Palm and Passion

Text: Matthew 26:14—27:66
Other texts: Matthew 21:1-11

There is a lot of hoopla today, in a seriously religious kind of way. And it will continue throughout this week until next Sunday, Easter Sunday. This is the central moment in the church year, far outweighing Christmas, and we rightly make a big deal of it.

We are so familiar with the story, however, that there are few surprises. Not only do we know what is going to happen, we know how to interpret it. We know what it means. The church has had 2000 years to think about it. And we know how things turn out.

We just heard one of the two Gospel readings for today, this doubly-named Sunday. We heard the Palm part, where Jesus rides into the city amidst rejoicing and hosannas. We are about the hear the Passion part, where the joy turns to grief and horror. These are not two different stories. They are a part of one thing, one story. In its simplest: a rabble-rousing blasphemer comes to the city, makes more trouble, and is arrested, tried, and executed.

However, no such story of life cut short is simple. Hopes and expectations reside in the narrative of all people, and especially in those whom we allow to lead us—from messiahs to presidents to CEOs—allowed because we trust them to redeem us, heal our sorrows and sins, and bring us peace and contentment. They rarely can.

This is one story. But if so, are we obligated to explain it? To explain how what starts in glory ends in grief? What starts in hope ends in mourning? Or it that just the way things go: a sudden change in the winds, and a good life turns tragic?

The people lining the road to Jerusalem expect a king. The king is coming to you, quotes Matthew, borrowing from the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah. And the crowds call Jesus, with hope, the Son of David. A warrior king, scion of the greatest monarch of Israel. They have heard his teaching, seen his healing, eaten the bread and fishes with which he fed thousands, watched him confront authorities. These experiences fuel their expectations of a powerful leader. Save us! they cry—which is what hosanna! means. Hosanna, Son of David—save our nation!

Although this part of the story is about Jesus, Jesus is hardly present in it. It is a story of people longing for what they think Jesus is. Jesus is the carrier of a desperate desire. This man, riding humbly, as it says, on a donkey, nevertheless inspires in the people vision of political power and the overthrow of the sitting government. What is Jesus thinking, as he rides without speaking over the cloaks and branches, as he sees the expectant faces of his brothers and sisters, other than that he is surely headed toward his death. And their disappointment. We do not know; it does not say.

You will hear in a moment the second Gospel reading, also from Matthew, but five chapters later. You will hear that while Jesus at first speaks quite a lot, once he is brought before Pilate, he says almost nothing. He claims nothing. He will not answer when accused. He will not answer a single charge, it says. He will not claim the title of king of the Jews. “You say so,” he responds to Pilate. And those words—except with his last breath, when he asks God why he has been forsaken—those are his final words.

The Jesus of Matthew’s Passion is a humble man, not an imperial one. He was humiliated by everyone—priests, passersby, even the bandits. He is mocked and ridiculed. Save yourself, if you are the Son of God—Son of David, mighty warrior. Save yourself—a wicked mockery of the earlier hosannas. Save yourself, if you can save others as they say you have. But he cannot. Or does not. Unlike in John’s Gospel, where Jesus seems to be in charge of directing a drama about his own death, here in Matthew he is powerless. There no clever win-by-losing scheme going on here. Only losing.

We, like the crowd with its palms and hosannas, have a hard time accepting a humble Jesus. We transmute his powerlessness in the Passion according to Matthew into a secret power. But this makes his death meaningless and trivial if it is only part of some theological mathematics of atonement. Instead, we teach that it is important that God really died—as everyone does—and really suffered—as everyone does—and, if we are to believe Matthew, was truly humiliated. As everyone is.

It is helpful to hear the Palm and Passion story as if we never knew of Easter. If we never knew how things turned out. To imagine that the last word in the Gospel of Matthew was, as we are about to hear: So they went and sealed the tomb.

And then to ask ourselves what is the good news in that. Without the resurrections, does it make sense to follow a God who is disgraced and crucified? Because we do.

The Jesus of the Palm and Passion steps out of the normal way of the world. He is humble not because he is obedient to God—though that is no doubt true—but because the usual and acceptable way of things in the world is arrogance, exploitation, abuse of power, and leverage. Jesus refuses to participate in that scheme, which is a cause of much suffering and despair. Are you king of the Jews, Pilate asks? You say so, answers Jesus. You inhabit the world of kings and courts, Jesus answers, but I do not.

Christians have tended to pray for a kingly Jesus who is on their side, an earthly force with divine power whose wishes parallel their own, morally, politically, or culturally. We are no different in that regard from those singing hosannas by the side of the road.

But the Jesus of Palm and Passion does not serve us like this, but rather with persistent courage and humility, and brings this good news through the ministry of his life—there is a another way.