Year A / Lent / Palm Sunday

Readings: Matthew 2:1-11 – for procession of palms / Isaiah 50:4-7 / Psalm 21.8-9, 17-18a, 19-20, 23-24 (R/v 2a)/ Philippians 2: 6-11 / Matthew 16:14-27:66 

A playwright once wrote: “My plays are a success when the audience is so drawn into the drama that they can feel the actors’ emotions”.

Today’s gospel reading is about the Passion of the Lord. It dramatically tells of Jesus’ final days and hours and his death. It invites us into Jesus’ experience of suffering and dying, but, more so, of his love for God to the end and his selfless love for us onto death.

The Passion begins with Jesus entering Jerusalem for the Passover. The crowds are excited. They wave their palms. They throw down their cloaks. They sing Hosannas! They are welcoming a vagabond rabbi they accept as the promised King and Messiah. If you’re part of this crowd, how does it feel to be part of this demonstration?

On the margins are the Roman authorities. They see the crowds, burgeoning because many more have come for the Passover. They are anxious about disorder. They want the law to prevail. If you’re one of them, what are your thoughts and feelings about this noisy demonstration?

Jesus is the protagonist in this scene. From the onset, he seems to control the action. He knows what needs to be done. He sends his closest friends to get all that he needs ready. He directs the action. If you’re Jesus’ disciple, what feelings do you have?

Such is the drama you and I have participated in a few minutes ago. Such is the drama that calls us to reflect on our roles in it. Such will also be the unfolding drama of this Holy Week. We must enter deeply into it, participate in it, get involved because it is a the real-life drama of our lives and our salvation.

Our Lenten journey leads us into this week. This must be time of profound renewal for us. The drama of God in Jesus battling the powers of darkness and destruction in our world and in our lives, and winning, is the drama of our redemption. God’s triumph must empower us to renew our baptismal life.

The best way of entering into the drama of Holy Week is to pray—to pray that we will follow Jesus closely as he does the will of the Father. This desire is the right grace to ask for at this time. The week’s scripture readings offer us details to feel, to contemplate, to ponder Jesus’ journey to the Cross. There is no need to speak much, or ask for more or to think too hard in our prayers this week. All we need is to let God lead us more deeply into Jesus’ suffering, passion and death, to touch the mystery of his selfless love for you and me.

The German actor Anton Lang once articulated very well this desire to follow Jesus closely. Lang played Jesus in the famous Passion Play at Oberammergau, which is staged every ten years. After one performance, a tourist and his wife went back stage to take photos with the actors. The man noticed the great cross that Lang had carried during the performance. He said to his wife, “Here, take the camera and I’ll lift the cross on my shoulder, and then snap my picture.” The tourist stooped down to lift the prop to his shoulder. He couldn’t budge it. The cross was made with solid oak beams. In amazement the man turned to Lang and said, “I thought it would be hollow and light. Why do you carry a cross which is so terribly heavy?” The actor replied, “Sir, if I did not feel the weight of his cross, I could not play Jesus’ part.”

To feel the weight of the cross. Isn’t that what we have been trying to do throughout Lent with our Lenten practices? Shouldn’t this be what we must now really want to experience as we begin to live this Holy Week?

Throughout this week, we will meditate on the life-giving events of these last days of Jesus’ life, and our part in them. Today, we walk with Jesus into Jerusalem, singing our Hosannas. At the Last Supper, we will pray to have our feet washed. At Gethsemane, we will want to stay awake with Jesus. When Judas betrays Jesus, we will ask not to run away. When Herod and Pilate judge Jesus, we will feel the injustice. When the crowds demand his death, we will be aghast that cries of “Crucify Him” replace the “Hosannas”. When he is tortured, spat on, crowned with thorns, we will cry. When Jesus is hung on the Cross and dies, our hearts will break open; we will be bereft and empty. When he is laid in his mother’s arms, we will feel deep grief. When Jesus is entombed, our need to be silent will be deep and real.

Choosing to enter into all of these by praying to enter into the drama of Jesus’s passion is how we can begin to feel the weight of the cross, borne by one who carries it and is nailed onto it to die for us. The weight of Jesus’ cross is how we can experience the magnitude of God’s sacrifice for us. It is moreover, how we can savour the immensity of God’ loves for us. 

