April 8, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Liturgy of the Palms: Luke 19:29-40, Psalm 118:19-29
Liturgy of the Word:
Isaiah 45:21-25
Psalm 22 Deus, Deus meus
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke (22:39-71) 23:1-49 (50-56)
The real name for today is "The Sunday of the Passion," that is, Suffering Sunday. Anciently, there was no mass on Good Friday at all, and the Passion had only this day for its liturgical observance, not as a funeral, but as a victory. Because Good Friday is for most people a working day the Church opted to celebrate it now, so that we hear the story of Jesus' humiliation and suffering proclaimed as celebratory, and not merely observed in shadows, as a tragedy, and with the singing of dirges. The three synoptic gospels are read in turn on this Sunday--Luke's today, Matthew's in Year A and Mark's in Year B. John's proclamation of the passion is read, sung, or enacted every year on Good Friday. For on these days of passion something different happens; instead of only listening as ministers proclaim the gospel story, we are asked to take part in the play. No one can remain a spectator, we are all material witnesses, we are all actors in the drama, we are all participants. And because the day is so pivotal, and so important, it is really two Sundays conflated into one--it is hinged, like a diptych, to be not only a day of the Passion, "Suffering Sunday", but also the Sunday of the Palms--the triumphant festival day of Hosanna. There is in this day a dialectic of the Jesus of History WITH the Christ of Faith, and each has a liturgy essential to that union--that hypostatic union, you might say if you are preaching in a seminary today.
As the Palm Liturgy recalls in triumph the divine Liberator, the Christ of faith--the Lord of the Church's processions and songs of glory, so the Passion gospel kneels before the human Jesus of history, our Salutaris Hostia, our saving victim. Pantokrator rides a mule today. The word "Hosanna," like the words "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani" is an Aramaic word--a reminder of our Jewish religion, our Jewish Jesus, our Jewish Messiah. But "Hosanna" is the prayer of Palm Sunday's triumphant (and triumphalist) Church, where "Eloi, Eloi" is the prayer of Jesus' rejection and despair. These are the old words of our story, words which are too freighted with meaning to be translated into any language, and so are left in Jesus'own tongue. We begin the liturgy with Hosanna on our lips--our modern equivalent might be "Jesus saves!" except that does not sound very revolutionary. "Hosanna!" was a nationalist and revolutionary cry on the lips of an oppressed people. It was more like "Allah Akbar!" as shouted in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine today. It was inflammatory, not suitable for Sunday school. Roman occupation soldiers would have heard it as provocation, as a rock thrown by an Arab youth at Israeli occupation troops. We sing it gladly as a triumphalist ditty, unaware of its political power. Perhaps the Church does not yet realize its own plight in the 21st century, or "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtahni" would be a more frequent prayer than once a year. We don't yet know the depth of our daily abandonment.
This great dramatic liturgy comes from the 4th century in Jerusalem. The churches and holy places that Helena, the mother of Constantine, had embellished and endowed had become the sites of annual pilgrimage, and in those days Christians went to Jerusalem as Muslims will go to Mecca still, or Baptists to Tulsa, and the bishop of Jerusalem was escorted into the city from the Mount of Olives, riding upon an ass (nowadays we call it a donkey, to distinguish it from its burden).
By the sixth century the procession and the palm blessing had been taken up in churches throughout the city of Rome, and ultimately throughout the world, even to this place this morning, thousands of miles and years away. Irascible Saint Jerome, curmudgeon, hammer of the heretics, and Bible translator, lived the last 34 years of his life in Palestine, and in the 4th & 5th centuries wrote that it is in our hearts that we must go in Holy Week to Jerusalem, and not merely to visit it in a geographical sense. "It is not a question of having been in Jerusalem," he wrote, "but what matters is to have lived well in Jersualem and it is for this that we must be happy. The city we seek is not the city that has killed the prophets and shed the blood of Christ, but the city that can rejoice in a powerful river, the city that, built on a mountain, cannot be hid, the city that the apostle proclaims to be the mother of saints and that he wishes to dwell in with the righteous." Jerome writes, "I would not dare to restrict the almighty power of God and to confine to a small country or a small corner of the earth him whom heaven cannot contain. Every believer is estimated according to the merit of his faith and not on account of where he lives."
Every year at this time most of the clergy begin to get mailings from travel agencies which offer a free round trip to Jerusalem if they can get eleven paying customers at thousands of dollars each to sign up and go along with them as their tour guide. I went on one of these trips once, recruited by a scholarly priest friend, arranged by the Israeli tourist department, and found it to be an exercise in pro-Israeli propaganda, which left the people of the Holy Land--the Arabs--completely out of history, as if they had been pushed into the Dead Sea and never surfaced through the salt. At such times, I am comforted by Saint Jerome's words too, assuring me that what matters is to have Jerusalem in the heart, Bethlehem in the bones, Gethsemane in the guts. The church's liturgy today is a free round trip to Jerusalem, a "virtual pilgrimage." Just remember it's occupied territory now, as then. But those who were occupied then are the occupiers now!
