree. See Respond section below).  But there were some who did not:

There were also women watching from afar, among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served him; and many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

These are the same three women mentioned by name who will bring spices to anoint his dead body after Jesus is placed in the tomb — and the same women who are the first witnesses to the resurrection.

And ironically, it is not one of his closest disciples who has the courage to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus on Preparation Day, the day before Sabbath. We may presume they are still in hiding. No, it is Joseph of Arimathaea, a member of the same Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus:

who also himself was looking for God’s Kingdom.

Obviously, like the centurion, Joseph of Arimathaea saw something in Jesus that had deeply reached him.

Pilate seems surprised that Jesus is already dead:

Pilate marveled if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead long.

Jesus is wound in a linen cloth and laid in a tomb cave. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses note where he has been buried. They plan to return when the Sabbath is over and anoint his corpse.

APPLY:  

Just who is this Jesus, and what is our response to him, and to his violent death?

To the chief priests and scribes, and the religious elite of the day, Jesus was a heretic who needed to be eliminated before he corrupted their precious temple worship, and perhaps incurred the wrath of Rome for stirring up trouble.

To the disciples, he was their beloved Rabbi, their Teacher, who had taught them of the Kingdom of God, and then had demonstrated its presence with his powerful signs. But when he spoke of his own death and resurrection, they couldn’t understand him. Not yet.

To Pilate, and the Roman overlords, he was a political problem to be solved. What happened to Jesus was a matter of indifference. If he could be released without consequences, that would be fine. If not, he could be crucified as a matter of convenience to appease the priests and avoid trouble with Rome.

To the women who had been treated as equals and human beings of sacred worth for the first time in their lives, he was Lord — and they demonstrated their reverence by anointing his head with oil, and watching in grief as he died.

To Joseph of Arimathaea — well, we’re not sure what he thought of Jesus.  We simply know what he did.  As in the deuterocanonical (or Apocryphal) book of Tobit, he perhaps saw the burial of a fellow Jew as a sacred duty. But we suspect that it meant much more than that. He was looking for the kingdom, and perhaps he’d caught a glimpse of the kingdom in the eyes of the King.

But most importantly, what is he to us?  Many today dismiss Jesus as a non-historical character invented by men to support a corrupt institution. Some think of him as a fine moral character whose teachings were part of the ethical development and evolution of our civilization.

That is too easy. Many of us find ourselves reading the Passion account and determine, as many Christians have over the centuries, that these details are too vivid and too realistic to be fiction. They have the feel of truth.

And perhaps we find ourselves in the same position as the centurion. We doubt that he had much contact with Jesus prior to this execution.  But there is something here that grips him, that speaks to his spirit, and that causes him to declare:

“Truly this man was the Son of God!”

It is interesting that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus never calls himself the Son of God.  This is the title given Jesus by Mark in the beginning of the book:

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1).

And the unclean spirits recognize him for who he is as the Son of God.  But Jesus invariably refers to himself as the Son of Man.  Perhaps this is because he is stressing his human nature, and his role as the Messianic figure of prophecy. He knows that he is the Son of God.

However, it is when we recognize that he is the Son of God that we truly come to faith. And it is then that we know that God has become one of us, with all the weakness and vulnerability that is revealed on the cross, so that he might demonstrate his power as the crucified and risen God.

RESPOND: 

I sometimes read history and wonder, “What would I have done?” Would I have stood my ground when the Redcoats charged up Breed’s Hill in Boston? Would I have spoken up against Hitler in Nazi Germany? But more importantly, would I have stayed close to Jesus that night when he was arrested?

I’d like to think that I would have remained near him, like the women did.  Of course, the Roman legionnaires and the religious authorities likely took no notice of the mourning women.  In that culture long ago, women were of little consequence.

But the sorry record of the male disciples makes me doubt myself. If Peter, James and John ran, or kept their distance, or even denied him, do I really think I would do any better?

They did forsake him. But here’s another pressing question — Did the Father forsake his Son? This is a theological conundrum.

I have heard sermons over the years that insisted that when Jesus was on the cross, the Father “turned his face away from his Son.” I understand where they’re coming from. When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 it does seem to be a cry of abandonment. And Paul tells us that:

For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I am not troubled by the fact that Jesus assumes my sin in order to transfer his righteousness to me. This is the purpose of the sacrifice — an exchange of sin for righteousness.  Jesus does not commit sin (we know from Scripture that he is without sin — see 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15), but he assumes our sin.  Only one who is fully divine is without sin. And only one who is fully human can fully enter into our human experience and take our sin upon himself.

And that’s what troubles me.

Jesus is so clearly established in the New Testament as the only begotten Son of the Father, the Word made flesh. He is God.  Not merely God-like, but God. His own claim is that he is uniquely united to the Father:

I and the Father are one (John 10:30).

And he decisively answers Philip’s request that the disciples may see the Father:

He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? (John 14:9-10).

This is the basis of the classic doctrine of the nature of Jesus as fully God and yet fully man, as understood by the church. And it is the basis of the Trinity, that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity.

How then could God the Father abandon himself?  It seems to be ontologically impossible. Though there is a distinction of Persons in the Trinity, there is still complete unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This explains my difficulty with the theory that “the Father turned his face away from his Son.”

I heard about a little girl who said “I love Jesus, but I hate his Father.”  In her innocence, I believe she missed the point. It is not the Father who crucifies the Son — it is evil itself, manifested in human sin.

Therefore I can come to only one conclusion — the Father didn’t turn his face away from his Son. There may be a hint of this in Luke’s account of the last moments of Jesus:

Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Having said this, he breathed his last (Luke 24:46).

On the cross God the Father embraces his Son, as the one who has been perfectly obedient even unto death.  The Father doesn’t watch this horror from a distance — he is as near to the suffering Son as he has ever been, watching with deep love.  Grieving, mourning perhaps because of what human evil had done — but absent? Never.

In the words of Charles Wesley’s powerful hymn, Arise, My Soul, Arise:

The Father hears Him pray,
His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away
The presence of His Son.
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.

It is the God-Man who dies on our behalf, who tastes the worst that evil can deliver (even, according to ancient church doctrine and Scripture, descending into Hell itself), and then is raised to life by God.  This descent and ascent is no mere myth. Jesus has descended to rescue us from sin, death and the Devil, and has re-ascended with us in his arms.  As Ephesians 4 tells us:

“When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.” Now this, “He ascended”, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things (Ephesians 4:8-10).

So, forsaken by all but God, because Jesus is God incarnate, Jesus sets free the prisoners from their dungeon.  Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Lord, I confess I have said and written too much about a mystery that I cannot begin to understand — your Passion, death and Resurrection, your ineffable nature, the Trinity.  Please forgive what I have said amiss; but lead me again to the same confession made by the centurion at the foot of the cross: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Amen.

PHOTO:
“It is Finished!” by Delirious? is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 2, 2023 (Liturgy of the Passion)

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death”
The photographer, Fr. Lawrence Lew, offers these thoughts:
This Station in marble bas relief is by Fr Aelred Whitacre OP, from Blackfriars in Oxford, the Dominican priory in that great university town.
It is striking that Fr Aelred, reflecting Thomistic teaching, depicts the dehumanizing effect of sin, hence this striking depiction of Pilate. The serpent shows that Pilate, in choosing to condemn an innocent man, has colluded with the Evil One. Incidentally, it is thought that Tolkien’s visual conception of orcs might have been inspired by seeing this depiction of Pilate.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 26:14-27:66
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The shock of the events recorded here in Matthew’s Gospel is lost on most modern Christians simply because they have become so familiar.  Ask a child who has been raised in Sunday School what Jesus has done for us and the child will likely rattle off the words “he died for our sins.”  These words would likely be delivered somewhat mechanically, as if by rote.

Looking at this account as if reading the Gospel for the first time would be truly shocking.  The first-time reader, starting at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, would have first encountered the account of Jesus’ miraculous birth, with its declaration that this child would be called Immanuel, God with us.  The God-head of this child would have been confirmed as he grew into a man and was baptized, with the descent of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father that attested that he was the Son of God.  His miraculous works of healing and feeding the multitudes and commanding the forces of nature would have further illustrated the divine nature of Jesus.  His Transfiguration would certainly have confirmed it.  And his teaching, as though providing a New Law, was with the authority of God.  His triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, welcomed by the throngs, would have authenticated his credentials as the Son of David and the Messiah.

So, the events of Matthew 26:14-27:66 would certainly be shocking to someone coming to this account for the first time.  Certainly the reader might have picked up hints from the murmuring of the Pharisees and the Saduccees and the Priests.  And Jesus himself offered foreshadowings of the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem.

But still, the events in this passage reveal the violence of those who plotted against Jesus. They also reveal his own human vulnerability.  The Son of God is also the Son of Man, who can be beaten and tormented and nailed to a cross.

With such a long passage, it is necessary to summarize some of the events — that Jesus is betrayed by one of his own disciples, predicts his own death, is denied by one of his closest disciples, stands trial in a hastily convened court, and is condemned to die by a foreign ruler.   

We will view these shocking events through the characters that appear, and the dramatic action that follows.  First, there is the shock of betrayal by Judas Iscariot, who approaches the chief priests to offer them Jesus — for a price.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we receive only one hint that Judas will betray Jesus (Matthew 10:4).  But this foreshadowing comes with no explanation of Judas’s motives.  Still, when the disciples are gathered to celebrate the Passover feast, Jesus knows what Judas will do.  Jesus announces that one of them will betray him.  The disciples search their own hearts and ask with deep sorrow:

“It isn’t me, is it, Lord?”

Jesus’ answer is cryptic — that whoever dips his unleavened bread into the charoset dish typical of Passover, would betray him.  Eating in a communal manner like this was an intimate experience.  Jesus was suggesting that the one who betrayed him was a close friend.

Judas is disingenuous, as though to deflect suspicion from himself.  He parrots the other disciples, and says:

It isn’t me, is it, Rabbi?

Unlike the other disciples, though, he calls Jesus Rabbi instead of Lord.  Though subtle, this may suggest he is disavowing any faith in Jesus as the Messiah.

Jesus has warned him, along with the others:

The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.

Following the trajectory of Judas’s fateful decision (sometime between the adjournment of the Passover meal and Jesus’ climb to the Mount of Olives), Judas has gathered a multitude with swords and clubs under the authority of the chief priests and elders of the people.  He knows Jesus’ plans for the evening, and leads this armed rabble to the Mount of Olives.  Again, there is the sign of hypocritical intimacy:

Now he who betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, “Whoever I kiss, he is the one. Seize him.”  Immediately he came to Jesus, and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Despite this betrayal, Jesus seems almost tender toward Judas.  Jesus says to him, Friend, why are you here? — although Jesus knows precisely why Judas has come.

We follow the next phase in Judas’s part of this drama.  It is only after Jesus is hailed before the council of the high priest and the elders late that night, and then turned over to Pontius Pilate for Roman justice the next morning, that Judas seems to experience remorse.  He attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver, and confesses his sin in betraying innocent blood.  His reparations of the money are refused, and he throws it at the feet of the priests and leaves — and hangs himself.

Was this a sign of repentance?  Was he forever condemned?  Literally, God alone knows.

Let us return to the other characters who reclined with Jesus at the Passover feast.  All of the disciples were searching their own hearts about Jesus’ prediction that one of them would betray him.  But when Jesus again warns them that they would all stumble because of the events that night, Peter can’t stand it.  He protests that he alone would remain faithful, even if all of them fell away.  Jesus singles out Peter specifically with the painful prediction that Peter himself would deny him three times before morning, when the rooster crowed.

To his credit, Peter was one of the three closest friends whom Jesus asked to stay near when Jesus went to Gethsemane to pray.  But Peter’s first stumble came even before he denied Jesus — three times Peter, along with James and John, fell asleep, even after Jesus asked them directly to stay awake and watch with him in prayer.

Matthew doesn’t tell us that Peter is the one who strikes off the ear of the high priest’s servant with a sword.  John’s Gospel supplies that detail (John 18:10).  But the Gospel of Matthew does show that Peter had just enough courage to follow Jesus and the armed band to the courtyard of the house of Caiphas — where Peter withers in fear.  When asked if he is one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter denies it, with a curse.

So, let us turn to Jesus and his words and actions in these events.  Jesus is very clearly aware of his role in this drama.  Jesus knows the script.  He predicts that he will be delivered up to death as it is written in the Scriptures.  The Passover meal becomes, in his hands, a new sign of remembrance for his followers.  The meal that celebrated the deliverance of his people from slavery some 1200 years earlier would now be transformed in order to celebrate his sacrificial death, which liberates from slavery to sin.

Jesus also very consciously refers to Scripture as he begins the death march to the cross — quoting Zechariah 13:7 to predict the scattering of his followers when he is arrested.  When the armed rabble come, and one of his followers offers resistance, Jesus reproves him — Jesus knows his own power to call down heavenly reinforcements, but he cites the Scriptures that prophesy that his death must happen. And of course he quotes Psalm 22:1 in the so-called Cry of Dereliction from the cross:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus does know what awaits him.  And yet we see the tension between his divine nature and his human nature, even if only briefly.  When he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asks:

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me.

Facing death, and the full brunt of evil on the cross, Jesus is honest.  If possible, he would prefer not to suffer the physical and spiritual suffering that is to come.  However, the tension is resolved when he prays:

nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.

If we subscribe to the classical Christology of the church, as I do, we see the two natures of Jesus here in this moment — he is fully human and fully divine.  Both natures are in harmony, and he is completely surrendered to the saving work for which he was destined.

