As Jesus rode along, the people were spreading their cloaks on the road; and now, as he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to praise God aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds they had seen. Luke 19: 28-40
The criminal said: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied to him: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” …Jesus cried out in a loud voice: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Luke 22:14 – 23: 56
Many of us, who received our early years of education in Catholic Primary Schools and who are now in the second half of our lives, have vivid memories of learning catechism questions and answers by heart. We know that we did not always understand the information we gathered and that it has taken close to a lifetime for us to integrate it into meaningful expressions of faith and trust in the God who loved us into life. We also know that some of our peers still have not developed a mature faith that has led them to regular, active participation in a Christian community of prayer and compassionate outreach to others.
Even throughout our adult years of listening to the gospel-readings week after week, we know that we stumble in our efforts to give credible expression to the teachings of Jesus and his exhortations to reach out to others with compassion, mercy and forgiveness. So, it should not come as a surprise to us when we read how the Jewish people of Jesus’ time who, through regular sabbath attendance in their local synagogues, had become familiar with the teachings of the Torah and the challenges put to them by their Prophets, were unable to integrate into their daily living what they had been taught. The prophet Micah, for example, had taught that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem: “But you, (Bethlehem) Ephrathah, the least of the clans of Judah, out of you will be born for me the one who is to rule over Israel; (Micah 5: 2). Yet many of Jesus’ close neighbours and other contemporaries forgot or chose to ignore that Jesus had been born in Bethlehem. Indeed, they chose to believe that nothing good could ever come out of the Galilee where Jesus grew up and learned his trade.
Over recent days, in the gospel-readings from John, we have been given a taste of how Jesus had gone about explaining that he had come from God and had been anointed by God in his mission to the world. In his journey to Jerusalem, he had given sight to a blind man and raised his friend Lazarus from the grave. John has recorded how many of the ordinary Jews who had witnessed those signs had come to believe in Jesus. Yet their religious leaders had belittled them as ignorant and gullible.
All this, of course, challenges us to clarify for ourselves what exactly is our relationship with Jesus and how we best give credible expression to it. Is our commitment to him firm and genuine or only skin-deep? That question is an appropriate entry point into engaging with Luke’s account of Jesus’ passion and death.
With all this as context and introduction, we are invited by this Passion Sunday liturgy to memorialise and reflect on Jesus’ suffering and death and accompany him on his journey to Calvary. A significant moment in Luke’s account occurred when Jesus had joined crowds of pilgrims who were coming from places far and near and entering the city of Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. When Jesus, riding on a donkey, joined the throng, it would seem that many of his disciples connected what they were witnessing to the prophecy of Zechariah: “See now, your king is coming to you; he is victorious, he is triumphant, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will banish chariots from Ephraim and horses from Jerusalem; the bow of war will be banished” (Zechariah 9: 9-10).
In that highly emotional moment, their familiarity with their Scriptures allowed them to connect what they were witnessing with the words of Zechariah. They concluded that Jesus really was the Messiah and that his teachings and miracles had demonstrated that. Accordingly, they vocalised their support and demonstrated their allegiance by spreading their cloaks in the path of Jesus and his donkey. But their support and allegiance would very soon evaporate, and they would soon disappear or join the crowd braying for Jesus’ blood.
Within a short time, a third crowd would come on the scene. They were the women who had witnessed the injustice and savagery meted out to Jesus and expressed their solidarity with him by their courage, presence and silent tears of protest. By walking the way to Calvary and standing beneath the Cross, they demonstrated that presence is the only, best and most important expression of support and solidarity that we are sometimes able to offer. Implicit in Luke’s words is a question for all of us: In the world in which we live, we know that we sometimes find ourselves in situations where our integrity is at stake. At times like that, how do we express our ‘hosannas’ to Jesus and his Gospel? How often do we wilt in fear of what side-line critics might say about us if we dared to speak the unpopular truth?
Worthy of note, too, is the prayer that Jesus prayed as fear overcame him in the garden of Gethsemane on his way to the Mount of Olives. A careful look at the words he prayed will show that they echo the prayer he taught his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray. His opening words to those accompanying him were: “Pray not to be put to the test” (Luke 22: 40). He went on to pray: “Father, …let your will be done, not mine” (Luke 22: 42). After concluding this prayer, an echo of what we call “the Lord’s Prayer”, he said directly to his disciples: “Why are you asleep? Get up and pray not to be put to the test”, stressing the importance of prayer when difficulties come our way.
There were also moments of deep irony, as when the frenzied crowd called for Barabbas to be released. They were calling for Pilate to spare a man whose name meant “son of the father” as they pleaded for the “Son of God the Father” to be done to death.
What might seem to us to be something of a puzzle was that when Jesus foretold that Simon Peter would be tested by Satan and would end up denying him (Jesus), Peter, the denier, would still be given the responsibility of being leader of the Apostles: “You, in your turn, must strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22: 32) That strikes me as a strange thing for Jesus to say to a man who would quiver in fear when a slave-girl suggested to him that he was one of Jesus’ close associates (see Luke 22: 56-57). I suggest that the import of Jesus’ words to Peter in the presence of all the Apostles was that anyone capable of genuine leadership must first be able to recognise his/her personal frailty, vulnerability and sinfulness, and that power that is invested in leaders is for the benefit of those they have the privilege to lead, not for self-aggrandisement. I wonder how those words from Jesus would sit with the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and some of our own politicians and institutional leaders, including ourselves. In the week that follows Palm/Passion Sunday, we are invited to ponder the meaning and significance of the passion and death of Jesus for us personally. Something that we all must surely face is that we are more than witnesses to what was done to the Jesus who is brother to us all. We have all played a part in it, in that we have all denied, disowned, betrayed or deserted him. How might we stumbling disciples respond?