At the heart of the Greek Scriptures (what we call the New Testament) are the gospels, and the heart of the gospels are the Passion stories. Indeed, they are the oldest pieces of our saga. There, in the irreducible minimum of this day, is Politician Pontius Pilate, and Luke begins the core of this story with "The assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate." Here Pilate hears the accusation "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah." Pilate is not surprised--does not ask Jesus if he indeed perverts politics, counsels tax resistance (what difference would it make? Taxes were not voluntary contributions. What would Jesus be doing there in court at all if he hadn't counselled resistance to Rome? Was he littering?) Pilate is concerned only about organized insurrection: "Are you the king of the Jews?" and when Pilate finds that Jesus is Herod's subject, he sends him off to that satrap, who happened also to be in Jerusalem at the time. But Herod bounces him back in another change of venue--indeed, Pilate finds Jesus "innocent" three times in these encounters, a pertinent number!
Tertullian thought Pilate had been a Christian in his heart, and the Ethiopian church included him in the calendar of saints. The Church, the Bride of Christ, on her way to an infamous couch with the Empire, turned to blame the Jewish people instead of the Roman Empire for the death of Jesus.
"I have found no grounds", he said, "I will therefore have him flogged and release him. I'll declare my amnesia in this case." But the gospels record that it was Pilate nevertheless who designed the "titulus" on the cross--some variant of "This was a Jewish king"--deliberately insulting the occupied nation. And crucified him between two insurrectionists, whom our imperialist history prefers to remember as murderers or bandits.
And some of the rest of the story, from which we get the array of passion symbols, is here--the Judas kiss, the ear of the high priest's servant, the servant girl in the firelight, Peter's denial, the rooster's scornful crowing, the elegant cloak, the pair of dice, the blindfold, the insults, the Temple curtain torn in two--these are here. There's no sponge here, in Luke, no vinegar, no reed, no piercing of Jesus with a sword. But there is darkness over the land, and there is mocking, and the deriding criminal rebuked by his fellow convict. The irreducible minimum to be read today ends at Luke 23:49, and this is a part of the passion story forgotten in the jumble sale of details which we put together as a pastiche of the gospels. Luke had said that it was a servant girl who put her finger on Peter. The women in serving positions were not important enough to arrest, 'though they were eyewitnesses, too. So Luke concludes:
"The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath day they rested according to the commandments." The eyewitnesses of Jesus' judicial murder were all women. The male coterie had fled. They have heard the rooster laugh at their treachery.
How do we depict this betrayal on the Portugese tapestry altar frontal? How do we show Judas' kiss? (It used to be forbidden in Hoy Week to exchange the Sign of Peace, lest we betray him again.) How do we show the betrayal, the treachery of Christians who take up the sword, who with Peter strike out at the ears which someday might hear the gospel, and call nuclear weapons by the name of "Peacemaker." And indiscriminately pay taxes to support the military-industrial complex, to underwrite war and mayhem. Jesus says simply to all of us, "No more of this!" "Are you still sleeping? Get up and pray that you do not come to the time of trial."
It is this sleep of the Church which is the continuing betrayal of Jesus. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about the church full of Rip Van Winkles who in the sixties slept through a Revolution in Human Rights in the United States. What about the Revolution going on now? The great and tumultous changes of the present, for it is not only the Cross which is a symbol of Christ's passion, but the Church's sleep, its avoidance which is equivalent to the apostles' sleep in Gethsemane, to Peter's denial at dawn. "There is no way to peace," A. J. Mustie insisted, "Peace is the way." "Peace" sounds so restful, so sleepy. But sleep is not peace; sleep is indeed rest, but it can be avoidance, the lack of consciousness, the lack of awareness, somnolence. But Peace is the presence of justice and life, hope, joy, vigor and the way to the future. Go back and listen to the rooster--he laughs to wake us up, he laughs at our own silence, our refusal to see the oppression in the garden, the high priest's servant still has his sword and the popes and bishops and fundamentalist pastors still bless it. The rooster crows thrice: Wake Up! We seem to be waiting for an attack by aliens in space cadet uniforms before we will rise and act to defend the human person who is suffering. "That's enough!" he declares. Jesus turns and looks in our direction very early each morning, in the firelight. We're cringing there, next to Peter.
Take up the palm then, once again, symbol now not only of praise and triumph, but of shame and betrayal. We who sang "Hosanna" at the Palm liturgy have also shouted "Crucify" in the garden. Or we have declared "I don't know him." Or we have slept. The Palm will be burned next Ash Wednesday and its dust laid on our faces. So the Christ of faith is reduced to the Jesus of history. Only a few women remain to bury their pastor, their friend, their leader. The story indicates they weren't even worth arresting, for they represent the powerless, the homeless, the Marys--Magdalene and the mother of James and Joses, and Salome. And many other women. The church recovered qickly and put our men back in charge, but it was women who were there at the cross, there at the tomb, present at the foundation, and it was women who lived to tell the story even as apostles to the apostles, and pass it on, and it runs through history like a powerful underground river. In Holy Week, it emerges in the bath of Baptismal renewal.
It is still the powerless whom Jesus is closest to. And the converted enemy. A turncoat imperial soldier praises God, declares the innocence of Jesus, and writes the first creed. He speaks our own faith across the centuries, over the Golgothas of world history. It is our faith, and binds Palm Sunday with the Cross and the empty tomb. "Truly," all of us aliens, women, and turncoats come to declare, "Truly, this was the Child of God."
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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