Jesus is fully aware of his latent power as Son of God, and his authority over all things.  His response to Peter’s feeble attempt to defend his Lord is telling:

do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?

But there are two reasons that such supernatural militance isn’t called for at this time — first, violent reprisal will only escalate violence (all those who take the sword will die by the sword), and that is not his purpose in coming.  And second, all that is happening is in order to fulfill the Scriptures.

Jesus does chide the crowd for an excessive show of force — coming at night, armed to the teeth, as if they are seeking a dangerous criminal.  After all, he’s been teaching publicly in the temple all week.

Jesus continues to exert his quiet, peaceful authority when he is hailed before a hastily summoned council of the priests and elders.  This court isn’t even held in a public venue, but in the home of Caiaphas the high priest.  None of the false testimony against him holds water — until he is asked the one question that really matters:

The high priest answered him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

The response of Jesus suggests that by bringing this very charge, the high priest has acknowledged that Jesus is either the Son of God, or he is a fraud.  And the life and ministry of Jesus leaves no room for the charge that he is a phony.  Moreover, Jesus confirms his identity with a prophecy:

Jesus said to him, “You have said it. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky.”

This is apocalyptic language that is unmistakably Biblical.  Jesus may well be referring to Daniel:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.  There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14).

Now the high priest has his “smoking gun” — all the evidence he thinks he needs to convict Jesus.  The high priest tears his robe, which is a sign of grief and lamentation.  But the Levitical law forbade the high priest from these customary signs of mourning (Leviticus 21:10).  The high priest is conveying a serious source of grief by doing this — he is accusing Jesus of blasphemy.

The penalty for blasphemy in Jewish law is death.  Jesus is physically abused and abased by these council members.  But they are an occupied nation, with Rome as their overlord.  They have no authority to execute a prisoner.

So the next morning Jesus must stand before Governor Pontius Pilate.  The Roman official’s concern is not with religious charges against Jesus, but with political sedition and revolution.  Messiah, or anointed one, is also the title of a king.  This is the only charge that concerns Pilate.  But Jesus leaves Pilate to make up his own mind:

 Now Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus said to him, “So you say.”

This is essentially the same answer Jesus gives to the high priest, which suggests that Jesus is tacitly confirming the charge.

Pilate’s role in this trial and execution are critical.  Pilate had already incurred the displeasure of the priests and elders with some of his previous public policies.  According to the Jewish historians of that time (e.g., Philo and Josephus), Pilate had offended the priests by introducing Roman standards and shields on temple grounds — this had been a violation of the second commandment forbidding graven images.  And he had appropriated money designated for the temple and used it to build aqueducts.  When the Jews protested these acts, Pilate ordered his troops to respond with violence.  It might be said he had two strikes against him already.  More complaints to the Emperor might be devastating to Pilate’s career.

Not even the intercession of Pilate’s wife could avert the inevitable.

Pilate’s contrivance, to force the crowd into a decision, backfires.  He offers a choice of Barabbas or Jesus.  They cry for Barabbas to be released, and Jesus to be crucified.  Pilate now finds himself in a corner that he himself created.   He is convinced of Jesus’ innocence.  When the crowd demands that Jesus be crucified, Pilate pleads for him:

But the governor said, “Why? What evil has he done?”

His efforts to avert violence are about to backfire.  Normally the Roman Procurator didn’t come to Jerusalem except in times of unrest, as a show of force to prevent uprisings.  Now, this trial was threatening to become the source of a riot.

Pilate’s highly symbolic act, washing his hands of Jesus’ blood, is a sham.  A crucifixion was a penalty exacted by Rome for political crimes (sedition, treason, revolution), not civil crimes.  By permitting it, Pilate was responsible for it.  And it was Roman soldiers who carried out the execution.

The Roman soldiers continue the abuse of Jesus.  Normally a flogging was considered a possible death sentence.  They mock him and humiliate him with the threadbare trappings of royalty — a scarlet robe, a crown of thorns, and a reed for a scepter — because by dehumanizing him they make an example of Jesus.  And it is easier to kill someone whose humanity has been devalued and objectified.

It should be noted that Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified, was not far from one of the city gates, along a well-traveled road.  This was quite intentional.  The cross was a political statement that Rome wished to make very public — this is what happens to enemies of Rome!

Thus begin the hours of supreme agony, coupled with paradox.  The Roman soldiers mock him by slapping and spitting on Jesus, and call him The King of the Jews.  The sign placed over his head on the cross proclaims the same charge.  The irony is that this helpless, humiliated and dying Jew is in fact the rightful heir of King David — and he is also the King of the Universe.

The paradox of this dying God is manifested further by the mockery of the passersby and the priests.  They taunt him:

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!

He saved others, but he can’t save himself. If he is the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now, if he wants him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’.

This is the supreme paradox.  Because Jesus is the Son of God, he chooses not to come down from the cross.  He saves others because he refuses to save himself.  And it is his trust in God that was revealed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said:

not what I desire, but what you desire.

Matthew’s descriptions of the scene on Golgotha (appropriately named: the place of the skull) grow surreal.  Darkness strangely falls over the land at noon.  There is silence, watching, and suffering until 3:00 p.m., when Jesus makes his famous cry:

“Eli, Eli, lima  sabachthani?” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The phrase that Jesus quotes is one of the rare transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic in the otherwise Greek text of Matthew’s Gospels. This is a clue to us that Matthew is using Jesus’ exact words from the cross, and that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22:1.  Psalm 22, written hundreds of years earlier, appears to be an eerily accurate description of the physical and psychological effects of this crucifixion:

All those who see me mock me.
They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying,
“He trusts in Yahweh;
let him deliver him.
Let him rescue him, since he delights in him” (Psalm 22:7-8)

I am poured out like water.
All my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax;
it is melted within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have brought me into the dust of death.
 For dogs have surrounded me.
A company of evildoers have enclosed me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
 I can count all of my bones.
They look and stare at me.
They divide my garments among them.
They cast lots for my clothing (Psalm 22:14-18).

At the same time it shouldn’t escape notice that despair is transformed into powerful hope in Psalm 22:

I will declare your name to my brothers.
Among the assembly, I will praise you.
You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel!
 For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:22-24).

A crucified man who is slowly dying of asphyxiation hasn’t the breath to recite an entire Psalm, but it may be that Jesus’ cry was not that of dereliction at all.  Perhaps he was remembering the Psalms learned in his childhood, and particularly this vivid poem, and in its despair he paradoxically finds hope.

This cry has been interpreted in many ways throughout the centuries by Christian expositors. In any event, this cry  is misinterpreted by some who stand at the cross.  They think he is calling on Elijah, when he is actually calling on God (Eli = My God). 

Even the kind effort of a soldier to offer Jesus sour wine soaked into a sponge is turned into a taunt by the others:

The rest said, “Let him be. Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.”

As mentioned above, the breath of a man dying of crucifixion becomes shallow — speaking becomes nearly impossible.  But Jesus dies with what seems a cry of victory:

Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit.

The effects of this climactic moment are multiple.  The thick curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.  This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.

The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go. This is where the table for the shewbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room were located.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.

The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus, the true high priest, has opened the way into the presence of God.

Not only are the religious symbols of Israel affected, nature itself is affected — there is a violent earthquake, and tombs are disturbed.  There is even a foretaste of the resurrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection expected at the end of the age:

The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city and appeared to many.

And of course, there are the reactions of the living.  A battle-hardened centurion sees all of these phenomena and declares what amounts to a confession of faith:

Truly this was the Son of God.

This is the first sign of the harvest among the Gentiles that is to come because of the death of Jesus — but not the last.

And there are the women who have been keeping vigil at the cross.  They will not stray far from the corpse of Jesus, even after he is entombed:

Many women were there watching from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, serving him.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Mary Magdalene we recognize from other Gospels as the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2).  The other Mary mentioned here is the mother of James the younger, one of the twelve disciples listed — but Joses is somewhat mysterious.  Although the name Joses appears in the Gospels, he does not appear as one of the twelve.  Curiously, James and Joses are mentioned as brothers — of Jesus himself!  (Matthew 13:55).

And finally the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, is mentioned.  These two sons were among the first of the fishermen to follow Jesus from the beginning, and two of Jesus’ closest friends (Matthew 4:21).  This is the same woman who asked Jesus to find a position of honor for her sons when Jesus came into his Kingdom (Matthew 20:20-21). This wife of Zebedee must have also left her home on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to follow Jesus!

Then there is Joseph, a rich man from Arimathaea. We also know from the other Gospels that Joseph was a prominent member of the Jewish council of elders — the same council that had condemned Jesus for blasphemy (Mark 15:43).  We know that Joseph was hoping for the consummation of the Kingdom of God (Luke 23:51).  And most significantly, we know that Joseph was a secret disciple, who hid his faith out of fear of his colleagues on the council of elders (John 19:38).

And here we see the courage of Joseph in risking the disapproval and censure of his colleagues:

This man went to Pilate, and asked for Jesus’ body. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given up.  Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.

Nevertheless, even after all of this, on the Sabbath day following the day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees violate their own prescriptions for the Sabbath observance in order to petition Pilate.  This suggests their anxiety and urgency even now about the influence of Jesus:

Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead;’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.

Clearly, they are aware that Jesus has predicted his own resurrection.  They may doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, but they don’t trust his disciples.

Guarding a tomb is hardly routine Roman military practice, but Pilate continues to placate the chief priests and the Pharisees:

You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.

Not only is there a guard set at the tomb where Jesus has been laid, they seal the stone.  The stone itself would have been large enough to block the entry way, and therefore quite large and heavy.  The caves in which these tombs were dug were likely limestone.  The seal was probably a soft, moldable clay that would harden — or it may well have indicated an Imperial Roman seal.  This would have been a deterrent to grave robbers who sought to break in.  Few would wish to risk the wrath of Roman justice.

APPLY:  

If we wish to read a theological or doctrinal interpretation of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, we might turn to the epistles of Paul, Peter, John and the book of Hebrews.  There we learn that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for sins, and that as the true high priest he is the one who both offers himself and is offered for our atonement.  By our faith in him, we are healed and forgiven.  In the account from Matthew there is some interpretation, but mostly we are presented with the narrative of these horrific events.

When we read this account as if for the first time, it is difficult not to experience shock, and even horror, as the drama unfolds.  Jesus is betrayed by a trusted follower.  He is arrested while at prayer.  He is tried by a court looking for a pretext to condemn him.  He is violently abused, and becomes the pawn in a political game of chess between powerful men.  He dies a horrible death on the cross, casually taunted by most who pass by.

But what is also shocking — in a positive and hopeful sense — is that despite the horror, there are those in this narrative who respond even to this crucifixion with faith and hope.  The centurion (a foreigner) is moved to a declaration of faith that Jesus is the Son of God.  The women who have followed Jesus and served him from the beginning in Galilee to this present moment remain with him to the bitter end, even holding vigil at his tomb.  Joseph of Arimathaea overcomes his fear of his colleagues and openly cares for the body of Jesus after his death.

However, if we take the time to review the Gospel of Matthew and note what Jesus said during his life and ministry about what awaited him in Jerusalem, the shock would be mitigated.  Jesus told his disciples at least three times that he would be killed in Jerusalem (Matthew 16:21-28; Matthew 17:22-23; Matthew 20:17-19).  And there is the suggestion in Matthew 16 that he went on advising them that he would be killed.

It must be noted that each time Jesus spoke of his death he also spoke of his resurrection.  Perhaps that is partly what motivates Joseph of Arimathaea.  After all, Joseph’s tomb was only borrowed for a few days by Jesus!  And perhaps this is why the women linger at the tomb.  As it turns out, this was not merely emotional denial or unassuaged grief — they were among the first to encounter the risen Jesus!

As shocking as this long and painful passage from Matthew’s Gospel may be, the ultimate shock is still to come — on the third day!

RESPOND: 

I once had a colleague in the ministry who insisted on reading the entire account of the Passion (the suffering) and death of Jesus on Palm/Passion Sunday.  His reasoning was interesting.  People in his church loved to hear the entire Nativity accounts of Jesus’ birth from Matthew and Luke at Christmas.  They needed to know why he was born, and where his life would take him.

I have spent much more time on this account from the Gospel of Matthew this week for much the same reason.  The birth of Jesus anticipates his death.  And his death makes sense of his birth as the Son of God and the Son of Man for our sake.

T.S. Eliot, in one of my favorite poems, describes the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem.  He describes the arduous journey as they leave the luxury and comforts of their summer palaces and silken girls bringing sherbet. 

And after the ordeal of this journey, with all of its hardships and frustrations, they arrive in the temperate valley and find the place they were looking for.   And Eliot closes with these lines, from the perspective of the Magi:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
(The Journey of the Magi)

May we all find in Jesus’ death our own birth.

Lord, the events of your Passion and Crucifixion are hard to look at.  If not for the Resurrection, and promise of pardon and new birth that accompany these events, it would be unbearable.  Thank you for suffering on our behalf — on my behalf — as unworthy as I am.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

2nd Gospel for March 28, 2021 (Liturgy of the Passion)

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Mark 14:1-15:47
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The climax of Mark’s Gospel approaches.  The growing and intense conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem reaches its culmination in the violent Passion of Jesus. Because the lectionary text for the Gospel of Mark is so lengthy, I must paint this scene with broad strokes.  But in so many ways, the Passion Narrative from Mark’s Gospel speaks for itself.

