I speak to you in the name of the crucified One, Jesus Christ
Whom the church knows as the redeemer of the world

On Sunday last, Palm Sunday, we shared in the dramatic reading of the Passion of Jesus as it is recorded in the gospel according to St Mark. This reading ended with these words from the mouth of the Roman centurion:

For many years I thought that statement was a confession of faith. I thought that this Roman centurion, just doing his duty, was converted to belief in Jesus by what he saw.

I have changed my mind. I have been studying Mark's gospel this lent- indeed a study of the gospels that I began on my sabbatical a year ago. This study has lead me to see these words not as pious words of confession but rather as cynical words of mocking or perhaps resignation. I think the sense of them is this: this Jesus is a deluded creature who claimed divinity but he is just another in a long line of those who have failed miserably to stand up against the power of the Roman Empire. Truly this was God's Son, then, is not a confession of faith but another humiliation of Jesus just as the claiming of his body by Joseph of Arimathea is a humiliation. Joseph was a member of the Council that brought action against Jesus and his offer to bury Jesus is to avoid breaking Temple purity laws not out of respect for Jesus. After all, Joseph buries Jesus without the proper preparation- the women come later to do that.

I mention these two incidents because they demonstrated to me how inexhaustible the passion narratives are in terms of finding new insights into both the historical event as well as one's own insights. And this discovery has increased in me the sense of how truly remarkable the bible accounts are-surely the wisdom of God is expressed in the richness of these texts.

I have come to appreciate the passion accounts in the four gospels more and more as highly sophisticated and very political documents. By political I mean to say that the gospels are highly reactive to the religious and secular environment of the time in which they were written. I also mean by political that the gospels present religious and social values that would have been regarded by the Temple and the state sacreligious and subversiv.

You know, unless you sit down and seriously compare them you miss how different they are from one another. For most of us the details of one flow into the others so that we end up with a good sense of the over-all story but not much understanding of the special perspective on Jesus offered by each of the gospel writers.

On Good Friday preachers usually try to answer the question: How has the death of Jesus Christ any relevance for today? It seems a perfectly predictable question, after all there have been thousands of good people, bad people, social visionaries, social revolutionaries, over the centuries - many of them meeting the same end as Jesus- whom we do not remember. Most of them we very likely have never heard of. So what's so special about his Jesus? Why has the world's largest religion been formed around him?

Preachers tend to take one or both of the following approaches in talking about the passion of Jesus, which is the focus of Good Friday:

1. preachers will point out that the social forces of dominance and violence of this story are still very much alive and part of our present world order. Therefore, an exploration of the actions and spirituality of Jesus in facing them is fully relevant for us we must live with these forces at work ourselves and our society. This is true and there can be real power in this kind of approach.



2. preachers will also speak of the passion of Jesus more in terms of the cast of characters, that is, the personalities rather than the socio-political forces. Over the years I have heard some excellent sermons exploring the personal moral and spiritual dilemmas of Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, the disciples, Mary, the mother of Jesus- and so on. The human condition has not changed. We face the same moral dilemmas as these folk; hence, a up-close and personal exposé of them is an exposé of each of us.

Surely, much of power of the passion story, whether we read it ourselves, or whether we listen to it in the liturgy like we are doing this afternoon, comes from this affinity we feel with the historical personalities involved. Most of us can identify bits of ourselves in each character.

There is a richness to be appreciated in comparing the 4 different accounts of the passion. It may sound like a fairly dry and academic undertaking. But I can assure you that the differences yield some amazing insights into the struggle of early Christians to believe and to be believable to the society around them. And for that very reason each account becomes more valuable to us. Behind the story of Jesus is the story of the struggle of the community of believers, the church, whom he left behind.

The gospel authors have borrowed liberally from the treasury of Hebrew scripture and have been heavily influenced by what was happening around them at the time of writing.

As an example, I would use the many editorials or interviews you have read or heard over the last few months on the war in Iraq. Isn't it amazing how many different positions can be espoused? Isn't it amazing how arguments that convince one person do not convince another? Isn't it true that if you have read a particular journalist for a while, whether the journalist be one with whom you agree or disagree, you begin to get a sense of what his or her basic assumptions are. Indeed, in many cases, you know what they will say on a particular issue even before you read it. Each journalist brings to their interpretation a personal history and convictions as well as the influences of their own social milieu.

We observe different things and the same events may have quite different meanings for people. I cannot do much here to explore the overt and subtle differences of the four gospel accounts but I can share with you something of the particular perspective of the gospel of Mark For example Mark's gospel emphasizes the following aspects in his story of the passion of Jesus:

• the collapse of community solidarity around Jesus when it is threatened by the apparatus of Temple and state power. This is foreshadowed throughout the gospel by the weakness and lack of understanding of the disciples.



