Yet these contrasts can be so powerful that we miss what is really most important, and what we most need to remember about this Sunday, and every Sunday. That has to do with Jesus, and with who, and how, Jesus is. Notice that, through it all, Jesus is always himself, always constant, always coming to whomever is there, always making himself present, always pretty much the same—speaking when there is something to say, acting when it is time to act, being silent or being still when there is nothing, really, to say or to do. That’s constant. Jesus holds true. Yet this is a day of jarring contrasts.

Remember, Palm Sunday is about back then, and those people, in Jerusalem; and it is about now, and here and us—all in pretty much the same way. When Jesus came to Jerusalem, the city and its people were full of expectations and hopes and dreams about what was going to happen when God’s messiah finally arrived. So they welcomed Jesus the way people were supposed to welcome a messiah; and then they took their ideas of what was supposed to happen, (which were mostly about a better life for themselves) and they watched and they waited. The Romans and the Religious Leaders of the day did the same thing. They took their ideas of what to expect, which were different from the people’s and different from one another’s, and they, too, watched and waited.

Meanwhile, Jesus was being Jesus. Saying what needed to be said, and doing what needed to be done, quite regardless of what the people or the Romans or the Religious Leaders expected or wanted or planned for or were certain was supposed to happen. Jesus was constant, he was himself. Always. And life had its own way of being itself.

The result of that was a bit peculiar. Jesus didn’t exactly scandalize everybody, but he somehow just didn’t measure up. He didn’t provide those who were watching, or even those who were following him, the comfort level, or the results, or the assurances, or the particular details of their expectations that they felt were theirs by right—for some he wasn’t safe enough, for others he wasn’t dangerous enough, for the rest, well, maybe their lives just didn’t get fixed by him the way they wanted him to fix their lives. After all, he was in Jerusalem for a whole week.

It was frustrating. Everyone—the disciples, the crowd, the Romans, the Religious Leaders, found in what Jesus said and did and demanded and made happen|| things that they liked, and that encouraged them. And everyone, the disciples, the crowd, the Romans, the Religious Leaders, also found in what Jesus said and did and demanded and made happen things that troubled, or angered them—or even things that they could not stand.

It was out of this frustration, this not quite measuring up to everybody’s, or for that matter, to virtually anybody’s, full range of expectations, that things changed. Judas, and the Religious Leaders, and finally the Romans and the crowd, all gradually, and all with some difficulty and with real internal resistance, made a different choice. They held on to their notions of how things should be, and they got rid of Jesus.

We know about this—here and now. We have our notions that, if the Lord really comes to us and is for us, and loves us then some good things should happen. Some preachers come right out and say it, to their shame, I believe; but whether it’s verified from the pulpit or not, we have our notions. We know, or we strongly suspect and hope, that our health will improve or our marriages will get better or we won’t be so depressed or the kids will be nicer or the dog won’t die or our little part of the stock market will get back to where it belongs,

or those we love the most will be protected or the people around us—or at least the people at church, or at the very least the preacher—will be nice to us, and so on. We have these notions, these ideas of how it should be.

Like everyone we have been hearing from today, like the folks in Jerusalem, Jesus comes to us. He comes humbly, but he comes persistently. And when we greet him, when we welcome him, we sometimes do it the same way they all did at first—with some real energy, and some real expectations. We know about "hosanna".

We also know the rest. We know that, in spite of what we think God should do will do if he loves us, Jesus remains constant. He remains Jesus. He says what really needs to be said, regardless of what we want to hear; and he does what really needs to be done; again, quite regardless of what we expect, or want, or plan for. And life still has its own way of behaving, life doesn’t stop being its own self. Jesus alone is constant. Always. And sometimes we like that, and sometimes we don’t. For his way is not the expected way, and what happens when he is around is not always what we are sure is supposed to happen when the messiah comes.

That means that we are thrown back on exactly the same dilemma that those first followers of Jesus faced. What do you do with a Lord who is constant, who doesn’t quite come through, who doesn’t deliver everything, but who continues to attract us, to draw us, and to love us?

We can stay with him, or we can leave, and go look somewhere else. Because he will not change for us. He will only call us to follow. Today we learn that to stay with him in his constancy is to go with him to the cross; that it is to bear our own cross. To stay with him in his constancy, in his love, is to live in a world quite different from what we imagine.