It has been noted by many Biblical interpreters that when Mark’s Gospel reaches the account of the Passion, there is a distinct change of tone and pace.  The first thirteen chapters of Mark move swiftly, almost breathlessly from one miracle to the next, one parable to the next.  For example, Mark uses the word immediately forty-one times — far more than any other book in the Bible — denoting action.  But thirty-eight of the occasions this word is used occur prior to chapter 14.

The pace slows down in Mark’s Gospel. The tone becomes darker. Mark lingers over these last few days of Jesus.

There are also contrasts here. There is an ominous sense of foreboding cast over these two chapters, as this passage begins with an introduction of the imminent feast of the Passover and the unleavened bread. The chief priests and scribes are explicit about their plot to arrest and kill him — but they are also cynical:

For they said, “Not during the feast, because there might be a riot of the people.”

But then there is the contrasting scene.  Jesus is a guest at the table of Simon the leper (presumably someone that he has healed?) Perhaps this was a feast of celebration and gratitude given by Simon.  And then:

a woman came having an alabaster jar of ointment of pure nard—very costly. She broke the jar, and poured it over his head.

When there is grumbling that this ointment was worth about a year’s wages for a farm worker and could have been put to use for the poor, Jesus defends her.  There will be other opportunities to help the poor, but his time is short.  Her deed is prophetic:

She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for the burying. Most certainly I tell you, wherever this Good News may be preached throughout the whole world, that which this woman has done will also be spoken of for a memorial of her.

Note that it is a woman who honors Jesus appropriately. In that patriarchal culture, a woman is more akin to a slave than an equal. And as we follow the narrative, note who is near when he is dying — and also who will become the first witnesses of the risen Jesus.

Now, the darkness grows deeper.  There is betrayal by one of his disciples, and collusion with the religious authorities who, as we already know, seek the death of Jesus.  Here there is irony.  As Jesus prepares solemnly for his death, the chief priests are described as glad and offer Judas Iscariot a price for Jesus.

Then there is the occasion of the Passover, which was normally an occasion of great joy as Israel remembered their deliverance from bondage in Egypt.  But this feast would be overshadowed by apprehension among the disciples, and the prescience of Jesus.  He knows what is to come, which they cannot know.

There is a kind of “secret signal” — two disciples are told to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water. (Normally, carrying water was a task assigned to women.)  He will lead them to an upstairs guestroom for their Passover meal.  All of this seems prearranged.

And at the supper itself, Jesus casts a shadow over the occasion by predicting his betrayal — by one of his own disciples!  What was normally a festive meal had certainly become depressing! Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t identify Judas Iscariot in Mark’s Gospel, leaving each of the twelve to search their own hearts, each asking:

“Surely not I?”

Jesus then transforms this historic and traditional Passover Seder into a sacrament that will be celebrated in the church until he returns:

As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body.”  He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.  Most certainly I tell you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew in God’s Kingdom.”

Here Jesus offers two predictions concerning his own fate — one concerning his tragic death, but the second concerning his ultimate triumph.  There is bitter death signified by the bread and wine — but there is also the promise and hope of ultimate and eschatological victory.  Jesus is able even now to look beyond his impending violent death toward his resurrection and eventual return.

However, the sorrow of the disciples is only begun.  Jesus predicts that they will all stumble  because of him that night — more specifically he quotes Scripture, from Zechariah 13:7:

 ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’

This is precisely what is about to happen. And yet once again he also foresees his own resurrection:

 However, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.

Once again there is the contrast of his death and his resurrection — darkness and light.

Peter’s famous contention that he won’t leave Jesus’ side, no matter what,  is met with brutal predictive honesty:

Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you, that you today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

We note that all of the disciples made the same protest that Peter did — that they would die with Jesus before they denied him. But of course Jesus would be proven correct by subsequent events.

The picture we have is that Jesus is wrestling with nearly everyone, including the priests and even his own disciples.  Only the woman who anoints his head with oil at the beginning of the scene seems to intuitively understand him.  The disciples, who have spent so much time with him over the previous short years, still don’t get it.

And on the Mount of Olives, in the place called Gethsemane, this struggle comes to a head.  (Gethsemane means olive press, because that’s where the olives were crushed into oil. How appropriate for the one whose body was to be broken and poured out!).

The three closest disciples (Peter, James, and John) can’t even stay awake while Jesus prays, even though he has told them how troubled he is.  All of the disciples have been charged to pray for him. Yet he is alone with the Father.

It might be said that this moment in the Garden is the climax of his struggle, and that he is perhaps even wrestling with God the Father.  But we note that he addresses his Father as Abba.  Many scholars suggest that this is the familiar and intimate term of endearment that a child might call his father, like “daddy.”

But we see also that despite his preference that he not endure the cross, Jesus surrenders his will to the purpose for which he has come:

He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.  He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire.”

There is a pattern of threes in this passage.  Jesus tells Peter he will deny him three times. Jesus finds his disciples sleeping three times. He is on his own. He says of them:

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The third time it is too late for them to pray. Jesus senses that Judas and the mob are coming.  We marvel at the hypocrisy of Judas Iscariot, who says to the chief priests, scribes and elders that he will identify Jesus with a kiss, and then calls out to Jesus with the honorific title “Rabbi! Rabbi!”

Jesus knows that this stealthy, shameful arrest by night is an act of cowardice on the part of the religious leaders:

Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to seize me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you didn’t arrest me. But this is so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.

There is some violent resistance by one of the disciples, but it is brief.  After one cuts off a servant’s ear, the disciples all flee into the night. Their escape is so panicked that one of the young men’s loose robe is torn from him by those seeking to arrest him, and he flees into the darkness.  Some early commentators speculated that because this detail is unique to Mark’s Gospel that the young man was John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark himself.  We just don’t know for sure.

Somehow, despite the terror of the arrest, Peter follows the procession of this mob to the court of the high priest — from a safe distance.

Again, there is a fascinating contrast — two trials, if you will.  Jesus is on trial for his life before the council — the Sanhedrin.  Meanwhile, Peter’s integrity and loyalty are on trial in the courtyard while he warms himself by the fire.

The accusations made against Jesus are false and contradictory.  No legitimate court could convict based on spurious testimony.  However, it is the words of Jesus himself that seal his fate:

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.”

From the perspective of the high priest and the members of the council, this is blasphemy and heresy.  The description that Jesus offers of himself is apocalyptic and Messianic.  When he calls himself the Son of Man he is alluding to the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. But surely it cannot have been lost on some of these Hebrew scholars that when Jesus says I am,  that phrase evokes the holy name of Yahweh from Exodus 3!  Not only is he claiming to be Son of Man, but he is also claiming to be Son of God!

The consequences are dire. The high priest tears his clothes, which is a sign of deep mourning  — but the high priest was never to tear his robe, according to the law (see Leviticus 21:10).  This suggests the intensity of the priest’s reaction to the words of Jesus.

Then there is the beginning of the brutal violence and contemptuous humiliation that rains down upon Jesus.  This will not stop with these council members and officers of the temple guard. He will be abused also by the Roman legionnaires.  As prophesied in Scripture, Jesus would be beaten, spat upon, lashed, mocked — all prior to his actual execution.

Meanwhile, Peter’s “trial” was also reaching a climax.  A maid accuses him of being with the Nazarene and then begins to harangue him to others nearby — presumably so that some of the officers might arrest him.  Peter fails the test but fulfills the prophecy of Jesus. Before the rooster crows twice, Peter has denied Jesus three times, finally becoming quite vehement:

he began to curse, and to swear, “I don’t know this man of whom you speak!” The rooster crowed the second time. Peter remembered the word, how that Jesus said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” When he thought about that, he wept.

Because Israel (known as Judea in Palestine at that time) was under Roman authority, there was a clear division of powers. The Jewish religious authorities could manage their religious affairs, but only under the close supervision of Rome. Therefore it was necessary to seek a civil judgment against Jesus.

When the night is over, Jesus is hailed before Procurator Pilate.  Pilate’s question does not relate to any religious significance of the claims of Jesus. He is concerned with only one thing:

Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

The implications are clear. Pilate must find a political pretext to execute this prisoner.  Religion is irrelevant, since the Jews had a special dispensation from Rome to preserve their own religious traditions. But a king who might raise a rebellion against Rome? That’s another matter.

Jesus won’t satisfy Pilate with an answer, except an enigmatic one:

He answered, “So you say.”

Pilate’s attempt to find an escape clause to this dilemma backfires. When he offers the people a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, they choose Barabbas. This is a disaster for Pilate. As far as he is concerned, Jesus is merely a religious fanatic who gathered a crowd in the countryside. But Barabbas was the modern-day equivalent of a political terrorist:

There was one called Barabbas, bound with his fellow insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

He, and the two men who were to be crucified with Jesus, may well have been Zealots who advocated a violent uprising and overthrow of their Roman occupiers.

It is important to remember that the cross was a form of execution normally reserved for sedition or treason — like the violent insurgents who had committed murder — or a man who claimed to be a king.  This is why, when the Roman soldiers mock Jesus with a purple robe of royalty, and press a crown of thorns onto his head, they hailed him as King of the Jews.  That mockery, and the cross itself, was a sign to the population of Jerusalem — “this is what Rome does to royal pretenders. The only true power here is Rome.”

Flogged, beaten, sleepless, Jesus carries his cross to Golgotha.  Mark doesn’t tell us that Jesus falls, or is too weak to carry the cross because of a loss of blood.  Floggings were often a death sentence in themselves.

The soldiers command a foreigner in the crowd to carry his cross.  His name is given — Simon of Cyrene. Again, this is a fascinating detail. Cyrene was a Greek and Roman city in modern day Libya — North Africa! This doesn’t suggest that Simon was a Gentile — there were Jewish settlers in Egypt as well as all over the ancient world in the Mediterranean area and the Near East.  And it would not have been unusual for a Jew to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover — especially bringing his sons.

And the mention of his sons, Alexander and Rufus, is also fascinating. Mark seems to assume that they are known to his readers.  Some scholars speculate that they became a part of the Christian community after witnessing the horrors of the cross. The names Alexander and Rufus do appear in some of the Epistles.

It was at 9:00 a.m. that they arrived at the very public hill of execution called Golgotha (that is, the place of the skull). Again, we are reminded that this execution is a public example, and a deterrent to would-be insurrectionists.  The charge against Jesus, inscribed above his head, made this clear:

 THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Our translation says that the other two crucified with him were robbers, but other translators suggest that they were actually Jewish rebels or insurgents, arrested with Barabbas after the recent riots in Jerusalem.  Again, Mark spots the fulfillment of Scripture, this time from Isaiah 53:12:

 “He was numbered with transgressors.”

This reference to Isaiah 53 points to the famous passage describing the Suffering Servant, which the church has come to see as a vivid picture of Jesus as the Messiah who suffers vicariously for all sinners.

Now Jesus is completely abandoned — almost.  In Mark’s Gospel, people passing by on the road taunt him.  The chief priests and scribes demean their own dignity and mock him. And in Mark’s Gospel, both of those crucified with him also insult him.  And after darkness falls on the face of the earth (from about noon to three o’clock), it seems that Jesus feels abandoned even by his God, quoting Psalm 22:

At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The taunts of the spectators, and the only words uttered by Jesus on the cross in Mark’s Gospel, are a little problematical.  The mockers are actually on the right track. Jesus did promise to rebuild the temple, but in their wooden literalism they fail to understand he spoke of his own resurrection — which would occur in three days. And in a paradoxical sense, when the religious authorities said “He saved others. He can’t save himself,” they were correct.  If he saved himself by coming down from the cross, he would be unable to save others. By losing his life, he saves billions upon billions.

And when Jesus cried out to God, was it truly a cry of desolation or a prayer of hope? (For a more complete treatment of this dilemma, please see: https://soarlectionarybiblestudy.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/gospel-for-april-9-2017-liturgy-of-the-passion/).  We are reminded that Jesus is dying slowly of asphyxiation on the cross. He hasn’t the breath to recite all of Psalm 22, which seems clearly to describe the effects of a suffering victim, with eerie similarity to a crucifixion. He certainly can’t hold out until the verses near the end of the Psalm, that ring with hope:

You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! 

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:23-24).

Typically, Jesus is misunderstood by those standing nearby. They think he is calling Elijah to rescue him.

The only other utterance from Jesus seems to be a cry of either agony — or triumph:

 Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit.

We are told that the veil of the temple was torn in half, from top to bottom.  The veil in the temple was not a mere sheer curtain. According to the ancient historian Josephus, the veil in Herod’s temple was as thick as a man’s hand (about four inches  thick) and 60 feet high and 20 feet wide.

This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.  The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go.  The following items were in the Holy Place — the table for the showbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in the book of Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.  The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus the true high priest has opened the way into the presence of God.

Perhaps a massive earthquake, such as was described in Matthew 27:54, might have caused such a rupture. No wonder the Roman centurion said:

 “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Perhaps there were a combination of factors that contributed to this startling confession of faith by a Gentile. The natural phenomenon must have moved him — the deep darkness over the land for three hours, the earthquake. Or perhaps there was something he saw and felt as he watched the Son of God die.

Earlier, I wrote that everyone seemed to have rejected or abandoned Jesus — the spectators, the religious authorities, and some would say even God (although I disagree. See Respond section below).  But there were some who did not:

There were also women watching from afar, among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served him; and many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

These are the same three women mentioned by name who will bring spices to anoint his dead body after Jesus is placed in the tomb — and the same women who are the first witnesses to the resurrection.