• the faithfulness, humility, and endurance of the women. They are contrasted with the disciples who fight over places of prominence and do not endure with Jesus to the end. Only the women are present in solidarity at the foot of the cross. Only the women dare to prepare Jesus' body for burial after death.



• The anguish of Jesus as a leader who struggles deeply with obedience: the struggle of Jesus to obey without knowing how this obedience can be efficacious but with full knowledge of the horrific consequences of martyrdom. Jesus is clearly identified with the powerless, the rural people, the bandits with whom he is crucified and for whom he has a word of compassion.



• The subversive even revolutionary style of Jesus' ministry. Jesus is portrayed as deeply critical of the priestly cast of Judaism and of the power of Roman and of the Temple. Mark's narrative is subversive of many social and religious orthodoxies. Have you ever wondered why there was so much secrecy around Jesus' observance of the Feast of the Passover? They met in secret because what Jesus did during that feast- changing the meanings of the symbols and relating them to himself- would have caused a riot in any public setting.

In his scholarly work, Binding the Strong Man: a political reading of Mark's story of Jesus ( Orbis 2002) theologian Ched Myers summarizes the effect of Jesus upon his contemporaries,

The world order is being overturned, from the highest political power to the deepest cultural patterns and it begins with the new community. ( p 397)

What is important to retain in this is that the passion narrative is tied forever to the socio-political situation of Jesus' time. What should we conclude from this? We should conclude that our own passion narrative will likewise be directly related to the socio-political situation of our time. Furthermore, what the whole New Testament reminds us of from beginning to end is that a life in obedience to Jesus Christ will, in fact, lead each and every one of us to our own passion story. There is no way in this world to be true to God and not suffer.

There is no such thing as an authentic neutral space. There is apparent neutral space if we want to avoid all conflict and suffering but there is no neutral space if we engage in the spiritual warfare of Jesus. The forces of death are not neutral; they are present, active, powerful, within and around us even before we go down to the grave.

Early on in his ministry Jesus rejected the ways offered by Satan to deal with the human condition. You remember those three temptations(Luke chp 4):

• the temptation to turn stones into bread is the temptation offered to Jesus to look after himself and not worry about the consequences for others.



• the temptation to receive the adulation of the world in return for bowing down to Satan is the temptation to disengage from the political realm into a private world of religion.



• and the temptation to throw himself unharmed from the Temple pinnacle is the temptation to win people over by fiats of power and miracles.

Jesus rejects all of them and as a result ends up by being hated by all the elements of society that have lined themselves up behind one option or another

Jesus rejects them because he knows that none of these can work. They may appear to work for a time. There may be stability and order for a time. But all semblance of real peace and justice is superficial. These methods only cover up the workings of death in human affairs but mask the deeper issue of the fundamental separation or alienation of humanity from God. This alienation from God results in our alienation from others as well as alienation within ourselves. What is needed is a confrontation with forces of death and their defeat. And on this point every one of the passion narratives agree. We suffer because every time we take on some aspect of the forces of death in ourselves or in others we suffer. We suffer because overcoming the alienation within ourselves is a long and painful task of setting aside the false things upon which we have built our lives in order to replace them with genuine things. Anyone who has spent time with a therapist will know precisely the demands of this struggle on a personal level.

For the most part how the victory of Jesus over death works for us is a mystery beyond our comprehension. How does Jesus overcome death? Just how does resurrection work? I'm afraid there are not easy answers. All these great claims of the faith are only verifiable in living the life and sharing it in the community of believers. Knowledge has limited capacity to change our hearts; living discipleship in the midst of our doubts has far greater power to change our hearts and our lives.

Certainly Mark's gospel with its abrupt ending gives no explanation. The fact is the witnesses themselves did not know how to explain what they saw. But what they saw moved them powerfully to pick up the pieces of their shattered courage, rebuilt a community of solidarity and courageously step out into the world again.

And that is what we need to take away with us from this place today. We need to take with us the hope which we see springing from the sacrifice of Jesus and the conviction that, appearances aside, the forces of death do not win the series. These death forces are not the last and inevitable word about the human condition. The ultimate cosmic victory has already been won but the effects of death still linger in our experience.

And Jesus has shown us the way, in following him, to contend with theses ever-present forces in our lives. It is for this reason and this reason only that we can share in the proclamation, We glory in your cross, O Lord...Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you.