Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday C April 13, 2025
Is. 50: 4-9a Ps. 31: 9-16
Phil. 2:5-11 Luke 23:1-49
Yes, it's Holy Week and that means on Passion Sunday and on Good Friday, the topic of the day is the death of Jesus. There are four Passion accounts in the New Testament as well as references to it by Paul and other writers of the New Testament. And we know the big issue, that Jesus died on a Roman Cross. But the descriptions and the meanings of the death of Jesus have significant differences. This reveals the human truth that the meaning of the death of Jesus or any person are different for different people at different times. The Passion accounts were written decades after Jesus lived in different settings by people who shared some common information, but they were writing their own personal and communal meanings.
By the time that the death of Jesus was written about and shared as the readings within the various groups of people who were followers of Jesus, the death had accrued so many meanings that it was more like a parable about Jesus tinged with the meanings of his life for the people who were gathered because they were sharing mystical experience which centered around the Risen Christ. Trying to connect the Risen Christ, the Christ who was revealed in St. Paul, with the person of Jesus who lived decades before and do it with literary invention in combining heroic themes of the Hebrew Scriptures and the heroes of the Greco-Roman world was the task of the Gospel writers of the Passion account.
The Passion accounts on Passion Sunday and on Good Friday are "performed." That is, various readers are assigned for the parts and the entire crowd performs the parts of the yelling crowds and groups.
Who killed Jesus? According to the New Testament the Romans did, the Jews did, and the collective we of humanity with our sinfulness, the god and the leaders of this world did, and ultimately God killed his own Son, for a divine purpose. So it looks like everyone was cosmically connected with the death of Jesus.
But then with spiritual poetry, the death of Jesus gets turned on its head. Because with Paul, he, we, and everyone can have a mystical experience of being crucified with Christ. So Paul as Saul was one who would have been in favor of the death of Jesus; but he became one who saw himself as crucified with Christ, through spiritual identity.
Can we appreciate how poetry can explode singular meanings? The meanings can be so personal and misunderstood that those like Paul who held such views could be called foolish. Paul actually wrote about the foolishness of the Cross of Jesus. To those without the mystical experience of an identity with Christ, the Cross of Jesus could be viewed as the visible failure of just another insurrectionist in the Roman Empire.
Can we appreciate that the Passion Narrative came to writing and public performance during a time of extended delay of the Day of the Lord when the Son of Man was supposed come in the clouds? Jesus was presented in saying to a crowd of people, that some who were there would not see death because they would be alive to witness this mysterious final event. If the day of the Lord is imminent, the people waiting do not need writing, or any thing like an institutional organization with developed liturgical practices for celebrating their faith habits. People do not need to get married or own property if the Day of the Lord is coming soon. But the Day of the Lord did not arrive and those who continued to hold on to such a future event had to deal with the delay. Terrible events have the power to awaken a renewed expectancy about the imminent event of the Day of the Lord.
For people in Palestine, the year 70 was an event to reawaken apocalyptic expectation. In the Jewish Wars from 66 to 70, Jerusalem was destroyed as well as the Temple. Thus the desolating sacrilege occurred which was a key event in the apocalyptic expectations, as penned by the prophet Daniel.
What was the divine meaning of the destruction of the Temple for the followers of Jesus and for the Jews? Was in fact the Jewish Wars efforts caused by apocalyptic Jews including followers of Jesus to force the "hand of God" to act with some cataclysmic response? And alas, the divine did not intervene to save the Temple or Jerusalem: what would this mean about the timing of the Day of the Lord?
"Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three day." These are the Gospel words of Jesus who is presented at the Temple making the reference of identity of his body and the Temple in Jerusalem.
The new location for the holy presence of God was the body of Jesus, replacing, as it were, the former intensive location of God in the Holiest of Holies in the Temple. In the quest for meaning among the followers of Jesus, there was a coupling of the destruction of the Temple which followed on the destruction of the body of Jesus on the Cross some four decades earlier.
The Passion Gospels is the account of the destruction of the body of Jesus. Did the destruction of the body of Jesus leave the world without a special location for the divine presence? The same sort of question would be pondered after the year 70. Did the destruction of the Temple leave the world without a special location for the meeting of God and God's people?
For the people of God the persisting delay of the Day of the Lord even after Jerusalem and the Temple was destroyed necessitated a theological explanation. The Passion Stories were part of this explanation. The death of Jesus and the destruction of the Temple appear to be the loss of the divine presence with humanity, but such appearance was only for the revelation of a greater plan for the continuing presence of God in a special way in this world.
The Passion Narrative is more a theology about the temporary leaving of the God in Jesus' death upon the Cross, and about his return in three days in the post-resurrection appearances. Further the Pentecost story, and the witness of St. Paul is about the further returns of the Risen Christ to many through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When when the Risen Christ occurred within people, they too and their bodies collectively became the body of Christ consisting of each of them as a temple of the Holy Spirit for God's holy dwelling.
The post resurrection appearances and the presence of the Risen Christ in Paul and those baptized with Holy Spirit became the explanation for how Christ had returned in many specific ways. Making sure that as many people as possible would know their own bodies to be known as temples of the Holy Spirit provided the theological reason for the delay of the Big Return Day of the Son of Man.
We may be tempted to want to come to this day and liturgy as a way to reconstruct the specific events of history, but miss the theological point of why the Passion Narrative came to writing within the communities after the destruction of Jerusalem and Temple, four decades later.
The death of Jesus on the Cross and the destruction of Temple in Jerusalem gave rise to the question of the loss of a location in a Body and in the Temple of the presence of God to God's people. What died in both was thinking that the divine presence could be limited in time and space, either in the Temple or in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
St. Paul wrote that he was crucified with Christ, and as a result, Christ lived within him. The presence of God in Christ was no longer seen to be limited to the body of the prophet named Jesus; rather the Christ of God could be known by anyone, anywhere, in any place. The post resurrection appearances, the event of Pentecost, were narrative teachings toward the always, already available baptism of the Holy Spirit whereby the Christ of God could be revealed to be in anyone. And this was known as the continual returns of the Risen Christ realized in new people. And the Risen Christ revealed in such people comprised the corporate Christ; people as the body of Christ conveying God's presence to the world.
With all these returns of the Risen Christ in and to people, what happened to the great, and future and final apocalyptic event? It was evident to Paul and all early followers of Jesus that the messianic age had not yet arrived, in fact it was woefully evident that the world was far from being healed, but the meantime mission was to experience one by one the healing of the presence of the Risen Christ.
Let us appreciate the meanings of the Passion of Jesus Christ today. As a personal mystical event of being crucified with Christ, that is, of knowing the graceful events of interdiction in lack of impulse control coupled with power to reconstitute our life energies toward the renewal and healing of our lives and our world.
Let us appreciate the collective meaning of the Passion of Jesus Christ as well, with an embrace of the temple theology of the Paul and the early followers of Jesus. Our bodies are made to be holy temples of the Holy Spirit; we need not trek to Jerusalem to find God or Christ. The Christ has become closer to us than we are to ourselves and as we share this experience with others we become the collective body of Christ, a social dwelling through which we can unify to do more good united than we can do as singular individuals.
May God show us the mystical personal meaning and the social collective meaning of the Passion of Jesus Christ today. Amen.
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