It is to surrender our conviction of what must happen, and be prepared for an open future, a future that is not in our hands, but in his hands—hands marked by nails.

To stay with him in his constancy is simply not to be in charge, and not to be the one with the power, and instead to entrust the core of our lives to whatever he may have in mind.

Back then, most didn’t do that. Most were like Peter, who slept and fought and lied and hid and vanished from the story when things got really tough.

But some were not like that. Some stayed. A few of the women stayed with Jesus—they had a consistency that matched his. They were with him for the palms and the hosannas, and they stayed with him through the rejection and the nails. Not because they expected it or understood it or liked it or thought it was all for the best, but because they loved him.

These women, in their constancy, were the first to know. They were the first there on Easter morning. They were the first to discover that the way of Jesus, with all of its words and actions and silences and disappointments and surprises, this way of Jesus was truly the way of a life, and of a love, that could not be stopped, not even by death, and would always be coming to them, and for them. These women, the constant followers of the constant lord, they were the first to discover this. They were the first to know.

As for the rest, as for Peter and the others, but especially as for Peter, well, I’ll be talking about him next Sunday.

He was right, and tonight, as we begin our remembrance of the great three days of our Redemption—and as we focus especially on the gift of the Eucharist, it’s worth taking a second to look at this word remembrance, and at just a tiny bit of what it means. And I want to do that backwards—I don’t want to start with the word, but with its opposites.

Now, we usually think of the opposite of remembering as forgetting; and that’s true enough. In fact, we can probably get at that most clearly through the Greek. The original word for remember is anamnesus—and its opposite is an English word we all know, amnesia—to forget who you are. On one level, that’s what the whole business of remembering is about—both remembering as Jesus commanded at the Eucharist, and our annual, and present, remembering of his passion.

After all, it is not like we are in any danger of forgetting Jesus, like we maybe forgot our elementary school PE teacher. That’s not the danger, and that’s not what the Eucharist or our Holy Week liturgies are here to prevent. They are here, instead, to prevent amnesia. They are here to help us remember who we are—and we cannot know, let alone remember, who we are, without the presence and power and grace of Jesus. Because he is simply the basis of our identity.

So to gather here, to share the bread and the cup, to hear the ancient story, all of this is in remembrance of him, just as Jesus commanded. And, as with everything Jesus commanded, it is really for our own good. It is really so that we will not forget who we are, and whose we are.

That’s one way of starting backwards at what it means to remember; and it’s important. But I want to focus now on a different opposite, a different way into this sacrament, and this time.

Think about this: with just a bit of linguistic creativity, there is another opposite of remember, one that also helps us understand what is going on today, and for the next few days. That opposite of re-member is to dis-member, to break apart, to tear into pieces.

Just as the Eucharist and our participation in these Great Three Days remind us of who we are, of whose we are, of our identity as Christian people, they also do something else. They are healing and restoring. They re-member us, they help us put the pieces back together, so that we can move and grow toward being whole, and complete—as Jesus emerges on Easter morning whole and complete, and as he comes to us in the bread and the cup, whole and complete. So he offers that same gift to us. The Eucharist is a sacrament of healing, a sacrament that is offered to help us re-member; to help us come back together again.

And, Lord knows, we need it. Life is hard, life is painful. Life sometimes hurts us, it sometimes tears us apart, it sometimes seems to dismember us to the point that being broken and scattered around in little pieces is our permanent and inevitable situation. And we come here to re-member, to find the healing grace of God’s presence, and we often find that grace most powerfully, if most gradually, in this bread and this cup.

The same things happen to families, and to communities, and to churches. We get dismembered, we get separated and broken up, and scattered about in small pieces. And Jesus tells us to do this, to break the bread and share the cup, in remembrance of him, in order that his presence, and his wholeness, may be available to us in this special way; and our heeling enhanced.

And don’t ever forget, all of the Lord’s gifts for us also have to do with mission. That means we are also called to take our small gift of wholeness, our little bit of re-membering, with us into a world that is itself so broken, and so fragmented, that it not only cannot re-member itself, but it cannot even discover who it is, or whose it is, without us, without our sharing those little bits of wholeness we are being given.

