Really Jesus

Text: Luke 22:14–23:56
Other texts: Luke 19:28–40

In the next few days we will hear, read, sing about, and tell each other the essential story of Christianity: Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and his subsequent trial, death, and resurrection. The story dominates the Gospels, taking up about a third of each. It is a story that we retell every Sunday. We recap it in the Eucharistic prayer. We summarize it in the creed. These tiny, brief reminders—the whole story in a phrase: suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried—refer our hearts back to the complete version of this Holy Week story.

Today preachers are advised by the liturgical instructions to keep it short, or to say nothing at all. But the weird doubly-named Sunday begs some discussion.

Palm Sunday just started with a grand parade celebrating the hope of the crowds as Jesus comes into the center of power in Israel: Jerusalem. They see in him the prophesied king. Praising God—God’s work—for the deeds of power they have seen in the life so far of Jesus. They cannot contain their enthusiasm, and if they had been able to keep silent, the stones would shout out. Yet in a moment, in the time it takes to say these few “keep it short” words, we will hear of sadness, betrayal, cowardice, and death.

It seems odd. It is odd. It mashes together two events which are separate in the Bible into one liturgical container. It is like a space warp, where one can travel from one place to the other without traversing the intervening route. If you come to church this week on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday the transition will be a little slower and smoother, but even so, we skip over some important ground. It is disorienting. How could the Jesus of the triumphal procession become seemingly in an instant the Jesus of the cross?

It is the same Jesus. In many ways, Jesus was not just a nice guy who healed people and turned water to wine. He was a trouble-maker by design. He ate with the wrong people, he spoke up when he shouldn’t have, he mocked those in authority, he told everyone to love their enemies, to sell what they owned and give it all to the poor. He told parables that made people ashamed of themselves. He predicted in public the fall of the main institution in Israel, and generally made a fuss. Jesus made people angry.

He was not brought to trial because he was lovable. The march on Jerusalem was a sign to the people in power: keep a close eye on this guy. And the next thing you know—the next verses in the chapters that were warped out, Jesus is agitating people with stories of the fall of Jerusalem—“your enemies,” he warns the city, “… will crush you to the ground, you and your children.” And after that he causes a riot in the Temple over the money-changers. Then he condemns the priests. And so it goes.

In spite of what we sometimes tell ourselves, people rarely do bad things because the people are bad and they just hate the good. They do bad things because they are scared. They are afraid that they will suffer. Or they think that what they love is good, and that the good will suffer. Jesus was scary to some people. They were afraid of Jesus. They had the authority and the power to bring him to trial and condemn him to death. And they did.

We often speak about the innocence of Jesus. In the Gospel of Luke especially, whose version of the Passion we are about to hear, everyone proclaims his innocence: Pilate and Herod, notably.

But we need to be cautious about thinking that the actions of Jesus had nothing to do with his death on the cross. Jesus is not just an object in some divine project, like a piece in a game. What he, Jesus, does makes a difference in what happens. And neither is Jesus just a bundle of divine goodness that makes people’s response to him inexplicable. Jesus is human as well as divine. The human world responds to his human actions in a human way.

This story is a divine story of salvation history and of God’s intervention in the world. We know that because we know how the story turns out and because we have had millennia to think hard about it.

And the story is a human story of a particular person, Jesus, in particular circumstances, in glory and in sorrow, Palms and Passion. We know that because we see it in the words—including those in Luke that we are about to hear—the words and actions of the people who meet, hate, love, follow, or crucify him.

And because we know that we strive to follow this divine and human person who lived 2000 years ago and yet who remains in our lives today, the story is our story.

It is all one singular story.

Now let us say, and sing, and tell it to each other.