Great crowds of people spread their cloaks on the road, while others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in his path. The crowds who went in front of him and those who followed were all shouting: “Hosanna to the son of David” …Pilate said to them: What am I to do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said: “Let him be crucified!” He asked: “But what harm has he done?” But they shouted all the louder: “Let him be crucified!” Matthew 21, 1-11 and 26, 14 – 27, 66
Whether or not we are conscious of it, we all have our own personal spirituality (our way of relating to God and praying), our own philosophy of life and our own theology (our way of making sense of our religious faith and practice). Much of the sense we make of all those aspects of our living and much of the sense we make of the Scripture readings we hear every Sunday has been shaped almost unconsciously by the hymns we sing over and over again, by the gospel stories we have heard year after year and by the works of great artists displayed in our churches and art galleries. For instance, despite what Matthew wrote in his Gospel, most well-known paintings of the Last Supper include only Jesus and twelve disciples. In writing about Jesus’ disciples, Matthew made reference to multiple disciples, both male and female. It is highly likely that the room of what we now call the Last Supper held a lot more than just twelve male disciples. And female disciples stayed loyal to Jesus through his bitter suffering and brutal torture, all the way up until his death and burial. Moreover, some were back at his tomb at dawn on his resurrection day. All of those disciples, both men and women, have contributed to shaping our spirituality and theology. Many of history’s great artists have put the focus of their creative talent on the events of Jesus’ birth and passion but that focus has tended to include few rather than multiple characters. While John, in his Gospel and subsequent prominent painters, included female disciples at the foot of Jesus’ Cross, they generally gave prominence to Jesus’ “beloved disciple” John. It appears that the cultural preference given to males in Jesus’ time and down through centuries has played a larger role in shaping our theology and spirituality. Even now, when we think, speak and write about disciples of Jesus, we rarely think to include female disciples, even though Jesus had experienced the support and encouragement of many such.
Today’s first reading introduces what Scripture Scholars refer to as the Third Servant Song. It is a description of a “Servant of God” who received guidance about how to reach out to and support those overcome by debilitating weariness. This servant disciple listened daily to God, endured both verbal humiliation and physical abuse, trusted in God’s providential care and “set his face firmly like flint”. This Third Servant Song reaches its climax in Isaiah chapter 53 and is interpreted by Scripture Scholars as a prophecy about Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, who was crucified on Calvary. We will hear and read more of this Servant Song in the course of Holy Week.
Today’s second reading from Philippians is a hymn composed by Paul to honour Christ. Scholars suggest that the most accurate translation is to be found in the New International translation of the New Testament. It reads: “Christ Jesus, who, being in the nature of God did not grasp at power and status.” In other words, Paul was pointing out that Jesus had come among us not only to show us the compassionate, merciful and loving face of God but also the non-grasping face of God, the face of a God who does not grasp for power and status and who has no taste for violence. In imitation of God the Father, Jesus accepted rejection and violence because he saw the violence and rejection directed at him as simultaneously being directed against the God who had given him to our world as one of us. We become closely united with our brother Jesus when we are able to accept rejection and empty ourselves of all desire for vengeance, power and status for the good of our fellow human beings. Paul, in today’s second reading, tells his community that non-grasping and self-emptying are divine characteristics, imitated by Jesus. It is for that reason that John the Evangelist was able to describe Jesus’ crucifixion as his moment of glorification. That was when he demonstrated that he was most like God.
What might strike us as unexpected in today’s gospel-reading about the passion and death of Jesus, his total self-emptying out of love, is the detailed preparation Jesus made for the meal during which he would dramatise the absolute self-gift he was about to make to humankind through his acceptance of the torture and death meted out to him.
Today’s three readings combine to demonstrate forcefully to us that God’s Servant, Jesus, the Messiah suffered and died not to pay for sin, but to convince us that God’s love does not waver even when humanity rejects that love. Jesus came to transform an inaccurate image of God – our seeing God as sending Jesus to pay for our sins by his death on a cross – that many of us have been inclined to hold on to. He revealed that God is ever merciful, compassionate, relentlessly loving, with no desire for violence, retribution and with no grasping for power and status. Are we able to embrace that kind of God and to reflect some of what we embrace to those around us? That’s the great challenge of this last Sunday of Lent and Holy Week.