And ironically, it is not one of his closest disciples who has the courage to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus on Preparation Day, the day before Sabbath. We may presume they are still in hiding. No, it is Joseph of Arimathaea, a member of the same Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus:

who also himself was looking for God’s Kingdom.

Obviously, like the centurion, Joseph of Arimathaea saw something in Jesus that had deeply reached him.

Pilate seems surprised that Jesus is already dead:

Pilate marveled if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead long.

Jesus is wound in a linen cloth and laid in a tomb cave. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses note where he has been buried. They plan to return when the Sabbath is over and anoint his corpse.

APPLY:  

Just who is this Jesus, and what is our response to him, and to his violent death?

To the chief priests and scribes, and the religious elite of the day, Jesus was a heretic who needed to be eliminated before he corrupted their precious temple worship, and perhaps incurred the wrath of Rome for stirring up trouble.

To the disciples, he was their beloved Rabbi, their Teacher, who had taught them of the Kingdom of God, and then had demonstrated its presence with his powerful signs. But when he spoke of his own death and resurrection, they couldn’t understand him. Not yet.

To Pilate, and the Roman overlords, he was a political problem to be solved. What happened to Jesus was a matter of indifference. If he could be released without consequences, that would be fine. If not, he could be crucified as a matter of convenience to appease the priests and avoid trouble with Rome.

To the women who had been treated as equals and human beings of sacred worth for the first time in their lives, he was Lord — and they demonstrated their reverence by anointing his head with oil, and watching in grief as he died.

To Joseph of Arimathaea — well, we’re not sure what he thought of Jesus.  We simply know what he did.  As in the deuterocanonical (or Apocryphal) book of Tobit, he perhaps saw the burial of a fellow Jew as a sacred duty. But we suspect that it meant much more than that. He was looking for the kingdom, and perhaps he’d caught a glimpse of the kingdom in the eyes of the King.

But most importantly, what is he to us?  Many today dismiss Jesus as a non-historical character invented by men to support a corrupt institution. Some think of him as a fine moral character whose teachings were part of the ethical development and evolution of our civilization.

That is too easy. Many of us find ourselves reading the Passion account and determine, as many Christians have over the centuries, that these details are too vivid and too realistic to be fiction. They have the feel of truth.

And perhaps we find ourselves in the same position as the centurion. We doubt that he had much contact with Jesus prior to this execution.  But there is something here that grips him, that speaks to his spirit, and that causes him to declare:

“Truly this man was the Son of God!”

It is interesting that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus never calls himself the Son of God.  This is the title given Jesus by Mark in the beginning of the book:

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1).

And the unclean spirits recognize him for who he is as the Son of God.  But Jesus invariably refers to himself as the Son of Man.  Perhaps this is because he is stressing his human nature, and his role as the Messianic figure of prophecy. He knows that he is the Son of God.

However, it is when we recognize that he is the Son of God that we truly come to faith. And it is then that we know that God has become one of us, with all the weakness and vulnerability that is revealed on the cross, so that he might demonstrate his power as the crucified and risen God.

RESPOND: 

I sometimes read history and wonder, “What would I have done?” Would I have stood my ground when the Redcoats charged up Breed’s Hill in Boston? Would I have spoken up against Hitler in Nazi Germany? But more importantly, would I have stayed close to Jesus that night when he was arrested?

I’d like to think that I would have remained near him, like the women did.  Of course, the Roman legionnaires and the religious authorities likely took no notice of the mourning women.  In that culture long ago, women were of little consequence.

But the sorry record of the male disciples makes me doubt myself. If Peter, James and John ran, or kept their distance, or even denied him, do I really think I would do any better?

They did forsake him. But here’s another pressing question — Did the Father forsake his Son? This is a theological conundrum.

I have heard sermons over the years that insisted that when Jesus was on the cross, the Father “turned his face away from his Son.” I understand where they’re coming from. When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 it does seem to be a cry of abandonment. And Paul tells us that:

For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I am not troubled by the fact that Jesus assumes my sin in order to transfer his righteousness to me. This is the purpose of the sacrifice — an exchange of sin for righteousness.  Jesus does not commit sin (we know from Scripture that he is without sin — see 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15), but he assumes our sin.  Only one who is fully divine is without sin. And only one who is fully human can fully enter into our human experience and take our sin upon himself.

And that’s what troubles me.

Jesus is so clearly established in the New Testament as the only begotten Son of the Father, the Word made flesh. He is God.  Not merely God-like, but God. His own claim is that he is uniquely united to the Father:

I and the Father are one (John 10:30).

And he decisively answers Philip’s request that the disciples may see the Father:

He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? (John 14:9-10).

This is the basis of the classic doctrine of the nature of Jesus as fully God and yet fully man, as understood by the church. And it is the basis of the Trinity, that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity.

How then could God the Father abandon himself?  It seems to be ontologically impossible. Though there is a distinction of Persons in the Trinity, there is still complete unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This explains my difficulty with the theory that “the Father turned his face away from his Son.”

I heard about a little girl who said “I love Jesus, but I hate his Father.”  In her innocence, I believe she missed the point. It is not the Father who crucifies the Son — it is evil itself, manifested in human sin.

Therefore I can come to only one conclusion — the Father didn’t turn his face away from his Son. There may be a hint of this in Luke’s account of the last moments of Jesus:

Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Having said this, he breathed his last (Luke 24:46).

On the cross God the Father embraces his Son, as the one who has been perfectly obedient even unto death.  The Father doesn’t watch this horror from a distance — he is as near to the suffering Son as he has ever been, watching with deep love.  Grieving, mourning perhaps because of what human evil had done — but absent? Never.

In the words of Charles Wesley’s powerful hymn, Arise, My Soul, Arise:

The Father hears Him pray,
His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away
The presence of His Son.
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.

It is the God-Man who dies on our behalf, who tastes the worst that evil can deliver (even, according to ancient church doctrine and Scripture, descending into Hell itself), and then is raised to life by God.  This descent and ascent is no mere myth. Jesus has descended to rescue us from sin, death and the Devil, and has re-ascended with us in his arms.  As Ephesians 4 tells us:

“When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.” Now this, “He ascended”, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things (Ephesians 4:8-10).

So, forsaken by all but God, because Jesus is God incarnate, Jesus sets free the prisoners from their dungeon.  Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Lord, I confess I have said and written too much about a mystery that I cannot begin to understand — your Passion, death and Resurrection, your ineffable nature, the Trinity.  Please forgive what I have said amiss; but lead me again to the same confession made by the centurion at the foot of the cross: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Amen.

PHOTO:
“It is Finished!” by Delirious? is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 5, 2020 (Liturgy of the Passion)

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death”
The photographer, Fr. Lawrence Lew, offers these thoughts:
This Station in marble bas relief is by Fr Aelred Whitacre OP, from Blackfriars in Oxford, the Dominican priory in that great university town.
It is striking that Fr Aelred, reflecting Thomistic teaching, depicts the dehumanizing effect of sin, hence this striking depiction of Pilate. The serpent shows that Pilate, in choosing to condemn an innocent man, has colluded with the Evil One. Incidentally, it is thought that Tolkien’s visual conception of orcs might have been inspired by seeing this depiction of Pilate.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 26:14-27:66
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The shock of the events recorded here in Matthew’s Gospel is lost on most modern Christians simply because they have become so familiar.  Ask a child who has been raised in Sunday School what Jesus has done for us and the child will likely rattle off the words “he died for our sins.”  These words would likely be delivered somewhat mechanically, as if by rote.

Looking at this account as if reading the Gospel for the first time would be truly shocking.  The first-time reader, starting at the beginning  of Matthew’s Gospel, would have first encountered the  account of Jesus’ miraculous birth, with its declaration that this child would be called Immanuel, God with us.  The God-head of this child would have been confirmed as he grew into a man and was baptized, with the descent of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father that attested that he was the Son of God.  His miraculous works of healing and feeding the multitudes and commanding the forces of nature would have further illustrated the divine nature of Jesus.  His Transfiguration would certainly have confirmed it.  And his teaching, as though providing a New Law, was with the authority of God.  His triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, welcomed by the throngs, would have authenticated his credentials as the Son of David and the Messiah.

So, the events of Matthew 26:14-27:66  would certainly be shocking to someone coming to this account for the first time.  Certainly the reader might have picked up hints from the murmuring of the Pharisees and the Saduccees and the Priests.  And Jesus himself offered foreshadowings of the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem.

But still,  the events in this passage reveal the violence of those who plotted against Jesus. They also reveal his own human vulnerability.  The Son of God is also the Son of Man, who can be beaten and tormented and nailed to a cross.

With such a long passage, it is necessary to summarize some of the events — that Jesus is betrayed by one of his own disciples, predicts his own death, is denied by one of his closest disciples, stands trial in a hastily convened court, and is condemned to die by a foreign ruler.   

We will view these shocking events through the characters that appear, and the dramatic action that follows.  First, there is the shock of betrayal by Judas Iscariot, who approaches the chief priests to offer them Jesus — for a price.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we receive only one hint that Judas will betray Jesus (Matthew 10:4).  But this foreshadowing comes with no explanation of Judas’s motives.  Still, when the disciples are gathered to celebrate the Passover feast, Jesus knows what Judas will do.  Jesus announces that one of them will betray him.  The disciples search their own hearts and ask with deep sorrow:

“It isn’t me, is it, Lord?”

Jesus’ answer is cryptic — that whoever dips his unleavened bread into the charoset dish typical of Passover, would betray him.  Eating in a communal manner like this was an intimate experience.  Jesus was suggesting that the one who betrayed him was a close friend.

Judas is disingenuous, as though to deflect suspicion from himself.  He parrots the other disciples, and says:

It isn’t me, is it, Rabbi?

Unlike the other disciples, though, he calls Jesus Rabbi instead of Lord.  Though subtle, this may suggest he is disavowing any faith in Jesus as the Messiah.

Jesus has warned him, along with the others:

The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.

Following the trajectory of Judas’s fateful decision (sometime between the adjournment of the Passover meal and Jesus’ climb to the Mount of Olives), Judas has gathered a multitude with swords and clubs under the authority of the chief priests and elders of the people.  He knows Jesus’ plans for the evening, and leads this armed rabble to the Mount of Olives.  Again, there is the sign of hypocritical intimacy:

Now he who betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, “Whoever I kiss, he is the one. Seize  him.”  Immediately he came to Jesus, and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Despite this betrayal, Jesus seems almost tender toward Judas.  Jesus says to him, Friend, why are you here? — although Jesus knows precisely why Judas has come.

We follow the next phase in Judas’s part of this drama.  It is only after Jesus is hailed before the council of the high priest and the elders late that night, and then turned over to Pontius Pilate for Roman justice the next morning, that Judas seems to experience remorse.  He attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver, and confesses his sin in betraying innocent blood.  His reparations of the money are refused, and he throws it at the feet of the priests and leaves — and hangs himself.

Was this a sign of repentance?  Was he forever condemned?  Literally, God alone knows.

Let us return to the other characters who reclined with Jesus at the Passover feast.  All of the disciples were searching their own hearts about Jesus’ prediction that one of them would betray him.  But when Jesus again warns them that they would all stumble because of the events that night, Peter can’t stand it.  He protests that he alone would remain faithful, even if all of them fell away.  Jesus singles out Peter specifically with the painful prediction that Peter himself would deny him three times before morning, when the rooster crowed.

To his credit, Peter was one of the three closest friends whom Jesus asked to stay near when Jesus went to Gethsemane to pray.  But Peter’s  first stumble came even before he denied Jesus — three times Peter, along with James and John, fell asleep, even after Jesus asked them directly to stay awake and watch with him in prayer.

Matthew doesn’t tell us that Peter is the one who strikes off the ear of the high priest’s servant with a sword.  John’s Gospel supplies that detail (John 18:10).  But the Gospel of Matthew does show that Peter had just enough courage to follow Jesus and the armed band to the courtyard of the house of Caiphas — where Peter withers in fear.  When asked if he is one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter denies it, with a curse.

So, let us turn to Jesus and his words and actions in these events.  Jesus is very clearly aware of his role in this drama.  Jesus knows the script.  He predicts that he will be delivered up to death as it is written in the Scriptures.  The Passover meal becomes, in his hands, a new sign of remembrance for his followers.  The meal that celebrated the deliverance of his people from slavery some 1200 years earlier would now be transformed in order to celebrate his sacrificial death, which liberates from slavery to sin.

Jesus also very consciously refers to Scripture as he begins the death march to the cross — quoting Zechariah 13:7 to predict the scattering of his followers when he is arrested.  When the armed rabble come, and one of his followers offers resistance, Jesus reproves him — Jesus knows his own power to call down heavenly reinforcements, but he cites the Scriptures that prophesy that his death must happen. And of course  he quotes Psalm 22:1 in the so-called Cry of Dereliction from the cross:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus does know what awaits him.  And yet we see the tension between his divine nature and his human nature, even if only briefly.  When he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asks:

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me.

Facing death, and the full brunt of evil on the cross, Jesus is honest.  If possible, he would prefer not to suffer the physical and spiritual suffering that is to come.  However, the tension is resolved when he prays:

nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.

If we subscribe to the classical Christology of the church, as I do, we see the two natures of Jesus here in this moment — he is fully human and fully divine.  Both natures are in harmony, and he is completely surrendered to the saving work for which he was destined.

Jesus is fully aware of his latent power as Son of God, and his authority over all things.  His response to Peter’s feeble attempt to defend his Lord is telling:

do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?

