2nd April 2023 Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50:4-9a;  Psalm 31:9-18;  Philippians 2:5-11;  Matthew 26:14-27:66

Reflection

Today started out so good for Jesus.  A triumphal procession.  Many people gladly welcoming a man riding into town as a hero, a welcome saviour who, they thought, would save them from painful Roman rule.  But then, 5 days later it all ended in death.  Children waving palm branches gave way to death threats being shouted by violent mobs.  And a question many ask – why did Jesus have to die.

Luke gives us three reasons – he was subverting the nation; he opposed the payment of taxes to Caesar;  and he said He himself is Christ, a King.  John tells us an angry mob warned Pilate “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar.”  There were so many who were agreeing with and shouting the script fed them by those who opposed Jesus, those who wanted to get rid of this ‘threat’ at any cost.  What about us.  How many times have we been ‘one of the crowd’ without even realising it.  How many times have we been the one ready to ‘sell them down the river’ because fighting against the tide is too hard.

Sermon.

6 weeks ago, we had ashes imposed on our foreheads with the words “remember you are but dust, and unto dust you shall return”.  In essence, remember you will die.  Difficult words to say, even though it is a fact of which we are all aware.  Death could be described as the greatest of all the ‘principalities and powers’ we face.  In fact Paul calls it our ultimate enemy.  But many of us ‘ignore’ death; we deny it at our funerals; and we glorify it in war.  But we give death its due during Lent.  In our Christian vocabulary death is the penultimate word, not the final word.  Our Scriptures remind us that Jesus ‘conquered death; he ‘tasted death for every one’; and ‘through death he rendered powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil’.

But that really doesn’t necessarily answer why did Jesus have to die?  Yes, I know the ‘scripted answers’ that it was necessary to save us from our sin;  that it was the only way for us to gain eternal life;  that it was because the ‘religious authorities’ had missed the point of the law and the prophets and were turning them into something so ‘hard and fast’ that even ‘God’ had been written out of them and Jesus death was the only way to correct that error.  But all that really doesn’t answer the question, after all, this is God we are talking about, there must have been another way.

But the thing is, Jesus knew the options, he knew where the ‘loop-holes’ were, and he chose not to use them.  We see in his impassioned prayer in the garden, “Father, if there is another way, then please let it be, but’ and this is the clincher ‘not my will, but yours be done”.  Jesus knew how to ‘get out of this mess’, he knew what was about to happen, and we even see him encouraging Judas to ‘do what you need to do’.  Jesus actively sends Judas out to ‘seal the deal’, sealing his fate.

And for those of us who struggle to understand why, and how, the God we see as loving all people, could allow this travesty to occur; how could the God we know allow the murder of this Son who came to declare the coming of God’s kingdom, a kingdom of peace, a kingdom of justice, a kingdom of radical and universal freedom.  The best answer I can come up with is.  He died because he unflinchingly fulfilled the will of God.  He died because he exposed the ungracious sham at the heart of all human kingdoms.  Even when Jesus knew that his earthly journey would cost him his life, he ‘set his face’ toward Jerusalem.  Even when he knew that he was to be a ‘sacrificial lamb’, he mounts a donkey and rode into Jerusalem in opposition to Rome.

And so, we enter Holy Week.  We sit with our suffering, sorrowing, saving God.  Here is the cross upon which we stand.  Blessed is the One who comes to die so that we will live.