The Lord Jesus Christ gives his body for us, that we may receive from him the Body of Christ at this Altar, so that we may be Christ’s Body for the world. All gifts are about mission.

And it all really begins today. This whole business. At this service we recall the gift of the Eucharist, and at the end of tonight’s service, as a way of marking the betrayal and arrest of Jesus—things that happened just a few minutes he gave us the Eucharist, after he told us to do this in remembrance of him—at the end of this service we dis-member the church. We strip the altar, and remove the furnishings and empty the aumbry and take away the candles and the kneelers and we leave things bare and in pieces and scattered all over the place.

Then, tomorrow, on Good Friday, we come to this dismembered church and we hear the story of the Passion, the story of how it all really fell apart. The Lord himself, and his Church, his hope, his mission, his brilliance, his teaching his miracles, his life, all of this falls apart, all of it is as broken and as scattered as are Peter and the other frightened and hiding disciples. We hear of death and destruction. Still, in the midst of the emptiness and the broken-ness of Good Friday, we can also hear, if only as a whisper, the Lord’s words, "do this in remembrance of me." and we know there is hope.

We see that hope happen, we re-live the first time it happened, as we gather in the darkness of Saturday night and the brightness of Easter morning to discover, once more and with passion and clarity, exactly who we are and whose we are. Then we enter a church building that has been re-membered in beauty and glory as a sign of the great renewal and re-membering of the Resurrection; as a sign of the rebirth of hope—the beginning of wholeness and of health for Jesus, and for all who were so broken, and so afraid, and so scattered. And we can find our own hope in that.

"Do this in remembrance of me..." Do this so we will not forget who we are and whose we are. For if we stay away too long, we will forget—we will not forget Jesus, but we will forget ourselves.

"Do this in remembrance of me..." Do this so that our dis-memberment, our being torn apart by the sin and the grief and the pain of our lives and of our world, so that this can begin to be healed, to be put back together. And so that we can become lights to a dark world.

This is the command the lord left us on the night he was betrayed. It is the gift he left us on the edge of the great darkness. It is sign to us, and hope to us, and healing to us. "Do this in remembrance of me..."

Have you noticed that the passion according to St. John is strangely passionless? Compared with Mark’s telling of the story that we heard last Sunday, John’s account seems without much feeling, without much conflict. There is no agony in the garden, no suspense in the trial, no indication of how anyone involved in the drama is moved, or affected by what is happening. Even Peter’s betrayal is reported factually, without reference to emotion or feelings. The entire story, from Jesus’ arrest to his death, moves with a smooth certainty, a controlled, almost casual, flow that leaves no doubt or tension as to the outcome.

One of the things this Gospel is telling us is that, for almost everyone involved, the crucifixion was not a big deal; it was not a particularly important event. There is even an ancient legend saying that Pontius Pilate was asked, late in his life, what he thought about the crucifixion of Jesus—an event by then much discussed. His response was that there had been so many crucifixions, he simply could not remember the specific one that had caused so much notice in later years. (I can maybe believe that.)

At the time, as we just heard, Pilate certainly did not think this crucifixion was important enough to handle differently from any other. He had, at the request of the chief priests, disposed of other troublemakers before; he would doubtless dispose of several more later on. Such accommodations to the religious leaders were simply part of the uneasy truce that existed between the Temple and the Palace. It was business as usual—doubtless regrettable if an innocent man got caught in the middle, but overall the system worked pretty well. It was worth a few mistakes to keep Jerusalem quiet and to avoid a rebellion.

In the same way, the crucifixion was a matter of small interest for the religious leaders.

Caiaphas counseled Jesus’ death because it was expedient. (That’s all). Not because it was right, or because it was necessary; not because it was vital or important or essential to the fate of the nation. Just because it was.... expedient. All in all, Caiaphas no doubt thought it a shame that the situation was such that an occasional execution was necessary. But that’s the way the world was put together. After all, it was necessary for someone in Caiaphas’ position to be realistic, and to do what needed to be done for the larger good.

Indeed, Caiaphas may well have hoped that, one of these days, maybe when the Messiah comes, things would be different, things would be better—and such regrettable incidents will no longer be needed. But for now, it was business as usual.