But there are two reasons that such supernatural militance isn’t called for at this time — first, violent reprisal will only escalate violence (all those who take the sword will die by the sword), and that is not his purpose in coming.  And second, all that is happening is in order to fulfill the Scriptures.

Jesus does chide the crowd for an excessive show of force — coming at night, armed to the teeth, as if they are seeking a dangerous criminal.  After all, he’s been teaching publicly in the temple all week.

Jesus continues to exert his quiet, peaceful authority when he is hailed before a hastily summoned council of the priests and elders.  This court isn’t even held in a public venue, but in the home of Caiaphas the high priest.  None of the false testimony against him holds water — until he is asked the one question that really matters:

The high priest answered him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

The response of Jesus suggests that by bringing this very charge, the high priest has acknowledged that Jesus is either the Son of God,  or he is a fraud.  And the life and ministry of Jesus leaves no room for the charge that he is a phony.  Moreover, Jesus confirms his identity with a prophecy:

Jesus said to him, “You have said it. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky.”

This is apocalyptic language that is unmistakeably Biblical.  Jesus may well be referring to Daniel:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.  There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14).

Now the high priest has his “smoking gun” — all the evidence he thinks he needs to convict Jesus.  The high priest tears his robe, which is a sign of grief and lamentation.  But the Levitical law forbade the high priest from these customary signs of mourning (Leviticus 21:10).  The high priest is conveying a serious source of grief by doing this — he is accusing Jesus of blasphemy.

The penalty for blasphemy in Jewish law is death.  Jesus is physically abused and abased by these council members.  But they are an occupied nation, with Rome as their overlord.  They have no authority to execute a prisoner.

So the next morning Jesus must stand before Governor Pontius Pilate.  The Roman official’s concern is not with religious charges against Jesus, but with political sedition and revolution.  Messiah, or anointed one, is also the title of a king.  This is the only charge that concerns Pilate.  But Jesus leaves Pilate to make up his own mind:

 Now Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus said to him, “So you say.”

This is essentially the same answer Jesus gives to the high priest, which suggests that Jesus is tacitly confirming the charge.

Pilate’s role in this trial and execution are critical.  Pilate had already incurred the displeasure of the priests and elders with some of his previous public policies.  According to the Jewish historians of that time (e.g. Philo and Josephus), Pilate had offended the priests by introducing Roman standards and shields on temple grounds — this had been a violation of the second commandment forbidding graven images.  And he had appropriated money designated for the temple and used it to build aqueducts.  When the Jews protested these acts, Pilate ordered his troops to respond with violence.  It might be said he had two strikes against him already.  More complaints to the Emperor might be devastating to Pilate’s career.

Not even the intercession of Pilate’s wife could avert the inevitable.

Pilate’s contrivance, to force the crowd into a decision, backfires.  He offers a choice of Barabbas or Jesus.  They cry for Barabbas to be released, and Jesus to be crucified.  Pilate now finds himself in a corner that he himself created.   He is convinced of Jesus’ innocence.  When the crowd demands that Jesus be crucified, Pilate pleads for him:

But the governor said, “Why? What evil has he done?”

His efforts to avert violence are about to backfire.  Normally the Roman Procurator didn’t come to Jerusalem except in times of unrest, as a show of force to prevent uprisings.  Now, this trial was threatening to become the source of a riot.

Pilate’s highly symbolic act, washing his hands of Jesus’ blood, is a sham.  A crucifixion was a penalty exacted by Rome for political crimes (sedition, treason, revolution), not civil crimes.  By permitting it, Pilate was responsible for it.  And it was Roman soldiers who carried out the execution.

The Roman soldiers continue the abuse of Jesus.  Normally a flogging was considered a possible death sentence.  They mock him and humiliate him with the threadbare trappings of  royalty — a scarlet robe, a crown of thorns, and a reed for a scepter — because by dehumanizing him they make an example of Jesus.  And it is easier to kill someone whose humanity has been devalued and objectified.

It should be noted that Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified, was not far from one of the city gates, along a well-traveled road.  This was quite intentional.  The cross was a political statement that Rome wished to make very public — this is what happens to enemies of Rome!

Thus begin the hours of supreme agony, coupled with paradox.  The Roman soldiers mock him by slapping and spitting on Jesus, and call him The King of the Jews.  The sign placed over his head on the cross proclaims the same charge.  The irony is that this helpless, humiliated and dying Jew is in fact the rightful  heir of King David — and he is also the King of the Universe.

The paradox of this dying God is manifested further by the mockery of the passersby and the priests.  They taunt him:

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!

He saved others, but he can’t save himself. If he is the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now, if he wants him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’.

This is the supreme paradox.  Because Jesus is the Son of God, he chooses not to come down from the cross.  He saves others because he refuses to save himself.  And it is his trust in God that was revealed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said:

not what I desire, but what you desire.

Matthew’s descriptions of the scene on Golgotha (appropriately named: the place of the skull) grow surreal.  Darkness strangely falls over the land at noon.  There is silence, watching, and suffering until 3:00 p.m., when Jesus makes his famous cry:

“Eli, Eli, lima  sabachthani?” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The phrase that Jesus quotes is one of the rare transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic in the otherwise Greek text of Matthew’s Gospels. This is a clue to us that Matthew is using Jesus’ exact words from the cross, and that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22:1.  Psalm 22, written hundreds of years earlier, appears to be an eerily accurate description of the physical and psychological effects of this crucifixion:

All those who see me mock me.
They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying,
“He trusts in Yahweh;
let him deliver him.
Let him rescue him, since he delights in him” (Psalm 22:7-8)

I am poured out like water.
All my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax;
it is melted within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have brought me into the dust of death.
 For dogs have surrounded me.
A company of evildoers have enclosed me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
 I can count all of my bones.
They look and stare at me.
They divide my garments among them.
They cast lots for my clothing (Psalm 22:14-18).

At the same time it shouldn’t escape notice that despair is transformed into powerful hope in Psalm 22:

I will declare your name to my brothers.
Among the assembly, I will praise you.
You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel!
 For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:22-24).

A crucified man who is slowly dying of asphyxiation hasn’t the breath to recite an entire Psalm, but it may be that Jesus’ cry was not that of dereliction at all.  Perhaps he was remembering the Psalms learned in his childhood, and particularly this vivid poem, and in its despair he paradoxically finds hope.

This cry has been interpreted in many ways throughout the centuries by Christian expositors. In any event, this cry  is misinterpreted by some who stand at the cross.  They think he is calling on Elijah, when he is actually calling on God (Eli = My God). 

Even the  kind effort of a soldier to offer Jesus sour wine soaked into a sponge is turned into a taunt by the others:

The rest said, “Let him be. Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.”

As mentioned above, the breath of a man dying of crucifixion becomes shallow — speaking becomes nearly impossible.  But Jesus dies with what seems a cry of victory:

Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit.

The effects of this climactic moment are multiple.  The thick curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.  This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.

The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go . This is where the table for the shewbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room were located.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.

The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus, the true high priest, has opened the way into the presence of God.

Not only are the religious symbols of Israel affected, nature itself is affected — there is a violent earthquake, and tombs are disturbed.  There is even  a foretaste of the resurrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection expected at the end of the age:

The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;  and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city and appeared to many.

And of course, there are the reactions of the living.  A battle-hardened centurion sees all of these phenomena and declares what amounts to a confession of faith:

Truly this was the Son of God.

This is the first sign of the harvest among the Gentiles that is to come because of the death of Jesus — but not the last.

And there are the women who have been keeping vigil at the cross.  They will not stray far from the corpse of Jesus, even after he is entombed:

Many women were there watching from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, serving him.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Mary Magdalene we recognize from other Gospels as the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2).  The other Mary mentioned here is the mother of James the younger, one of the twelve disciples listed — but Joses is somewhat mysterious.  Although the name Joses appears in the Gospels, he does not appear as one of the twelve.  Curiously, James and Joses are mentioned as brothers — of Jesus himself!  (Matthew 13:55).

And finally the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, is mentioned.  These two sons were among the first of the fishermen to follow Jesus from the beginning, and two of Jesus’ closest friends (Matthew 4:21).  This is the same woman who asked Jesus to find a position of honor for her sons when Jesus came into his Kingdom (Matthew 20:20-21). This wife of Zebedee must have also left her home on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to follow Jesus!

Then there is Joseph,  a rich man from Arimathaea. We also know from the other Gospels that Joseph was a prominent member of the Jewish council of elders — the same council that had condemned Jesus for blasphemy (Mark 15:43).  We know that Joseph was hoping for the consummation of the Kingdom of God (Luke 23:51).  And most significantly, we know that Joseph was a secret disciple, who hid his faith out of fear of his colleagues on the council of elders (John 19:38).

And here we see the courage of Joseph in risking the disapproval and censure of his colleagues:

This man went to Pilate, and asked for Jesus’ body. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given up.  Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.

Nevertheless, even after all of this, on the Sabbath day following the day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees violate their own prescriptions for the Sabbath observance in order to petition Pilate.  This suggests their anxiety and urgency even now about the influence of Jesus:

Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead;’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.

Clearly, they are aware that Jesus has predicted his own resurrection.  They may doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, but they don’t trust his disciples.

Guarding a tomb is hardly routine Roman military practice, but Pilate continues to placate the chief priests and the Pharisees:

You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.

Not only is there a guard set at the tomb where Jesus has been laid, they seal the stone.  The stone itself would have been large enough to block the entry way, and therefore quite large and heavy.  The caves in which these tombs were dug were likely limestone.  The seal was probably a soft, moldable clay that would harden — or it may well have indicated an Imperial Roman seal.  This would have been a deterrent to grave robbers who sought to break in.  Few would wish to risk the wrath of Roman justice.

APPLY:  

If we wish to read a theological or doctrinal interpretation of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, we might turn to the epistles of Paul, Peter, John and the book of Hebrews.  There we learn that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for sins,  and that as the true high priest he is the one who both offers himself and is offered for our atonement.  By our faith in him, we are healed and forgiven.  In the account from Matthew there is some interpretation, but mostly we are presented with the narrative of these horrific events.

When we read this account as if for the first time, it is difficult not to experience shock, and even horror, as the drama unfolds.  Jesus is betrayed by a trusted follower.  He is arrested while at prayer.  He is tried by a court looking for a pretext to condemn him.  He is violently abused, and becomes the pawn in a political game of chess between powerful men.  He dies a horrible death on the cross, casually taunted by most who pass by.

But what is also shocking — in a positive and hopeful sense — is that despite the horror, there are those in this narrative who respond even to this crucifixion with faith and hope.  The centurion (a foreigner) is moved to a declaration of faith that Jesus is the Son of God.  The women who have followed Jesus and served him from the beginning in Galilee to this present moment remain with him to the bitter end, even holding vigil at his tomb.  Joseph of Arimathaea overcomes his fear of his colleagues and openly cares for the body of Jesus after his death.

However, if we take the time to review the Gospel of Matthew and note what Jesus said during his life and ministry about what awaited him in Jerusalem, the shock would be mitigated.  Jesus told his disciples at least three times that he would be killed in Jerusalem (Matthew 16:21-28; Matthew 17:22-23; Matthew 20:17-19).  And there is the suggestion in Matthew 16 that he went on advising them that he would be killed.

It must be noted that each time Jesus spoke of his death  he also spoke of his resurrection.  Perhaps that is partly what motivates Joseph of Arimathaea.  After all, Joseph’s tomb was only borrowed for a few days by Jesus!  And perhaps this is why the women linger at the tomb.  As it turns out, this was not merely emotional denial or unassuaged grief — they were among the first to encounter the risen Jesus!

As shocking as this long and painful passage from Matthew’s Gospel may be, the ultimate shock is still to come — on the third day!

RESPOND: 

I once had a colleague in the ministry who insisted on reading the entire account of the Passion (the suffering) and death of Jesus on Palm/Passion Sunday.  His reasoning was interesting.  People in his church loved to hear the entire Nativity accounts of Jesus’ birth  from Matthew and Luke at Christmas.  They needed to know why  he was born, and where his life would take him.

I have spent much more time on this account from the Gospel of Matthew this week for much the same reason.  The birth of Jesus anticipates his death.  And his death makes sense of his birth as the Son of God and the Son of Man for our sake.

T.S. Eliot, in one of my favorite poems, describes the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem.  He describes the arduous journey as they leave the luxury and comforts  of their summer palaces and silken girls bringing sherbet. 

And after the ordeal of this journey, with all of its hardships and frustrations, they arrive in the temperate valley and find the place they were looking for.   And Eliot closes with these lines, from the perspective of the Magi:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
(The Journey of the Magi)

May we all find in Jesus’ death our own birth.

Lord, the events of your Passion and Crucifixion are hard to look at.  If not for the Resurrection, and promise of pardon and new birth that accompany these events, it would be unbearable.  Thank you for suffering on our behalf — on my behalf — as unworthy as I am.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for March 25, 2018 (Liturgy of the Passion)

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Mark 14:1-15:47
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The climax of Mark’s Gospel approaches.  The growing and intense conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem reaches its culmination in the violent Passion of Jesus. Because the lectionary text for the Gospel of Mark is so lengthy, I must paint this scene with broad strokes.  But in so many ways, the Passion Narrative from Mark’s Gospel speaks for itself.

