NewCreation

Homily for Palm Sunday, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for Palm Sunday. And I'd just like to do a little sort of celebratory dance because it was two years ago on Palm Sunday that I started this series, set up Preaching Eucharistically, the site, and started providing a homily every Sunday. So we're now beginning the third year, the third and final year of the extra cycle in which I hope to be providing these resources for you. Anyhow, just a little reminder of how short and how long this period has been. Okay, this year Saint Luke's Passion — and obviously the Passion itself is far too long for me to go through the close reading of it. It's just a 14-minute read of the actual passages, let alone anything else. So I'm going to look at two key moments which I hope will bring out something of what Luke understands is going on here, of the very many passages which we could have chosen. The first is going to be Jesus in Luke's Gospel not in the Garden of Gethsemane but on the Mount of Olives, and then the second is the actual moment of the crucifixion, because those two moments give us a pretty clear idea of how Luke understands what Jesus has been doing and what is in fact going on here. So this is from Luke 22:39. "Jesus came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him." So please notice here it's all of the disciples. In Matthew and Mark, here just the three of them going separately with him. But here he reaches the place and he says to them, "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial." In other words, all that's going to happen now is going to be very trying for them. They're going to have to work out what is going to be true, what is not true, whether to run away, whether to stay. This is going to be their problem. Then he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down and prayed. So the stone's throw here — it may be a reference to the story of the giving of the first covenant, where the people were instructed to keep animals a stone's throw away from the holy mountain. If the animals touched the mountain they would be stoned. So here we have a considerable distance, but the suggestion of lapidation is building up: distance, sacredness, lapidation. And in this he kneels down. In the other synoptic Gospels he lies down. Why is it important that he kneels down? Well, we'll see that in just a second, but basically it serves to allow gravity to run its course. Something has got to run down, and it's important that it run down, because that will be fulfilling a prophecy. And he prays: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done." This is said more serenely than it appears in Mark's Gospel. The The will in question, the thelema, appears in Luke's Gospel as either the will of humans or the will of God. The will of humans takes the form of the will of human leadership, and is obviously the corrupt thing. In other words, it's the will of Adam. And then there is the Father's will, which is shown to be the will that was original before Adam fell, in our understanding. So Luke is setting us up for a moment where Jesus is going to be enacting Adam — he's going to be getting right what Adam got wrong — and we'll see that work out in just a second. Then an angel from heaven appears to him and gives him strength. This fulfills a prophecy in Deuteronomy about how the angel would give strength to the one who was about to perform the requital or atonement. In John's Gospel we get this same angel appearing earlier, when Jesus is in the Temple and the Greeks have come seeking him, and it's at that point that people hear the voice of an angel. But the notion that the angel would come to comfort the one who is about to enact the atonement — that's a fulfillment of a prophecy. "And in his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground." So here there is a notion this is an anguishing moment, whereas before he's been quite serene. He prays more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood. It does not say that he started sweating blood — it became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. And here there are a number of hidden references going on. What is being fulfilled here is — if I can find it — this text from Genesis 3, when the human is cast out, when Adam is cast out. This is the prophecy that is made: "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return." Now here's the interesting thing. If we have the sweat like great drops or clumps or clots of blood dribbling down his face, what do we have? We have a picture of somebody with whom the dust has become red, is falling down to the ground, dribbling down him. That prophecy — the Genesis prophecy — is being fulfilled. And at the root of this there are some puns from the Hebrew word for red, for blood, for Adam, and for earth, all of which have the same root. In other words, here Jesus is enacting Adam, getting right what the first Adam got wrong. This is a key element, because as we'll see, what we have in Luke's passion is creation running backwards. So this is, if you like, the moment when they're in the garden — not that it's the garden of Gethsemane, it's on the Mount of Olives. And at last the Messiah has come, and he's come to be the first Adam, the real Adam. He's going to get right what Adam got wrong. In other words, What's hinted at already here is the beginning of the new creation. So when he got up from prayer he came to the disciples, finding them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial." So he repeats: they're about to go through a time of trial. Please notice he's been in this kind of sacred space, referring as it were to the first garden that's a stone's throw away, that nothing can touch. He's been in that space. He has enacted Adam. He's preparing the possibility of the return to the garden — and more of that anon. Okay, after that we have the crowd come, and you have the strange moment where Jesus' disciples ask him — when Judas betrays him with a kiss — they ask him, "Should we strike him with a sword?" because Jesus had talked to them about having swords before. But it sounds as though before, when Jesus said, "Listen, have these swords," it's because Jesus needed some excuse for them to arrest him. He needed — that was part of the thing that he knew he was enacting — that it required people to take him as a transgressor. So you needed to have some sign that you were a guilty party. He was giving an excuse; he didn't want anybody to harm anybody. Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. So, whereas — I think it's written, saying in John's Gospel it's Peter who does that — here it's just one of them. And Jesus says, "No more of this," and touches the ear and heals him. In other words, that's not what Jesus had meant by bringing a sword. But the key point that is brought out here is that the high priest's slave has been wounded. He has a blemish, and under the understanding that the high priest's slave or servant was the agent of the high priest, that meant that what was affected in the servant is affected in the principal, and that meant that the high priest now had a blemish — which means that the high priest couldn't perform the atonement sacrifice. Which of course, in Luke's understanding, this wasn't even the day for that anyhow. And Jesus ignores all that olympically, because he knows perfectly well that he is the one who's performing the great atonement sacrifice. So it's quite unnecessary — whether the high priest is injured or not is not germane. The true high priest is here; the other one really doesn't matter. "And then, when I was with you day after day in the Temple, you did not lay hands on me." The laying of hands, of course, was the moment of the placing of the sins on the scapegoat mechanism. But this is your hour and the power of darkness — placing the hands on the scapegoat, which was the transference of the sins. So he's saying: here they're laying hands on him, and here they are doing what they didn't do in the Temple. He's saying, "So this is your hour…" This is the way that the transfer of sins, the real atonement, the real escape mechanism, is going to work. Okay, now let's jump through, if you'll excuse me, the court and the trial, and come to the actual crucifixion. So Simon of Cyrene follows him, carrying the stave that would have been – probably the principal pike would have been buried already in the ground at the place for execution, and the stave would be carried for the criminal. A great number of the people followed him. Among them were women who were beating their breasts. So again, one of the things which happens here is that the attempt by the authorities – both Pilate, the Roman authority, and Herod the Tetrarch, in other words the stand-in kings – the attempt of both of them to try to sort this out by a little bit of scapegoating has failed. A mob has taken over. But what is revealed is that the mob themselves are not all mobbish. In fact it's a failed scapegoat mechanism, because you have the crowd watching, mourning, as this happens. Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Okay, so here we have the Lord sitting on his mercy seat, which is the cross, between the two – ah, cherubim; the ones who were in the Holy Place – was it seraphim? Anyhow, the angels in the Holy Place. And here is the Lord in their midst, and it's the mercy seat, such that the place where sins are being forgiven, and he understands that this is exactly what he's doing. They cast lots to divide his clothing – so more psalms being fulfilled. The people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying: "He saved others; let him save himself," for this is repeated, something we had earlier in the Gospel. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, saying: "If you're the king of the Jews, save yourself." So the leaders mocked him, the Romans mocked him, but there were lots of people there who were not engaging in the mocking. One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying: "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." But the other rebuked him, saying: "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?" So here, curiously, we have the two angelic figures – at this stage, bad angels, fallen angels if you like – one of whom is beginning to realize that there may be something positive going on here, and the one who is treating the whole thing in a condemnatory way and is therefore part of self-destruction. So the two angels who are there, representing the fallen and the unfallen, the interpretation as just punishment and the recognition that something innocent is here: they are going to, if you like, frame what is happening. And after the good angel has recognized that what is going on is good, this person is innocent, this person is sinless, then he says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus replies, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." Now this is a specific Holy of Holies reference. Paradise was one of the ways of referring to the Holy of Holies in the Temple, and is Jesus indicating, "Yep, you're going to be one of the angels in the Holy of Holies with me"? That's already starting now. And of course, both later on in Luke's Gospel at the ascension — both in Luke and in Acts — these two men in white, these angelic figures, will turn up again, being, if you like, the temporal sign that this is the holy place that is being enacted. "It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed." So you have this sensation of the whole of the order of creation at midday — which should have been just right — as the whole of the order of creation lapsing back into futility. The sun's light failed. You've gone back to day one of creation where light is created. No longer: light has gone out, there's no more light. We're outside creation at this stage. The curtain of the Temple was torn — the veil which was what distinguished the Holy of Holies from the created matter. So at this stage the gap between the uncreated reality of heaven, and therefore everything the holy place stood for, and the created reality has been destroyed. And what we have is, instead of the mercy seat and the angels, we have Jesus on the cross between these two thieves. He cries out in a loud voice and says, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." So again, here is the deliberate cry in the case of Jesus. Once we have undone the whole of the old order of creation, gone back right to the beginning, he then commends his spirit and breathes out his last — which means that the word is exactly the same for "expire." He breathes out his spirit, which means the Spirit which hovered over creation — if you remember, before God started putting water and things — has now gone back out. It will come back again at Pentecost, but this is the creation run in reverse. This is the notion of how the definitive atonement sacrifice renews and recreates everything, starting from the beginning. So from Jesus getting right what Adam had got wrong, to Jesus living through the running backwards of Genesis at the very beginning, when the Spirit is outside, goes back outside, so as to come in and bring about an entirely new creation — all of that is gently and beautifully hinted at by Luke in this Gospel. And then at the end he breathes his last. The centurion who had seen what had taken place praises God and says, "Certainly this man was just." So we've had the good criminal, if you like, making the Jewish point about him being innocent — the point about the spotlessness of this one, if you like — and the centurion giving the Gentile approach: "This is just." We're bringing together both the cultic innocence and the moral innocence, or legal innocence, which is likewise going to be completely refounded. This is going to completely refound whatever goodness is going to mean in the world which Jesus's death is opening up for us. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.