Notice also that there is no indication of personal malice. Pilate liked Jesus. The other officials did not know him very well. Decisions were made, not because of personalities or theology, but because of fear—fear that, somehow, this Jesus fellow would mess up the way things worked.

Reading John’s account of the crucifixion, I always remember a horrible scene in The Godfather. It happens a couple of times: some "soldiers" or whatever the folks who did the dirty work were called, were going to murder another soldier, an old friend, for some reason or another. They knew their victim well and assured him that his being killed was "nothing personal, only business." Nothing personal. Even worse, the victim understood. Life is cheap; business is what matters.

Nothing personal, Pilate could say. Nothing personal, Caiaphas could say. We have our way of doing things here; and you endanger that. ||It is only when we pause to consider the meaning of this that the horror becomes clear.

No one decided to kill the Lord of Life out of hatred, malice, pride, greed, rage or envy. There are no powerful emotions, no great, visible evil at work here—no Hitler or Stalin. It just turned out that way.

There was no room in the world for his life; just as their was no room in the inn for his birth. Jesus was not crucified by a world gone rabid with hatred and violence. He was killed by a world gone numb, and indifferent, and slightly bored. It took nothing special to put Jesus on the cross. No extraordinary laws were passed or broken; no unusual actions were taken; and John’s Gospel goes to great lengths to make it clear that not one single exception was made to any religious or legal rule or custom.

Sometimes, truly monstrous evil is too big to see. So we like to trim it down to size and blame somebody—Judas, Pilate, the Jewish leaders, anybody. After all, such blame distances us a bit from what happened and makes it easier to understand. ||But this didn’t work that way. The point is simply that the world, going about its business, executed Jesus Christ as a routine and ordinary event. (The evil goes that deep). The point is simply that everyone involved was only doing his job—and the evil goes that deep.

The sin that is shown here is sin buried deep—deep in our lives, deep in our habits, our reflexes, our institutions, and our sensitivities. It is sin rooted so deeply in our world and our lives that most of the time we do not repent of it, or feel ashamed by it. At best, at the very best, we regret it.

John’s Gospel is reminding us that we crucify our Lord in ways we seldom consider. On the one hand, we know that we crucify him anew. We know that we do that when we act like Judas or Peter—when we deny who Jesus is, or try to live as if we do not know him, or put ourselves first. We know about those moments. | They trouble us.

On the other hand, the sin we see on the cross is also found in other ways; in ways more subtle. The sin we see on the cross is found when we look at the tragedy of human pain and suffering and regret that things just seem to work out that way. This sin is found both when we realize that not just the technology, but the actual food necessary to end starvation in the world is available right now—yet people continue to starve; and when we say that it is really a shame that things work out that way. That is another way to crucify him anew.

The sin that put Jesus on the cross is in front of us whenever we watch lives being chewed up in the vicious, unforgiving, competitive structures we build around our schools and our egos, our games and our families, even our jokes, and our wardrobes || and watching that destruction we hear, or we say—that’s the way it is—it’s a tough world.

And Jesus was telling the truth when he said of his executioners, and of us, that they did not know what they were doing. And we can thank God that Jesus prayed for mercy, and not for justice.\\ The sin that we see in the cross is, to a large extent, a silent sin—so built into our lives and our world, so much a part of how things operate, that we hardly notice it.

Today, we see the power of that sin. Today we see what happens when things are simply carried on as usual. Today we realize that the very worst the world can do, it does naturally, and easily, and with some mild regret for a messy necessity.

This is the power that Jesus accepted and refused to resist on its own terms. This is the evil that fell full force on one man on a cross, and was met by love. The crucifixion was inevitable. But it was not inevitable because God wanted Jesus to die; and it was not inevitable because Jesus wanted to suffer. It was inevitable because this is the way the world meets God. This is what happens when God is with us. It is not a big deal to the folks in charge; but this is the world’s automatic last word to God.

We have a day or so to think about that before the first light of Easter flickers in front of us. Of course we know that Good Friday is not finally about sin and evil. It is finally, and fully, and really about the power and depth of God’s redemptive love in the world. For God looked even at this, and even at us and the world we have made—and God said, "let there be light".

And there was light.

The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.

This page last updated on March 27, 2006