It has been noted by many Biblical interpreters that when Mark’s Gospel reaches the account of the Passion, there is a distinct change of tone and pace.  The first thirteen chapters of Mark move swiftly, almost breathlessly from one miracle to the next, one parable to the next.  For example, Mark uses the word immediately forty-one times — far more than any other book in the Bible — denoting action.  But thirty-eight of the occasions this word is used occur prior to chapter 14.

The pace slows down in Mark’s Gospel. The tone becomes darker. Mark lingers over these last few days of Jesus.

There are also contrasts here. There is an ominous sense of foreboding  cast over these two chapters, as this passage begins with an introduction of the imminent feast of the Passover and the unleavened bread. The chief priests and scribes are explicit about their plot to arrest and kill him — but they are also cynical:

For they said, “Not during the feast, because there might be a riot of the people.”

But then there is the contrasting scene.  Jesus is a guest at the  table of Simon the leper (presumably someone that he has healed?) Perhaps this was a feast of celebration and gratitude given by Simon.  And then:

a woman came having an alabaster jar of ointment of pure nard—very costly. She broke the jar, and poured it over his head.

When there is grumbling that this ointment was worth about a year’s wages for a farm worker, and could have been put to use for the poor, Jesus defends her.  There will be other opportunities to help the poor, but his time is short.  Her deed is prophetic:

She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for the burying. Most certainly I tell you, wherever this Good News may be preached throughout the whole world, that which this woman has done will also be spoken of for a memorial of her.

Note that it is a woman who honors Jesus appropriately. In that patriarchal culture, a woman is more akin to a slave than an equal. And as we follow the narrative, note who is near when he is dying — and also who will become the first witnesses of the risen Jesus.

Now, the darkness grows deeper.  There is betrayal by one of his disciples, and collusion with the religious authorities who, as we already know, seek the death of Jesus.  Here there is irony.  As Jesus prepares solemnly for his death, the chief priests are described as glad and offer Judas Iscariot a price for Jesus.

Then there is the occasion of the Passover, which was normally an occasion of great joy as Israel remembered their deliverance from bondage in Egypt.  But this feast would be overshadowed by apprehension among the disciples, and the prescience of Jesus.  He knows what is to come, which they cannot know.

There is a kind of “secret signal” — two disciples are told to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water. (Normally, carrying water was a task assigned to women.)  He will lead them to an upstairs guestroom for their Passover meal.  All of this seems prearranged.

And at the supper itself, Jesus casts a shadow over the occasion by predicting his betrayal — by one of his own disciples!  What was normally a festive meal had certainly become depressing! Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t identify Judas Iscariot in Mark’s Gospel, leaving each of the twelve to search their own  hearts, each asking:

“Surely not I?”

Jesus then transforms this historic and traditional Passover Seder into a sacrament that will be celebrated in the church until he returns:

As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, he broke it, and gave to them, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body.”  He took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them. They all drank of it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.  Most certainly I tell you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew in God’s Kingdom.”

Here Jesus offers two predictions concerning his own fate — one concerning his tragic death, but the second concerning his ultimate triumph.  There is bitter death signified by the bread and wine — but there is also the promise and hope of ultimate and eschatological victory.  Jesus is able even now to look beyond his impending violent death toward his resurrection and eventual return.

However, the sorrow of the disciples is only begun.  Jesus predicts that they will all stumble  because of him that night — more specifically he quotes Scripture, from Zechariah 13:7:

 ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’

This is precisely what is about to happen. And yet once again he also foresees his own resurrection:

 However, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.

Once again there is the contrast of his death and his resurrection — darkness and light.

Peter’s famous contention that he won’t leave Jesus’ side, no matter what,  is met with brutal predictive honesty:

Jesus said to him, “Most certainly I tell you, that you today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

We note that all of the disciples made the same protest that Peter did — that they would die with Jesus before they denied him. But of course Jesus would be proven correct by subsequent events.

The picture we have is that Jesus is wrestling with nearly everyone, including the priests and even his own disciples.  Only the woman who anoints his head with oil at the beginning of the scene seems to intuitively understand him.  The disciples, who have spent so much time with him over the previous short years, still don’t get it.

And on the Mount of Olives, in the place called Gethsemane, this struggle comes to a head.  (Gethsemane means olive press, because that’s where the olives were crushed into oil. How appropriate for the one whose body was to be broken and poured out!).

The three closest disciples (Peter, James, and John) can’t even stay awake while Jesus prays, even though he has told them how troubled he is.  All of the disciples have been charged to pray for him. Yet he is alone with the Father.

It might be said that this moment in the Garden is the climax of his struggle, and that he is perhaps even wrestling with God the Father.  But we note that he addresses his Father as Abba.  Many scholars suggest that this is the familiar and intimate term of endearment that a child might call his father, like “daddy.”

But we see also that despite his preference that he not endure the cross, Jesus surrenders his will to the purpose for which he has come:

He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.  He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire.”

There is a pattern of threes in this passage.  Jesus tells Peter he will deny him three times. Jesus finds his disciples sleeping three times. He is on his own. He says of them:

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The third time it is too late for them to pray. Jesus senses that Judas and the mob are coming.  We marvel at the hypocrisy of Judas Iscariot, who says to the chief priests, scribes and elders that he will identify Jesus with a kiss, and then calls out to Jesus with the honorific title “Rabbi! Rabbi!”

Jesus knows that this stealthy, shameful arrest by night is an act of cowardice on the part of the religious leaders:

Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to seize me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you didn’t arrest me. But this is so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.

There is some violent resistance by one of the disciples, but it is brief.  After one cuts off a servant’s ear, the disciples all flee into the night. Their escape is so panicked that one of the young men’s loose robe is torn from him by those seeking to arrest him, and he flees into the darkness.  Some early commentators speculated that because this detail is unique to Mark’s Gospel that the young man was John Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark himself.  We just don’t know for sure.

Somehow, despite the terror of the arrest, Peter follows the procession of this mob to the court of the high priest —from a safe distance.

Again, there is a fascinating contrast — two trials, if you will.  Jesus is on trial for his life before the council — the Sanhedrin.  Meanwhile, Peter’s integrity and loyalty are on trial in the courtyard while he warms himself by the fire.

The accusations made against Jesus are false and contradictory.  No legitimate court could convict based on spurious testimony.  However, it is the words of Jesus himself that seal his fate:

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.”

From the perspective of the high priest and the members of the council, this is blasphemy and heresy.  The description that Jesus offers of himself is apocalyptic and Messianic.  When he calls himself the Son of Man he is alluding to the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. But surely it cannot have been lost on some of these Hebrew scholars that when Jesus says I am,  that phrase evokes the holy name of Yahweh from Exodus 3!  Not only is he claiming to be Son of Man, but he is also claiming to be Son of God!

The consequences are dire. The high priest tears his clothes, which is a sign of deep mourning  — but the high priest was never to tear his robe, according to the law (see Leviticus 21:10).  This suggests the intensity of the priest’s reaction to the words of Jesus.

Then there is the beginning of the brutal violence and contemptuous humiliation that rains down upon Jesus.  This will not stop with these council members and officers of the temple guard. He will be abused also by the Roman legionnaires.  As prophesied in Scripture, Jesus would be beaten, spat upon, lashed, mocked — all prior to his actual execution.

Meanwhile, Peter’s “trial” was also reaching a climax.  A maid accuses him of being with the Nazarene and then begins to harangue him to others nearby — presumably so that some of the officers might arrest him.  Peter fails the test but fulfills the prophecy of Jesus. Before the rooster crows twice, Peter has denied Jesus three times, finally becoming quite vehement:

he began to curse, and to swear, “I don’t know this man of whom you speak!” The rooster crowed the second time. Peter remembered the word, how that Jesus said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” When he thought about that, he wept.

Because Israel (known as Judea in Palestine at that time) was under Roman authority, there was a clear division of powers. The Jewish religious authorities could manage their religious affairs, but only under the close supervision of Rome. Therefore it was necessary to seek a civil judgment against Jesus.

When the night is over, Jesus is hailed before Procurator Pilate.  Pilate’s question does not relate to any religious significance of the claims of Jesus. He is concerned with only one thing:

Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

The implications are clear. Pilate must find a political pretext to execute this prisoner.  Religion is irrelevant, since the Jews had a special dispensation from Rome to preserve their own religious traditions. But a king who might raise a rebellion against Rome? That’s another matter.

Jesus won’t satisfy Pilate with an answer, except an enigmatic one:

He answered, “So you say.”

Pilate’s attempt to find an escape clause to this dilemma backfires. When he offers the people a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, they choose Barabbas. This is a disaster for Pilate. As far as he is concerned, Jesus is merely a religious fanatic who gathered a crowd in the countryside. But Barabbas was the modern-day equivalent of a political terrorist:

There was one called Barabbas, bound with his fellow insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

He, and the two men who were to be crucified with Jesus, may well have been Zealots who advocated a violent uprising and overthrow of their Roman occupiers.

It is important to remember that the cross was a form of execution normally reserved for sedition or treason — like the violent insurgents who had committed murder — or a man who claimed to be a king.  This is why, when the Roman soldiers mock Jesus with a purple robe of royalty, and press a crown of thorns onto his head, they hailed him as King of the Jews.  That mockery, and the cross itself, was a sign to the population of Jerusalem — “this is what Rome does to royal pretenders. The only true power here is Rome.”

Flogged, beaten, sleepless, Jesus carries his cross to Golgotha.  Mark doesn’t tell us that Jesus falls, or is too weak to carry the cross because of a loss of blood.  Floggings were often a death sentence in themselves.

The soldiers command a foreigner in the crowd to carry his cross.  His name is given — Simon of Cyrene. Again, this is a fascinating detail. Cyrene was a Greek and Roman city in modern day Libya — North Africa! This doesn’t suggest that Simon was a Gentile — there were Jewish settlers in Egypt as well as all over the ancient world in the Mediterranean area and the Near East.  And it would not have been unusual for a Jew to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover — especially bringing his sons.

And the mention of his sons, Alexander and Rufus, is also fascinating. Mark seems to assume that they are known to his readers.  Some scholars speculate that they became a part of the Christian community after witnessing the horrors of the cross. The names Alexander and Rufus do appear in some of the Epistles.

It was at 9:00 a.m. that they arrived at the very public hill of execution called Golgotha (that is, the place of the skull). Again, we are reminded that this execution is a public example, and a deterrent to would-be insurrectionists.  The charge against Jesus, inscribed above his head, made this clear:

 THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Our translation says that the other two crucified with him were robbers, but other translators suggest that they were actually Jewish rebels or insurgents, arrested with Barabbas after the recent riots in Jerusalem.  Again, Mark spots the fulfillment of Scripture, this time from Isaiah 53:12:

 “He was numbered with transgressors.”

This reference to Isaiah 53 points to the famous passage describing the Suffering Servant, which the church has come to see as a vivid picture of Jesus as the Messiah who suffers vicariously for all sinners.

Now Jesus is completely abandoned — almost.  In Mark’s Gospel, people passing by on the road taunt him.  The chief priests and scribes demean their own dignity and mock him. And in Mark’s Gospel, both of those crucified with him also insult him.  And after darkness falls on the face of the earth (from about noon to three o’clock), it seems that Jesus feels abandoned even by his God, quoting Psalm 22:

At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The taunts of the spectators, and the only words uttered by Jesus on the cross in Mark’s Gospel, are a little problematical.  The mockers are actually on the right track. Jesus did promise to rebuild the temple, but in their wooden literalism they fail to understand he spoke of his own resurrection — which would occur in three days. And in a paradoxical sense, when the religious authorities said “He saved others. He can’t save himself,” they were correct.  If he saved himself by coming down from the cross, he would be unable to save others. By losing his life, he saves billions upon billions.

And when Jesus cried out to God, was it truly a cry of desolation or a prayer of hope? (For a more complete treatment of this dilemma, please see: https://soarlectionarybiblestudy.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/gospel-for-april-9-2017-liturgy-of-the-passion/).  We are reminded that Jesus is dying slowly of asphyxiation on the cross. He hasn’t the breath to recite all of Psalm 22, which seems clearly to describe the effects of a suffering victim, with eerie similarity to a crucifixion. He certainly can’t hold out until the verses near the end of the Psalm, that ring with hope:

You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! 

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:23-24).

Typically, Jesus is misunderstood by those standing nearby. They think he is calling Elijah to rescue him.

The only other utterance from Jesus seems to be a cry of either agony — or triumph:

 Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit.

We are told that the veil of the temple was torn in half, from top to bottom.  The veil in the temple was not a mere sheer curtain. According to the ancient historian Josephus, the veil in Herod’s temple was as thick as a man’s hand  (about four inches  thick) and 60 feet high and 20 feet wide.

This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.  The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go.  The following items were in the Holy Place — the table for the showbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in the book of Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.  The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus the true high priest has opened the way into the presence of God.

Perhaps a massive earthquake, such as was described in Matthew 27:54, might have caused such a rupture. No wonder the Roman centurion said:

 “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Perhaps there were a combination of factors that contributed to this startling confession of faith by a Gentile. The natural phenomenon must have moved him — the deep darkness over the land for three hours, the earthquake. Or perhaps there was something he saw and felt as he watched the Son of God die.

Earlier, I wrote that everyone seemed to have rejected or abandoned Jesus — the spectators, the religious authorities, and some would say even God (although I disagree. See Respond section below).  But there were some who did not:

There were also women watching from afar, among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served him; and many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

These are the same three women mentioned by name who will bring spices to anoint his dead body after Jesus is placed in the tomb — and the same women who are the first witnesses to the resurrection.

