Good Morning 

I think we are doing the right thing when we don’t read the Passion of  Jesus on Palm Sunday. The reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday  began in 1954 when I was four years old. The church was concerned  that the numbers of people attending services during Holy Week was  dropping off and it was important that the faithful hear the story of  Jesus’ suffering. So they changed the name of that Sunday from  Palm Sunday to Passion Sunday and made the principal gospel the  reading of the Passion. For me, the impact of Jesus triumphant entry  into Jerusalem is dwarfed into non-existence by the reading of the  Passion. That is as it should be if this were not Palm Sunday.

I think Jesus and God and the church had a plan in mind when they  structured the events of Holy Week the way they did. As a result, I  like it when we “stick to the script” and follow the events of the week  as they occurred. I think when we don’t stick to the script we run the  risk of missing things as we rush to get it all out there. If you think  about it, a week, well really four days, of nightly services in reliving  Jesus’ final story on earth is not so much. Islam has a whole month  of Ramadan in comparison. The Jewish Holiday of Passover is  celebrated over eight day. 

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, a teacher and a monk, a  Lutheran and a Roman Catholic respectively, were part of a  movement undertaken in the middle to late 20th century to try to  discover the historical Jesus. Together in 2006, Borg and Crossen  produced a book called The Last Week in which they suggest,  through scripture and historical record, the day by day, hour by hour  activities of Jesus and his followers during the seven days leading to  the death and resurrection of Jesus. A good deal of what I offer this  morning comes from or is inspired by that book. It is a great read and  raises some interesting considerations and I recommend it to you. 

In order to experience Palm Sunday I think we need some  background. When the Jewish people celebrate the Passover they  do two things that are important to remember. First, they don’t just  remember the Passover, they relive it in the actions of the celebration,  much like we relive the washing of the disciples feet at the last supper  on Maundy Thursday. Second, the Jewish celebration of Passover  concludes with the words, “next year in Jerusalem”. A Haggadah is a  book of the Jewish celebration of Passover. In the New American  Haggadah, edited by Jonathan Safran Foer with a new translation by  Nathan Englander, Jeffery Goldberg says “Jerusalem is the symbol of  peace, the destination of the Messiah, the holiest place on earth, the  purest expression of the profound Jewish belief that the world will  one day be a better place. It is this idea of Jerusalem for which we  reach. When we reach it - and we will, for that is the core Jewish  belief - there will be no more need for seders and Haggadot: We will  live in a world in which the poor are fed and sheltered and the sick  are healed; in which no one is persecuted or enslaved.”   

Jerusalem, at the time of the crucifixion, was a city of about 30, to  40,000 people, pretty large for the period but only about the size of  Northampton. At Passover the population of Jerusalem grew to  somewhere between 80 and 120 thousand. Imagine packing the  population of Springfield into Northampton. Normally only a cohort or  500 Roman soldiers were stationed in Jerusalem to keep order.  During high holidays the crowd sizes really required a substantially  larger contingency to maintain order and thwart any potential  uprising. 

Roman Governor Pontius Pilate and the bulk of the Roman soldiers  assigned to the area of Judea were normally stationed in Caesarea  Maritima. Caesarea Maritima was located on the shores of the  Mediterranean Sea, west of Jerusalem. They were stationed there in  part because it was cooled by the breezes of the Mediterranean Sea  and made for much more comfortable living than in the near desert  area of Jerusalem. During the high Jewish holidays, Pilate and two  additional cohorts of Roman troops would travel to Jerusalem to insure Roman order. Pilate and his troops would be moving from the  west toward Jerusalem, the center of Jewish faith. 

