March 28, 2010

Glynn Cardy

Palm Sunday

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Today is the start of Holy Week. In St Matthew’s Holy Week involves services on Palm Sunday, Wednesday in Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day. For most of the week there will also be a candle-lit labyrinth for people to come, walk, and contemplate within.

Holy Week is on the one hand a quasi-reenactment of the events that alleged happened around the time of Jesus’ death in Palestine, 33 CE. Christians for centuries have used this time to reflect on the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection and whether there are cosmic theological implications. Was this the unique, once-for-all-time, for-every-culture salvation event?

On the other hand, there is also a long history of Christians using the events of Holy Week as a time to allegorically reflect on their own lives and their community’s. It is in this vein that I speak this morning.

On Palm Sunday Jesus rode upon a donkey into Jerusalem to much acclaim. The crowd loved him, placed their hopes on him, and bowed before him. 

Jerusalem was the centre of religious and political power in Palestine. This was the place where the forces of oppression, which Jesus had criticized from the Galilean countryside, coalesced. If there was going to be any national change it needed to change here.

Sometimes we need to leave the comfort and security of the place we know [our Galilees] and travel to the centre of power [our Jerusalems] to seek the change we hope for. We have to go there, to be face-to-face, and to risk our future. The risk-adverse never leave Galilee – and will therefore never experience crucifixion or resurrection. They just stay home, go to Church, and pray that someone else will save them.

There is a love that is welcome, and there’s a love that’s not. There is a love that is encouraged and affirmed, and there is a love that is disapproved of and punished. May we know and emulate the Jesus who risked all to pull down the walls separating the welcomed and the unwelcome, the accepted and the rejected. His was a bigger love. 

Jesus chose to ride in to Jerusalem on a donkey. It looked rather silly. Not exactly the triumphant-military, adorned-with-armour, riding-a-stallion look? 

Prior to entering the arena of the powerful we need to consider our strengths and how we want to appear. The humble donkey was a symbol, both to the biblically literate and to the Roman elite. It symbolized that here was one who had no need for muscular might and the assumptions of the culture of violence. Here was one who was not afraid of being alone and seeming to be stupid. Here was one who trusted in a God foreign to the halls of power.

The best argument doesn’t usually win the day. The courts of the powerful listen to the language of power, both the cultivated and the raw kind. To enter as one who will not play the power-game, who seeks to champion the unpopular, is at best to be a loser. Yet what can’t be dismissed so easily is one’s integrity. In the end, on the losing side of some Golgotha, all you have is your integrity. I suspect the acquittal of the Waihopai trio last week was due to their integrity.

To truly love one person is to innately like all people. To truly care for one person is to be concerned for all people. A soul that is grounded in God is grounded in compassion. When people die in foreign conflicts, such a soul suffers too. And such a soul must act, no matter how foolish or futile it seems.

Although Holy Week is filled with poignant exchanges let’s now jump forward to Thursday night. The powerful are elsewhere. Jesus is among friends. He takes bread and wine and likens it to his own life broken and poured out. These elements are sustenance for the journey, and a bond between us his followers. In simple food there is a simple grace. In simple grace there is a simple power.

Jesus next takes a towel, in the manner of a servant, and washes the feet of his guests. Leadership is to be like this: in the end none of us is greater or more worthy than anyone else, and therefore all are to be treated as special. The marginal and the mighty both get smelly feet. Both need help. Both can help each other – though one is not used to bending.

There is great potency in these rites of connection, mutuality, and equality. They summarize Jesus’ hopes for his friends.

Hope sees the deep truth that our difference does not define us, rather our commonality does. We are brothers and sisters of the planet. One’s giftedness is less important than one’s belonging. When we are home to one another there is hope.

That night the betrayal happens. The Roman soldiers find Jesus and arrest him. He has disturbed the peace of the powerful and insecure long enough. Judas, who paid 30 pieces of silver for a kiss, delivers it. After a show of bravado the other disciples either flee into the night or surreptitiously tag along until noticed. It is Peter’s cowardice that is highlighted. Brought before the authorities it is the fawning crowd who seemingly only yesterday held palm branches who now cry out that he should be crucified.

When the opposition mounts the applause and accolades of yesterday quickly evaporate. Likewise the friendships and intimacy of yesterday. We are alone. It is then that you know what strength you have, what courage is in your soul. Sometimes, when you think you are weak, your soul surprises you.

It is at this place of aloneness that every little flicker of what could be support counts – from a man who is press-ganged into helping you, from a soldier who serves you vinegar, from a thief who suffers with you, from the distant watching and weeping figures of a handful of women. It makes you realize how powerful a small encouraging word is, and how often you have not given it.

Only a few churches now, and none that I know of in this diocese, hold a vigil throughout Thursday night and into the morning. It is the time of aloneness, of nursing bruises, of darkness, of questioning, and having no one to answer.

Hope is a vulnerable thing, easy prey for the powerful to squash. Hope is a little thing. It is glimpsed in every kindness and every green shoot. Hope is a fickle thing. It flickers in the breeze and is blown by the winds of darkness. Will it be re-lit, and who will do it? 

On Friday morning Pilate asks the question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” For Jesus’ Roman accusers this is the nub of the matter. Forget all the religious palaver about sons of god and celestial seating arrangements – the nub is this-worldly power. Kings and kingdoms matter.

It’s been convenient for Pilate’s successors to locate Jesus’ power in some off the earth, heavenly realm. Yet Jesus was a threat to Pilate’s patch, and despite some writer’s wish to exonerate him of culpability, it was Pilate who ordered him killed.

There is a power that seeks to control people, to bend their wills to ours. In greater or lesser degrees this is the power that continues to dominate in the higher echelons of politics and wealth, and that we in the lower echelons often seek to replicate. Yet there is another power that seeks to make people free, without needing or wanting the coercive methods of the former. It is a power of the heart. A kingdom that only exists to liberate others has no need of kings, hierarchy, and obeisance. For anyone concerned about control it is to be feared.

The story goes that on Friday at 3 p.m. Jesus died. At dawn on Sunday, some 39 hours later, his resurrection is said to have already occurred. God raised him from the dead. Whatever this means – and it’s meaning launched a religion – it is grounded in his life and the events of his last week. Love, hope, and freedom always have a context.