And ironically, it is not one of his closest disciples who has the courage to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus on Preparation Day, the day before Sabbath. We may presume they are still in hiding. No, it is Joseph of Arimathaea, a member of the same Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus:

who also himself was looking for God’s Kingdom.

Obviously, like the centurion, Joseph of Arimathaea saw something in Jesus that had deeply reached him.

Pilate seems surprised that Jesus is already dead:

Pilate marveled if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead long.

Jesus is wound in a linen cloth and laid in a tomb cave. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses note where he has been buried. They plan to return when the Sabbath is over and anoint his corpse.

APPLY:  

Just who is this Jesus, and what is our response to him, and to his violent death?

To the chief priests and scribes, and the religious elite of the day, Jesus was a heretic who needed to be eliminated before he corrupted their precious temple worship, and perhaps incurred the wrath of Rome for stirring up trouble.

To the disciples, he was their beloved Rabbi, their Teacher, who had taught them of the Kingdom of God, and then had demonstrated its presence with his powerful signs. But when he spoke of his own death and resurrection, they couldn’t understand him. Not yet.

To Pilate, and the Roman overlords, he was a political problem to be solved. What happened to Jesus was a matter of indifference. If he could be released without consequences, that would be fine. If not, he could be crucified as a matter of convenience to appease the priests and avoid trouble with Rome.

To the women who had been treated as equals and human beings of sacred worth for the first time in their lives, he was Lord — and they demonstrated their reverence by anointing his head with oil, and watching in grief as he died.

To Joseph of Arimathaea — well, we’re not sure what he thought of Jesus.  We simply know what he did.  As in the deuterocanonical (or Apocryphal) book of Tobit, he perhaps saw the burial of a fellow Jew as a sacred duty. But we suspect that it meant much more than that. He was looking for the kingdom, and perhaps he’d caught a glimpse of the kingdom in the eyes of the King.

But most importantly, what is he to us?  Many today dismiss Jesus as a non-historical character invented by men to support a corrupt institution. Some think of him as a fine moral character whose teachings were part of the ethical development and evolution of our civilization.

That is too easy. Many of us find ourselves reading the Passion account and determine, as many Christians have over the centuries, that these details are too vivid and too realistic to be fiction. They have the feel of truth.

And perhaps we find ourselves in the same position as the centurion. We doubt that he had much contact with Jesus prior to this execution.  But there is something here that grips him, that speaks to his spirit, and that causes him to declare:

“Truly this man was the Son of God!”

It is interesting that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus never calls himself the Son of God.  This is the title given Jesus by Mark in the beginning of the book:

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1).

And the unclean spirits recognize him for who he is as the Son of God.  But Jesus invariably refers to himself as the Son of Man.  Perhaps this is because he is stressing his human nature, and his role as the Messianic figure of prophecy. He knows that he is the Son of God.

However, it is when we recognize that he is the Son of God that we truly come to faith. And it is then that we know that God has become one of us, with all the weakness and vulnerability that is revealed on the cross, so that he might demonstrate his power as the crucified and risen God.

RESPOND: 

I sometimes read history and wonder, “What would I have done?” Would I have stood my ground when the Redcoats charged up Breed’s Hill in Boston? Would I have spoken up against Hitler in Nazi Germany? But more importantly, would I have stayed close to Jesus that night when he was arrested?

I’d like to think that I would have remained near him, like the women did.  Of course, the Roman legionnaires and the religious authorities likely took no notice of the mourning women.  In that culture long ago, women were of little consequence.

But the sorry record of the male disciples makes me doubt myself. If Peter, James and John ran, or kept their distance, or even denied him, do I really think I would do any better?

They did forsake him. But here’s another pressing question — Did the Father forsake his Son? This is a theological conundrum.

I have heard sermons over the years that insisted that when Jesus was on the cross, the Father “turned his face away from his Son.” I understand where they’re coming from. When Jesus quotes Psalm 22 it does seem to be a cry of abandonment. And Paul tells us that:

For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I am not troubled by the fact that Jesus assumes my sin in order to transfer his righteousness to me. This is the purpose of the sacrifice — an exchange of sin for righteousness.  Jesus does not commit sin (we know from Scripture that he is without sin — see 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15), but he assumes our sin.  Only one who is fully divine is without sin. And only one who is fully human can fully enter into our human experience and take our sin upon himself.

And that’s what troubles me.

Jesus is so clearly established in the New Testament as the only begotten Son of the Father, the Word made flesh. He is God.  Not merely God-like, but God. His own claim is that he is uniquely united to the Father:

I and the Father are one (John 10:30).

And he decisively answers Philip’s request that the disciples may see the Father:

He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? (John 14:9-10).

This is the basis of the classic doctrine of the nature of Jesus as fully God and yet fully man, as understood by the church. And it is the basis of the Trinity, that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity.

How then could God the Father abandon himself?  It seems to be ontologically impossible. Though there is a distinction of Persons in the Trinity, there is still complete unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This explains my difficulty with the theory that “the Father turned his face away from his Son.”

I heard about a little girl who said “I love Jesus, but I hate his Father.”  In her innocence, I believe she missed the point. It is not the Father who crucifies the Son — it is evil itself, manifested in human sin.

Therefore I can come to only one conclusion — the Father didn’t turn his face away from his Son. There may be a hint of this in Luke’s account of the last moments of Jesus:

Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Having said this, he breathed his last (Luke 24:46).

On the cross God the Father embraces his Son, as the one who has been perfectly obedient even unto death.  The Father doesn’t watch this horror from a distance — he is as near to the suffering Son as he has ever been, watching with deep love.  Grieving, mourning perhaps because of what human evil had done — but absent? Never.

In the words of Charles Wesley’s powerful hymn, Arise, My Soul, Arise:

The Father hears Him pray,
His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away
The presence of His Son.
His Spirit answers to the blood,
And tells me I am born of God.

It is the God-Man who dies on our behalf, who tastes the worst that evil can deliver (even, according to ancient church doctrine and Scripture, descending into Hell itself), and then is raised to life by God.  This descent and ascent is no mere myth. Jesus has descended to rescue us from sin, death and the Devil, and has re-ascended with us in his arms.  As Ephesians 4 tells us:

“When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.” Now this, “He ascended”, what is it but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things (Ephesians 4:8-10).

So, forsaken by all but God, because Jesus is God incarnate, Jesus sets free the prisoners from their dungeon.  Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Lord, I confess I have said and written too much about a mystery that I cannot begin to understand — your Passion, death and Resurrection, your ineffable nature, the Trinity.  Please forgive what I have said amiss; but lead me again to the same confession made by the centurion at the foot of the cross: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Amen.

PHOTO:
“It is Finished!” by Delirious? is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 9, 2017 (Liturgy of the Passion)

“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death”
The photographer, Fr. Lawrence Lew, offers these thoughts:
This Station in marble bas relief is by Fr Aelred Whitacre OP, from Blackfriars in Oxford, the Dominican priory in that great university town.
It is striking that Fr Aelred, reflecting Thomistic teaching, depicts the dehumanizing effect of sin, hence this striking depiction of Pilate. The serpent shows that Pilate, in choosing to condemn an innocent man, has colluded with the Evil One. Incidentally, it is thought that Tolkien’s visual conception of orcs might have been inspired by seeing this depiction of Pilate.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Matthew 26:14-27:66

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The shock of the events recorded here in Matthew’s Gospel is lost on most modern Christians simply because they have become so familiar.  Ask a child who has been raised in Sunday School what Jesus has done for us and the child will likely rattle off the words “he died for our sins.”  These words would likely be delivered somewhat mechanically, as if by rote.

Looking at this account as if reading the Gospel for the first time would be truly shocking.  The first-time reader, starting at the beginning  of Matthew’s Gospel, would have first encountered the  account of Jesus’ miraculous birth, with its declaration that this child would be called Immanuel, God with us.  The God-head of this child would have been confirmed as he grew into a man and was baptized, with the descent of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father that attested that he was the Son of God.  His miraculous works of healing and feeding the multitudes and commanding the forces of nature would have further illustrated the divine nature of Jesus.  His Transfiguration would certainly have confirmed it.  And his teaching, as though providing a New Law, was with the authority of God.  His triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, welcomed by the throngs, would have authenticated his credentials as the Son of David and the Messiah.

So, the events of Matthew 26:14-27:66  would certainly be shocking to someone coming to this account for the first time.  Certainly the reader might have picked up hints from the murmuring of the Pharisees and the Saduccees and the Priests.  And Jesus himself offered foreshadowings of the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem.

But still,  the events in this passage reveal the violence of those who plotted against Jesus. They also reveal his own human vulnerability.  The Son of God is also the Son of Man, who can be beaten and tormented and nailed to a cross.

With such a long passage, it is necessary to summarize some of the events — that Jesus is betrayed by one of his own disciples, predicts his own death, is denied by one of his closest disciples, stands trial in a hastily convened court, and is condemned to die by a foreign ruler.   

We will view these shocking events through the characters that appear, and the dramatic action that follows.  First, there is the shock of betrayal by Judas Iscariot, who approaches the chief priests to offer them Jesus — for a price.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we receive only one hint that Judas will betray Jesus (Matthew 10:4).  But this foreshadowing comes with no explanation of Judas’s motives.  Still, when the disciples are gathered to celebrate the Passover feast, Jesus knows what Judas will do.  Jesus announces that one of them will betray him.  The disciples search their own hearts and ask with deep sorrow:

“It isn’t me, is it, Lord?”

Jesus’ answer is cryptic — that whoever dips his unleavened bread into the charoset dish typical of Passover, would betray him.  Eating in a communal manner like this was an intimate experience.  Jesus was suggesting that the one who betrayed him was a close friend.

Judas is disingenuous, as though to deflect suspicion from himself.  He parrots the other disciples, and says:

It isn’t me, is it, Rabbi?

Unlike the other disciples, though, he calls Jesus Rabbi instead of Lord.  Though subtle, this may suggest he is disavowing any faith in Jesus as the Messiah.

Jesus has warned him, along with the others:

The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.

Following the trajectory of Judas’s fateful decision (sometime between the adjournment of the Passover meal and Jesus’ climb to the Mount of Olives), Judas has gathered a multitude with swords and clubs under the authority of the chief priests and elders of the people.  He knows Jesus’ plans for the evening, and leads this armed rabble to the Mount of Olives.  Again, there is the sign of hypocritical intimacy:

Now he who betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, “Whoever I kiss, he is the one. Seize  him.”  Immediately he came to Jesus, and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed him.

Despite this betrayal, Jesus seems almost tender toward Judas.  Jesus says to him, Friend, why are you here? — although Jesus knows precisely why Judas has come.

We follow the next phase in Judas’s part of this drama.  It is only after Jesus is hailed before the council of the high priest and the elders late that night, and then turned over to Pontius Pilate for Roman justice the next morning, that Judas seems to experience remorse.  He attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver, and confesses his sin in betraying innocent blood.  His reparations of the money are refused, and he throws it at the feet of the priests and leaves — and hangs himself.

Was this a sign of repentance?  Was he forever condemned?  Literally, God alone knows.

Let us return to the other characters who reclined with Jesus at the Passover feast.  All of the disciples were searching their own hearts about Jesus’ prediction that one of them would betray him.  But when Jesus again warns them that they would all stumble because of the events that night, Peter can’t stand it.  He protests that he alone would remain faithful, even if all of them fell away.  Jesus singles out Peter specifically with the painful prediction that Peter himself would deny him three times before morning, when the rooster crowed.

To his credit, Peter was one of the three closest friends whom Jesus asked to stay near when Jesus went to Gethsemane to pray.  But Peter’s  first stumble came even before he denied Jesus — three times Peter, along with James and John, fell asleep, even after Jesus asked them directly to stay awake and watch with him in prayer.

Matthew doesn’t tell us that Peter is the one who strikes off the ear of the high priest’s servant with a sword.  John’s Gospel supplies that detail (John 18:10).  But the Gospel of Matthew does show that Peter had just enough courage to follow Jesus and the armed band to the courtyard of the house of Caiphas — where Peter withers in fear.  When asked if he is one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter denies it, with a curse.

So, let us turn to Jesus and his words and actions in these events.  Jesus is very clearly aware of his role in this drama.  Jesus knows the script.  He predicts that he will be delivered up to death as it is written in the Scriptures.  The Passover meal becomes, in his hands, a new sign of remembrance for his followers.  The meal that celebrated the deliverance of his people from slavery some 1200 years earlier would now be transformed in order to celebrate his sacrificial death, which liberates from slavery to sin.

Jesus also very consciously refers to Scripture as he begins the death march to the cross — quoting Zechariah 13:7 to predict the scattering of his followers when he is arrested.  When the armed rabble come, and one of his followers offers resistance, Jesus reproves him — Jesus knows his own power to call down heavenly reinforcements, but he cites the Scriptures that prophesy that his death must happen. And of course  he quotes Psalm 22:1 in the so-called Cry of Dereliction from the cross:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus does know what awaits him.  And yet we see the tension between his divine nature and his human nature, even if only briefly.  When he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asks:

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me.

Facing death, and the full brunt of evil on the cross, Jesus is honest.  If possible, he would prefer not to suffer the physical and spiritual suffering that is to come.  However, the tension is resolved when he prays:

nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.

If we subscribe to the classical Christology of the church, as I do, we see the two natures of Jesus here in this moment — he is fully human and fully divine.  Both natures are in harmony, and he is completely surrendered to the saving work for which he was destined.

