Sunday Sermon: the Lords´ Passion – a challenge to christians

This Sunday’s feast is commonly known as Palm Sunday or the Lords´ Passion. In this liturgical Year A, we meditate on the following readings: Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66. The main theme of these readings is on the suffering servant of Yahweh. In the first reading, Isaiah presents the mysterious figure of the servant of Yahweh whose precise identity is not yet clear. What is clear is the servant’s awareness of his God-given capacity to “give a word of comfort to the weary.” (v.4) The servant also has to endure suffering and the hostility of others, but he finds strength in Yahweh’s help. Psalm 22 presents a theme which is so common in our developing countries; the cry of one who is in a vicious circle of suffering and who is desperately in need of help to be pulled out of a certain kind of misery. ‘ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but I have no rest.’ The Psalmist gives us an image of someone who suffers the jeers and taunts of those who mock him. There is an insistent cry for the Lord’s help. The psalm ends, in contrast to the initial tone of imploration, with a declarative affirmation of the praise of Yahweh. The psalm unites suffering and the praise of God. But in the final verses he decides to remain with his God what ever might be the case: ‘From You comes my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear You. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD.’ He foretells the universal acknowledgement of Yahweh as king. The Gospel narrates Jesus´ Passion in a very detailed way. The text gives us so many themes that we can develop in order to put them in our modern context. We are reminded of the mystery of the deceiving power of the devil in the heart of Judas. The devil can be so shrewd! There is a theme on the Eucharistic Presence. Then there is what people saw as a “scandal” for the one who raised people from the dead and cannot do anything for himself. And to most friends of Jesus especially his apostles, they wonder at the silence of Jesus and his refusal to use power and force in order to demonstrate who he really is. There is then the stubborn blindness of religious leaders which can be compared to the honest admission of a Roman centurion that Jesus was the Son of God despite his apparent failure to react as the Messiah. St. Paul in the second reading, summarizes the theological meaning of the Messiah’s human birth and death saying: Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, he instead emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. For St Paul Christ did all he did so that all people may come to know God’s love in Jesus Christ. The doctrinal message of the Passion of Jesus is a challenge to our modern mind. It is so clear from the Scripture that Jesus was acutely aware of the proper timing of his death and could have avoided it if he wished so. He deliberately refused to take that option. Why did God choose this particular way of intervening in human lives and history? What does it reveal of the reality of our own lives here and now? What experience is God communicating to us to day as we meditate on the cross? One thing is dramatically evident to us today, by Jesus´ death on the cross. We all need to be saved each individual in a personal way. And Jesus chose the way of the cross in order to “pay the price” that this personal salvation required. Today we have a choice, either to take or to refuse this salvation which cost him life. The second challenge we get as we look up to the cross after Jesus’ resurrection, is the urgent call to imitate him and participate in the salvation of others. That is the meaning of the Lord’s Passion, as Christians, we are called to live out the reality of sacrificial death in our lives, for ourselves and for others. Ends