Off in the opposite direction, Jesus and his followers had been  traveling toward Jerusalem from Galilee, east of Jerusalem. For most  of the people traveling with Jesus, the goal of the journey was to  arrive at Jerusalem in time for Passover. Jesus, however, had  different plans. Jesus had been in Jerusalem for many Passovers  beginning at least when he was twelve and gave his parents a scare  by staying in the temple with the teachers after his parents had  headed home. Jesus knew Jerusalem and how the population of the  city swelled at Passover. He also knew that religious fervor swelled in  the city at this time. He knew too that those who hoped to throw off the Roman yoke were at their highest number in the city at Passover  and so tensions between the Romans and Jews were higher than  usual.  

We can guess that at least 3- 5,000 were traveling with Jesus based  on our understanding of the feeding of the crowd not long before  Jesus’ arrival at Jerusalem. These were people who had followed his  teachings for quite a while, and many were convinced he was the  Chosen One who was going to liberate Israel. Word of what he was  doing was well known in Jerusalem. It had motivated religious  leaders from the temple to go out into the desert country to challenge  Jesus’ teachings. 

We also know that Jesus has been telling his closest friends that he is  going to Jerusalem to die. If they had understood him clearly, he was  telling them that he is going to die in a very unpleasant way.  

When I got to this point in my exploration of the last week before the  resurrection, with the help of Borg and Crossen, I began to see some  pieces fall together. Somehow, even though I had heard all of the  gospel readings about Jesus foretelling his death, I got the  impression that this was something that was happening to him from  outside. He was an unresisting victim. Then it started to dawn on me  that Jesus had this all planned out. He knew how he was going to  die, at least in part, because he was planning it. Some would say the  donkey being ready for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem was a miracle or  the hand of God. I think you could also conclude that Jesus had  arranged for the donkey to be there. It was where he said it would be  and the owners had no problem with it being taken away. A donkey  was a pretty valuable possession and an owner would not easily let it  be taken away. It makes sense that Jesus had already arranged with  the donkey’s owner to allow his disciples to borrow it.  

With that in mind, I think that if you approach Holy Week with an  expectation that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and what  would happen it offers a different way of looking at the events of that  week. I think that the possibility is great that the last week was well  planned by Jesus. But why? 

Let’s go back to that Sunday the week before the Passover. It is  about mid-morning. If we sent a drone up over the city we would see  Pilate on a great horse, in full battle regalia, a thousand troops  marching behind him also in regalia and the standards of the rule of  Rome entering the west gate of the city. The occupants of the city are cowed and seeking shelter in doorways. Some of the children are  trying to get outside to see what is going on as adults try to pull them  back inside to safety avoiding the horse hooves and marching  soldiers. No one speaks. The only sound is the tramp, tramp, tramp  of the soldiers feet.  

On the eastern side of the city, at the eastern gate, there are throngs  of people lining the road into the city waving branches and cheering.  They are cheering a young man on small donkey who seems to stand  out from the crowd with a crowd surging behind him shouting cheers  and dancing. They are jubilant. Mothers and fathers are hoisting  their children on their shoulders so they can see this teacher from the  wilderness. What a difference the west is from the east. What a 1 juxtaposition between the oppression of the existing order and the  promise of a new order. And they are on a collision course. As Borg  and Crossen say, this has all the earmarks of a pre-planned political  demonstration. What clearer choice can there be between 2 preserving the oppressive political and religious establishment and  the new world Jesus talks about where all are equal and all have free  access to God. 

Interestingly, Mark’s gospel says that after entering Jerusalem, Jesus  walked through the city, looked around, then left to spend the night at  his friend Lazarus’ house. It isn’t until Monday that Jesus returns,  goes to the temple and causes quite a disturbance with the money  changers. Luke and Matthew have Jesus going to the temple that  same Palm Sunday and overturning tables. John says nothing about  going to the temple at this time. I guess I rely on Mark in large part  because his detail of that week is the greatest and because Mark’s  account is the lead for Borg and Crossen. Which ever way you lean it  is clear that not long after Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem he  is challenging the authority of the existing system. I think the bottom  line in all three is that Jesus is in control of what is happening. Pilate,  the chief priests and the established order are all reacting to what  Jesus does. So what the heck is Jesus up to? That, I think, is the  beauty of this week. We get to struggle along side Jesus’ followers in  discovering what he is truly trying to say to us. 