Jesus is fully aware of his latent power as Son of God, and his authority over all things.  His response to Peter’s feeble attempt to defend his Lord is telling:

do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?

But there are two reasons that such supernatural militance isn’t called for at this time — first, violent reprisal will only escalate violence (all those who take the sword will die by the sword), and that is not his purpose in coming.  And second, all that is happening is in order to fulfill the Scriptures.

Jesus does chide the crowd for an excessive show of force — coming at night, armed to the teeth, as if they are seeking a dangerous criminal.  After all, he’s been teaching publicly in the temple all week.

Jesus continues to exert his quiet, peaceful authority when he is hailed before a hastily summoned council of the priests and elders.  This court isn’t even held in a public venue, but in the home of Caiaphas the high priest.  None of the false testimony against him holds water — until he is asked the one question that really matters:

The high priest answered him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

The response of Jesus suggests that by bringing this very charge, the high priest has acknowledged that Jesus is either the Son of God,  or he is a fraud.  And the life and ministry of Jesus leaves no room for the charge that he is a phony.  Moreover, Jesus confirms his identity with a prophecy:

Jesus said to him, “You have said it. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky.”

This is apocalyptic language that is unmistakeably Biblical.  Jesus may well be referring to Daniel:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.  There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14).

Now the high priest has his “smoking gun” — all the evidence he thinks he needs to convict Jesus.  The high priest tears his robe, which is a sign of grief and lamentation.  But the Levitical law forbade the high priest from these customary signs of mourning (Leviticus 21:10).  The high priest is conveying a serious source of grief by doing this — he is accusing Jesus of blasphemy.

The penalty for blasphemy in Jewish law is death.  Jesus is physically abused and abased by these council members.  But they are an occupied nation, with Rome as their overlord.  They have no authority to execute a prisoner.

So the next morning Jesus must stand before Governor Pontius Pilate.  The Roman official’s concern is not with religious charges against Jesus, but with political sedition and revolution.  Messiah, or anointed one, is also the title of a king.  This is the only charge that concerns Pilate.  But Jesus leaves Pilate to make up his own mind:

 Now Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus said to him, “So you say.”

This is essentially the same answer Jesus gives to the high priest, which suggests that Jesus is tacitly confirming the charge.

Pilate’s role in this trial and execution are critical.  Pilate had already incurred the displeasure of the priests and elders with some of his previous public policies.  According to the Jewish historians of that time (e.g. Philo and Josephus), Pilate had offended the priests by introducing Roman standards and shields on temple grounds — this had been a violation of the second commandment forbidding graven images.  And he had appropriated money designated for the temple and used it to build aqueducts.  When the Jews protested these acts, Pilate ordered his troops to respond with violence.  It might be said he had two strikes against him already.  More complaints to the Emperor might be devastating to Pilate’s career.

Not even the intercession of Pilate’s wife could avert the inevitable.

Pilate’s contrivance, to force the crowd into a decision, backfires.  He offers a choice of Barabbas or Jesus.  They cry for Barabbas to be released, and Jesus to be crucified.  Pilate now finds himself in a corner that he himself created.   He is convinced of Jesus’ innocence.  When the crowd demands that Jesus be crucified, Pilate pleads for him:

But the governor said, “Why? What evil has he done?”

His efforts to avert violence are about to backfire.  Normally the Roman Procurator didn’t come to Jerusalem except in times of unrest, as a show of force to prevent uprisings.  Now, this trial was threatening to become the source of a riot.

Pilate’s highly symbolic act, washing his hands of Jesus’ blood, is a sham.  A crucifixion was a penalty exacted by Rome for political crimes (sedition, treason, revolution), not civil crimes.  By permitting it, Pilate was responsible for it.  And it was Roman soldiers who carried out the execution.

The Roman soldiers continue the abuse of Jesus.  Normally a flogging was considered a possible death sentence.  They mock him and humiliate him with the threadbare trappings of  royalty — a scarlet robe, a crown of thorns, and a reed for a scepter — because by dehumanizing him they make an example of Jesus.  And it is easier to kill someone whose humanity has been devalued and objectified.

It should be noted that Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified, was not far from one of the city gates, along a well-travelled road.  This was quite intentional.  The cross was a political statement that Rome wished to make very public — this is what happens to enemies of Rome!

Thus begin the hours of supreme agony, coupled with paradox.  The Roman soldiers mock him by slapping and spitting on Jesus, and call him The King of the Jews.  The sign placed over his head on the cross proclaims the same charge.  The irony is that this helpless, humiliated and dying Jew is in fact the rightful  heir of King David — and he is also the King of the Universe.

The paradox of this dying God is manifested further by the mockery of the passersby and the priests.  They taunt him:

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!

He saved others, but he can’t save himself. If he is the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now, if he wants him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’.

This is the supreme paradox.  Because Jesus is the Son of God, he chooses not to come down from the cross.  He saves others because he refuses to save himself.  And it is his trust in God that was revealed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said:

not what I desire, but what you desire.

Matthew’s descriptions of the scene on Golgotha (appropriately named: the place of the skull) grow surreal.  Darkness strangely falls over the land at noon.  There is silence, watching, and suffering until 3:00 p.m., when Jesus makes his famous cry:

“Eli, Eli, lima  sabachthani?” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The phrase that Jesus quotes is one of the rare transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic in the otherwise Greek text of Matthew’s Gospels. This is a clue to us that Matthew is using Jesus’ exact words from the cross, and that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22:1.  Psalm 22, written hundreds of years earlier, appears to be an eerily accurate description of the physical and psychological effects of this crucifixion:

All those who see me mock me.
They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying,
“He trusts in Yahweh;
let him deliver him.
Let him rescue him, since he delights in him” (Psalm 22:7-8)

I am poured out like water.
All my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax;
it is melted within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have brought me into the dust of death.
 For dogs have surrounded me.
A company of evildoers have enclosed me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
 I can count all of my bones.
They look and stare at me.
They divide my garments among them.
They cast lots for my clothing (Psalm 22:14-18).

At the same time it shouldn’t escape notice that despair is transformed into powerful hope in Psalm 22:

I will declare your name to my brothers.
Among the assembly, I will praise you.
You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel!
 For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
Neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard (Psalm 22:22-24).

A crucified man who is slowly dying of asphyxiation hasn’t the breath to recite an entire Psalm, but it may be that Jesus’ cry was not that of dereliction at all.  Perhaps he was remembering the Psalms learned in his childhood, and particularly this vivid poem, and in its despair he paradoxically finds hope.

This cry has been interpreted in many ways throughout the centuries by Christian expositors. In any event, this cry  is misinterpreted by some who stand at the cross.  They think he is calling on Elijah, when he is actually calling on God (Eli = My God). 

Even the  kind effort of a soldier to offer Jesus sour wine soaked into a sponge is turned into a taunt by the others:

The rest said, “Let him be. Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.”

As mentioned above, the breath of a man dying of crucifixion becomes shallow — speaking becomes nearly impossible.  But Jesus dies with what seems a cry of victory:

Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit.

The effects of this climactic moment are multiple.  The thick curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.  This is the veil that separated the Holy Place in the temple from the innermost room known as the Holy of Holies.

The Holy Place was the location of solemn worship where only the priests were permitted to go . This is where the table for the shewbread, the altar of incense which represented the prayers of Israel, and the seven-branched lampstand that offered light for the room were located.  These were all articles carefully prescribed by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus.

However, the Holy of Holies was the most holy place, where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sins of Israel.

The significance of the tearing of the veil is clear — Jesus, the true high priest, has opened the way into the presence of God.

Not only are the religious symbols of Israel affected, nature itself is affected — there is a violent earthquake, and tombs are disturbed.  There is even  a foretaste of the resurrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection expected at the end of the age:

The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;  and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city and appeared to many.

And of course, there are the reactions of the living.  A battle-hardened centurion sees all of these phenomena and declares what amounts to a confession of faith:

Truly this was the Son of God.

This is the first sign of the harvest among the Gentiles that is to come because of the death of Jesus — but not the last.

And there are the women who have been keeping vigil at the cross.  They will not stray far from the corpse of Jesus, even after he is entombed:

Many women were there watching from afar, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, serving him.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Mary Magdalene we recognize from other Gospels as the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2).  The other Mary mentioned here is the mother of James the younger, one of the twelve disciples listed — but Joses is somewhat mysterious.  Although the name Joses appears in the Gospels, he does not appear as one of the twelve.  Curiously, James and Joses are mentioned as brothers — of Jesus himself!  (Matthew 13:55).

And finally the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, is mentioned.  These two sons were among the first of the fishermen to follow Jesus from the beginning, and two of Jesus’ closest friends (Matthew 4:21).  This is the same woman who asked Jesus to find a position of honor for her sons when Jesus came into his Kingdom (Matthew 20:20-21). This wife of Zebedee must have also left her home on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to follow Jesus!

Then there is Joseph,  a rich man from Arimathaea. We also know from the other Gospels that Joseph was a prominent member of the Jewish council of elders — the same council that had condemned Jesus for blasphemy (Mark 15:43).  We know that Joseph was hoping for the consummation of the Kingdom of God (Luke 23:51).  And most significantly, we know that Joseph was a secret disciple, who hid his faith out of fear of his colleagues on the council of elders (John 19:38).

And here we see the courage of Joseph in risking the disapproval and censure of his colleagues:

This man went to Pilate, and asked for Jesus’ body. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given up.  Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.

Nevertheless, even after all of this, on the Sabbath day following the day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees violate their own prescriptions for the Sabbath observance in order to petition Pilate.  This suggests their anxiety and urgency even now about the influence of Jesus:

Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He is risen from the dead;’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.

Clearly, they are aware that Jesus has predicted his own resurrection.  They may doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, but they don’t trust his disciples.

Guarding a tomb is hardly routine Roman military practice, but Pilate continues to placate the chief priests and the Pharisees:

You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.

Not only is there are guard set at the tomb where Jesus has been laid, they seal the stone.  The stone itself would have been large enough to block the entry way, and therefore quite large and heavy.  The caves in which these tombs were dug were likely limestone.  The seal was probably a soft, moldable clay that would harden — or it may well have indicated an Imperial Roman seal.  This would have been a deterrent to grave robbers who sought to break in.  Few would wish to risk the wrath of Roman justice.

APPLY:  

If we wish to read a theological or doctrinal interpretation of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, we might turn to the epistles of Paul, Peter, John and the book of Hebrews.  There we learn that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for sins,  and that as the true high priest he is the one who both offers himself and is offered for our atonement.  By our faith in him, we are healed and forgiven.  In the account from Matthew there is some interpretation, but mostly we are presented with the narrative of these horrific events.

When we read this account as if for the first time, it is difficult not to experience shock, and even horror, as the drama unfolds.  Jesus is betrayed by a trusted follower.  He is arrested while at prayer.  He is tried by a court looking for a pretext to condemn him.  He is violently abused, and becomes the pawn in a political game of chess between powerful men.  He dies a horrible death on the cross, casually taunted by most who pass by.

But what is also shocking — in a positive and hopeful sense — is that despite the horror, there are those in this narrative who respond even to this crucifixion with faith and hope.  The centurion (a foreigner) is moved to a declaration of faith that Jesus is the Son of God.  The women who have followed Jesus and served him from the beginning in Galilee to this present moment remain with him to the bitter end, even holding vigil at his tomb.  Joseph of Arimathaea overcomes his fear of his colleagues and openly cares for the body of Jesus after his death.

However, if we take the time to review the Gospel of Matthew and note what Jesus said during his life and ministry about what awaited him in Jerusalem, the shock would be mitigated.  Jesus told his disciples at least three times that he would be killed in Jerusalem (Matthew 16:21-28; Matthew 17:22-23; Matthew 20:17-19).  And there is the suggestion in Matthew 16 that he went on advising them that he would be killed.

It must be noted that each time Jesus spoke of his death  he also spoke of his resurrection.  Perhaps that is partly what motivates Joseph of Arimathaea.  After all, Joseph’s tomb was only borrowed for a few days by Jesus!  And perhaps this is why the women linger at the tomb.  As it turns out this was not merely emotional denial or unassuaged grief — they were among the first to encounter the risen Jesus!

As shocking as this long and painful passage from Matthew’s Gospel may be, the ultimate shock is still to come — on the third day!

RESPOND: 

I once had a colleague in the ministry who insisted on reading the entire account of the Passion (the suffering) and death of Jesus on Palm/Passion Sunday.  His reasoning was interesting.  People in his church loved to hear the entire Nativity accounts of Jesus’ birth  from Matthew and Luke at Christmas.  They needed to know why  he was born, and where his life would take him.

I have spent much more time on this account from the Gospel of Matthew this week for much the same reason.  The birth of Jesus anticipates his death.  And his death makes sense of his birth as the Son of God and the Son of Man for our sake.

T.S. Eliot, in one of my favorite poems, describes the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem.  He describes the arduous journey as they leave the luxury and comforts  of their summer palaces and silken girls bringing sherbet. 

And after the ordeal of this journey, with all of its hardships and frustrations, they arrive in the temperate valley and find the place they were looking for.   And Eliot closes with these lines, from the perspective of the Magi:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
(The Journey of the Magi)

May we all find in Jesus’ death our own birth.

Lord, the events of your Passion and Crucifixion are hard to look at.  If not for the Resurrection, and promise of pardon and new birth that accompany these events, it would be unbearable.  Thank you for suffering on our behalf — on my behalf — as unworthy as I am.  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“The First Station- Jesus is Condemned to Death” by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.