Passion Narrative as Revisionary History

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday Cycle A   April 13, 2014

Is.45:21-25     Ps. 22:1-11

Phil. 2:5-11    Matthew 26:36-27:66

Lectionary Link

   I can’t imagine what it would be like if my best friend and the greatest person I’d ever known were to be condemned to die a death of capital punishment.

  The death of capital punishment is a declaration that someone is a menace to the social order.  To watch a really good person die a criminal’s death would really be hard to fathom.  One could only think, “It has to be that the bad guys are winning.”  It has to be that people with money and power can use power to call bad anyone who seems to threaten their money and their authority.

  The death of Jesus was a political decision by the Roman authorities.  It was a way of getting rid of someone who had been perceived as a trouble maker.  A trouble maker would be anyone who could draw a significant crowd of people.  The Romans did not want crowds of people gathering that were not gathered for them and for their own purposes.

  The death of Jesus could only be a terrible event.

  But this most terrible event underwent many make overs.  The cross of Jesus became the very opposite of terrible.  The cross of Jesus became viewed as an expression of the glorious power of God.  God is so powerful that God can willingly empty the life completely out of Jesus in his death.  The earliest New Testament writer, St. Paul made the cross of Jesus a central theological focus.  The power of being emptied of life itself represented the power to end all things that needed to be ended.  The cross of Jesus became the metaphor for spiritual transformation in the theology of St. Paul.

   The growing number of the followers of Jesus meant that the message of Jesus was successful.  Success meant the message was the basis for establishing small social gatherings in the cities of the Roman Empire.  The church had to deal with the success of the message about Jesus; they had to teach it and put it in forms accessible to more people.  How did the death of a person result in a growing and popular new social movement within the cities of the Roman Empire?   The death of Jesus did not end the Jesus Movement; it only amplified it.  And so the Passion Narratives in the Gospels came as the Christian communities reinterpreted the meaning of the death of Christ in liturgical and narrative forms.  By the time the death of Jesus was used as a liturgy within the Christian gatherings it had already become the focus of spiritual transformation.  Because the life and death and the after life of Jesus had become so successful in the lives of people, the death of Jesus could only be as an event which was interpreted as ordained, scripted and triumphant.  The success of the message of Jesus in the Jesus Movement required that the death of Jesus be presented in the way in which it was experienced as an interior method of spiritual transformation by the followers of Jesus.

  As we have read today’s Passion account from Matthew's Gosepl, we can note that Jesus is both the main actor and the director of the event.  Jesus is following the script.  The references in the Hebrew Scriptures about a suffering apocalyptic or messianic hero had been found to provide the template for story.  There had to be a betrayer, deniers and deserting friends.  Somebody had to fulfill the pre-ordained roles in the script of the Hebrew Scripture.  The Christians who read the Hebrew Scriptures believed that the dynamics of events in the past repeated themselves in the events of the life of Jesus.  The church of the years 60-100 had become so successful in the Roman Empire, they could only look back at the life of Jesus as the evidence of the fully scripted plan of God in history to make the church reach the outcome that it had already attained.  On the day of the crucifixion, it was a horrible event.  When the Passion narratives were written, the death on the cross had become the glorious providence of God.

  The Passion Gospel is a literary truth of the death of Jesus; it is not the literal truth of what truly happened in Roman crucifixion.  The Passion Gospel is the literary and liturgical truth of the Church of people who had undergone the truth of a spiritual process of knowing their lives completely transformed because of this post-resurrection spiritual presence of Christ in their lives.  The reality of Christ within the lives of Christian writers could only inspire them to present the narrative of Jesus on the cross as the Victor.

  As we read the Passion Narrative, we are insulated by the alchemy of spiritual process which has turned the power of the death of a good and perfect Jesus into the power to end what is wrong within a human heart and bring to birth a new kind of resurrection life.  The power to die to everything that is unworthy and the power to let come to birth what is good, was given the passion – resurrection narrative to teach and renew the growing and successful Christian communities.

  We cannot blame the church for writing it in such a way.  The churches of the Gospel writers wrote it fully influenced by the transformation of their personal and social lives.

  We cannot blame ourselves either for continuing in this tradition.  Not because we cannot still shudder at the literal thoughts of such a death, but because we too know the transformation in our lives in having the power to bring to an end unworthy motives and habits and bringing to birth patterns of love, peace and justice.  If we were to decry the Passion Gospel writers for taking too much literary license, we too would have to deny the reality of transformation within us because of our baptismal lives.

  The Passion narratives are also preceded by Eucharistic Narratives.  This is where Jesus takes the food and drink of a meal and identifies himself with this food and drink and then feeds his friends.  This is the promise that he made to be very close with them forever in the transformation of their lives.

  So whether, in the Eucharist or in the highly literary Passion Narrative, you and I identify again with a power that can end what is evil and unworthy in our live.  We also can know a power to give birth to actions which will bring peace, love and justice to our lives.

  People can be cynical and dismissive about our Eucharistic liturgies and Passion narratives, but what matters to you and me is that we know power of the transformation of our lives which surely is anchored in the very same life power which was in Jesus in his death and resurrection.  Amen.