Kelly Brown Douglas in her article for Sojourners magazine entitled “A  Christian Call for Reparations” says “That Jesus was crucified, and  refused to save himself from being crucified, reveals that he emptied  himself of all privilege that might separate him from the victims of the  deadly political, cultural, and religious realities of his day.” Is that the  lesson of this week? Is that the reality that Jesus was trying to lay  down in a way that we would never forget it? How many lessons  might there be in his actions? 

The gift of this Holy Week is that we each get to struggle with what  Jesus and God are trying to burn into our minds through Jesus’  actions during this week. As we walk with Jesus through Thursday,  Friday, Saturday evening and Sunday morning we have the chance to  listen and dwell on the words of scripture as individuals, and then  collectively, to try to hear God’s messages. Rachel Held Evans, a  Christian writer who died far too young wrote “Inspiration is not about  some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes to a  catatonic host. It’s a collaborative process, a holy give-and-take, a  partnership between Creator and creator . . . . God is still breathing.  The Bible is both inspired and inspiring. Our job is to ready the sails  and gather the embers, to discuss and debate, and like the biblical  character Jacob, to wrestle with the mystery until God gives us a  blessing.” My wish for all of us this Holy Week is that we all take the 3 opportunity to wrestle with the mystery and on Easter Day find we  have received a God given blessing. 
Amen 

1 Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week (NewYork, HarperCollins,2007) 2-3

2 Ibid, 4 

3 Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible 3 Again(Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2018), xxiiii-xxiv

All four of the New Testament gospels include an account of Jesus’ anointing, though they differ in details.  John tells us that the anointing incident took place six days before Passover, and that the atmosphere was charged with tension: according to John’s gospel, Jesus’ opponents were already plotting to kill him, and pilgrims in Jerusalem were speculating with one another about whether Jesus would come to the city for the festival.

Mark’s accounts of events in Jesus’ life have the authority of having been, chronologically, the earliest recorded, though this isn’t a guarantee of accuracy.  In his anointing story, an unnamed woman anoints Jesus’ head with a costly perfume and the disciples, collectively, object to the gesture as wasteful.  Jesus silences them, stating that “she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”  He then goes on to observe that “what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”  Matthew’s account (Matt 26:6-13) is virtually identical to Mark’s.

Luke’s gospel includes an anointing story (Lk 7:36-50) but the details are strikingly different.  For one thing, Luke doesn’t locate the episode in proximity to Jesus’ death, but rather, cites it as happening earlier in Jesus’ ministry.  The most dramatic difference between Mark and Matthew’s version and Luke’s is that the anointer is described as “a woman in the city, who was a sinner.”  Instead of anointing Jesus’ head, she abases herself, anointing his feet after bathing them with her tears and drying them with her hair.  When the homeowner in Luke’s version criticizes Jesus for allowing himself to be touched by a sinner, Jesus responds by justifying her action as one of gratitude for the forgiveness of her sins.

Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Harvard Professor of Divinity, has written about this transformation in what seems to be a single memory from Jesus’ life: her analysis is pretty compelling.  She observes that the anointing of the head is a gesture that has distinct and important symbolic meaning in Jesus’ culture.  

Noting that in the tradition of the Hebrew scriptures the prophet designates the king by anointing his head, as Samuel did with David, she interprets the anointing in Mark as representing the woman’s prophetic identification of Jesus as the Messiah.  Just as Peter had SPOKEN his recognition that “You are the Messiah” (Mt 16:6, Mk 8:29), the anointing woman expressed the same recognition IN ACTION, actually taking on the role of the prophet. 

Further, Schussler-Fiorenza observes, in pairing the action with oil used at the time of burial, the woman is alone among the disciples in understanding Jesus’ messiahship to be one of suffering and death.  

