Thank you for joining this second of six Lenten devotionals with 1st Congregational United Church of Christ.
Focusing on the story of the last weeks, and especially the last days, of Jesus' life are central in the earliest gospel we have about Jesus.
*That earliest gospel is Mark. It was written about 40 years after Jesus died. Like the other gospels it was not an eye witness report but one creatively inspired by a gifted believer to try to capture how the words and deeds of a simple-living, poor, roaming teacher had touched and uplifted so many lives.
Jesus is shown providing the most oppressed and rejected persons of his homeland renewed hope in life and in God.
For example the popular movie The Passion Of Christ eighteen years ago excited many Christians that Jesus was again in the secular headlines. Churches were renting and showing the movie to their people and guests. How could all this excitement not be good? Unfortunately what the movie emphasized above all else was the horrible suffering of Jesus' death. There were continuous graphic images of his beating, bleeding and slow murder by Roman crucifixion.
The expression 'Christ's passion' has often been equated to his horrible death and we've been told that the Jews and even the rest of us are guilty of killing Jesus. This has resulted in worldwide centuries of persecution of Jews and a general sense of false guilt among Christians. We Christians have our share of guilt to bear but I don't think killing Jesus is one of them. This misguided understanding of the meaning of Jesus' passion implies that God is unable to forgive humans of our wrongs if Jesus did not suffer this horrible way.
But Mark does not aggrandize Jesus death that way. He writes simply, " After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then lead him out to crucify him." Mark 15:20. As we will see the movie unfortunately failed to even come close to capturing Mark's emphasis.
Another, and our most common, meaning of a person's passion is what is most important in life to them, what is it they most love and want to be real and true in this world? So what does Mark's gospel clearly show was Jesus' true passion?
Whoever the actual inspired author of this creative gospel was, he frames his story around contrasting Jesus' passion with that of his high powered enemies who wanted him killed. Mark makes clear that Jesus' true passion was not about dying a cruel suffering death. Jesus did not want that anymore than you and I or any sane person does.
Yes he was certainly willing to endure that suffering in order to follow his real passion which Mark says was his longing for what he called the, 'coming of the kingdom of God' into this world. Jesus saw his human and sacred purpose in life was to do what he could to bring forth a new and different humanity, a transformed humanity with a raised appreciation of and compassion for each other, especially those who at any time are most oppressed and crushed by life.
Jesus' passion then is his world view that every human no matter her religion, ethnicity, color, sexual orientation, gender, economic status or any other natural differences is an equally loved and valued child of God. The Kingdom of God breaking into human life was Jesus' dream, his passion- that all persons come to be seen as having authoritatively equal dignity and respect in life and death.
But then, as still now, that is not how the world is. Instead of desiring the equal valuing of all persons some have an opposite view, that our primary goal as humans be to accumulate power, wealth, status and authority over others as much as we can. And the winners of this competition are said to deserve the necessities and the overflowing fruits and gifts of the Earth, while the ones who fall behind in this competition are not.
This opposite view of life's purpose was what Jesus eventually ran into head on in Jerusalem, even to the point of dying for his passion and his message. This opposing view is what the Roman emperor and his empowered underlings believed. They called the emperor King, Lord and son of God.
Jesus had daily seen ordinary poor people not being given opportunity to live in a valued and respected way but instead suffering much for the high life styles of the Roman elite and the ranking leaders of the Jewish religion who had become political puppets of Rome. These of course were the ones who in ignorance crucified Jesus.
Mark shows Jesus throughout his teaching ministry as never entering big cities where the rich and powerful lived. He knew his message would enrage them. Jesus was not a coward but had his own sense of Divine timing.
Mark shows Jesus in his last week finally and purposely entering the largest city in his homeland, Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of political and religious power. Jesus knew he would likely be killed. And we all know how the situation resulted in his murderous crucifixion.
Mark creatively crafts his story leading to the ultimate climax of this true passion of Jesus.This was six days before Jesus was killed and what what came to be called Palm Sunday. The remainder of Mark's gospel (more than a third of it)is devoted to his last week. Here is how Mark begins these last days with words of chapter 11 verses 1-11. ....
Today the church in the form of individual persons can desire to have the passion of Jesus grip our very inner beings, to capture our souls. It is from that same passion, only possible in individual hearts, that something grand, good and redeeming can still come in the world. Such can come in spite of the intervening centuries of injustice, power grabbing, war, materialistic world views and lack of respect for humanity including all our diverse brothers and sisters across this rapidly shrinking world .
Our prayer this Lenton season can surely be, "May it be so. May the kingdom of God come. Amen."
*The information shared here is influenced by the scholarship of Marcus Borg, co-author of 'The Last Week.'
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