“It was a politically dangerous story” for a patriarchal Greco-Roman audience, Schussler-Fiorenza contends, having the woman disciple in the role of prophet and having Jesus specifically lift her up for remembrance.  Is it any surprise that her name is lost to us?  The memory as told in Mark and Matthew was thus transformed by Luke, Schussler-Fiorenza suggests, into the more acceptable narrative of the woman as sinner.1

When John tells the story of the anointing decades after Mark, Matthew and Luke, as we have heard this morning, he seems to offer the compromise version.  John agrees with the tradition that the anointing represents the woman’s preparation of Jesus body for burial, but tells the less controversial story that it is Jesus’ feet that are anointed.  He also places the event at the home of Jesus’ friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and identifies Mary as the anointing woman, making her attention is a gesture of support:  during a week of tension and foreboding, she offers comfort. 

Some undoubtedly conclude that the differing stories of Jesus’ anointing represent entirely different incidents.  Some will choose to conclude that Luke’s version - the woman as forgiven sinner – is the true story.  We’ll never know.  I hope we don’t dismiss issue, however, as it raises the profoundly important question I began with, that of whose story we choose to hear.

Last Fall we selected as an “all-parish read” Ibram Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning.  Similarly, a number of us joined in Sacred Ground “listening circles” in a curriculum prepared by the Episcopal Church.  Both opportunities provided me with information about the complex realities of race and racism in the American Story that I did not encounter in my time spent in mainstream white American educational institutions.  For the record, I do not accept every word Kendi wrote as “gospel”: there are points on which I reach different conclusions than he did.  Kendi, however, and the Sacred Ground material and other resources I have sought out have certainly lifted a curtain that the culture we live in prefers for me not to peek behind.  

It’s been said that “history is written by the victors”. I don’t think we can ignore the fact that those who hold the power and authority in a community shape the flow of information. We will always do well to seek out multiple sources so that we can make our own choices about what to believe and what to be shaped by.
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But I want to return to John’s account of the anointing, because it also lifts up for us the hard question of the limitations of our seeing and hearing.  

In all of the gospels, Jesus repeatedly informs the disciples traveling with him of what awaits him in Jerusalem.  He is often very specific.  Here’s one of many of Jesus’ predictions, from Luke:

Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.”   (Lk 18:31-33) 

Repeatedly, as we know, the disciples could not hear it.  Luke goes on in the passage I just read to tell us that “they understood nothing about all these things.”   Peter, in fact, was vehement in criticizing Jesus for making such disturbing predictions, and was in turn rebuked by Jesus for doing so.

How often and how easily do we reject what others tell us about their realities, often enough because we don’t want to face the uncomfortable feelings their situations stir up in us?  I have a childhood friend whose husband died a couple of weeks ago and this week she posted on social media a piece, versions of which I’m sure we’ve all seen, about what is helpful and what is not helpful to say to someone who is grieving.  Her post spoke to the impulse we all have ask others not to feel bad, or at least, not to make us feel bad.

In the case of “the twelve”, it’s pretty easy to see that in their hope for a messiah who would be triumphant in conquering the powers that produced suffering for their people, they were blinded and deafened to the truth that Jesus was trying to teach them, that sacrificial love is the way to peace.

When we read and remember the accounts of Jesus’ Passion, I am always thinking about how lonely it must have been for him.  But one of the disciples, whether it was Mary of Bethany or someone else, was able to hear what the others could not.  She had heard and she believed that Jesus’ death and burial were approaching.  She managed to get beyond “what not to say” when another is grieving, and she offered touch, and silent solace.

I am not inviting us to feel guilty for all of the times and ways in which we haven’t heard what we ought to hear, the times when we insist on imposing our version of reality over what we are told about another person’s more difficult reality.

I do invite us to work at being honest about our capacity to do these things, however.  I invite us to examine our negative reactions when those resistant thoughts and feelings rise up in us in response to another’s sharing of “their truth”.  

Let us move forward doing our best to walk in love.



1 Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, Crossroads; Introduction.

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