Will we let the weight of the cross awaken the depth of God’s love in us? Are we ready to experience the highs and lows of Jesus’ life in these final days, the consolations and desolations of his faith in the final hours, the passion of his suffering and death and the promise of God’s love that he abides in to die for us and to save us?

We can answer these questions if and only if we really let ourselves go and enter into the drama of Holy Week. 

The way ahead through Holy Week ahead will be difficult; it is the way of the Cross. But I believe we can walk it with hope and trust because the weight of the cross is really the weight of glory—the glory of the Resurrection. The Opening Prayer sums it best: “that we may heed the lesson of his patient suffering and so merit a share in his Resurrection”. Easter is God’s promised resurrection in our lives. The only way to get there is to go through the drama of Holy Week with Jesus. As we do so, may we may come to know

Readings: Ezekiel 37.12-14 / Psalm 129.1-2, 3-4ab, 4c-6, 7-8 (R/v 7) / Romans 8.8-11 / John 11.1-45

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Singapore Changi Airport, where the local time is 5.36pm. The outside temperature is 36 degree Celsius, with 94% humidity, and there is a chance of showers this evening. Please wait until the seat belts signs are switched off before moving about the cabin”. I am always comforted when I hear these words after the plane I’m travelling home on touches down safely. I believe we all want to hear similar words when we arrive safely at the different destinations we travel too.

Today’s readings however offer us sobering words about the destination of human life: it ends in death. We hear of Lazarus death in our gospel reading. We hear of the dead buried in graves in our first reading and of bodies dead because of sin in our second reading. Our Psalm, so often read at funerals and sung at requiem masses, expresses our pain, our despair, our hopelessness when we mourn the death of a loved one.

Death. Despair. Hopelessness. We are familiar with these themes. They are part of our lives. We anguish over them when our loved ones die. We grapple with the many more deaths we read or hear about: the deaths of innocent Christians and minorities massacred in the Middle East, of unsuspecting civilians slaughtered in London, Jakarta and Orlando and of starving hundreds of children in Africa. These remind us starkly of where human life ends—in death.

Today, we hear that Jesus goes to the place of death, to where his friend, Lazarus, died and is buried. Many come to comfort Martha and Mary who grieve the dead brother, like he now comes to do. Seeing Jesus, Mary cries out: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She weeps; the Jews accompanying her weep too. It must been quite a sound—this sound of death. At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great distress, and with a profound sigh, “Where have you put him?”

Whatever language we speak, it is always difficult to talk about emotions, let alone translate them into another language. The Greek word used to denote how deeply moved Jesus felt is ἐνεβριμήσατο (enebrimēsato). It literally means “to snort out of anger, indignation or antagonism” This suggests a more primitive, even animalistic behaviour: snorting like a horse. The Greek word for “profound sigh” is ἐτάραξεν (etaraxen). It literally means to stir up or to shudder in emotional agitation. 

Jesus is indeed deeply saddened by Lazarus’ death; he weeps because he has lost a close friend. But he is also filled with so much anger that he shudders. English translations of the Bible generally do not describe this quality of character in Jesus. The Greek translations expresses it better: they describe it as it is—that in the face of death, Jesus is agitated, vexed, furious and so angry that he is trembling. Why so?

We know that Jesus is not despairing that his friend had died. We also know from John’s gospel that Jesus knows all things: he would therefore have known that he would find Lazarus dead and that he would call him forth and raise him up. Jesus would also have known the depth of faith Martha and Mary would have as they grieved their loss. Jesus probably pitied the as many would have been hired. If Jesus is not angry with Mary and Martha or the mourners, why is he so angry?

He is angry at the situation that has brought such devastation into these people’s lives. He is angry at Death—this manifestation of Satan’ evil in the world that came through Adam and Eve’s disobedience. He directs his anger at Death, the source of grief itself. Death’s presence in the Lazarus’ tomb does more than stink; it stirs Jesus to action. He is indignant in its presence and intolerant of its temporary power. He snorts like a horse and hot tears stream down his face. He demands the stone covering the tomb be rolled away. He calls Lazarus forth and raises him up.Lazarus’ tomb is therefore where God who gives life overcomes Satan who destroys life, especially through sin. For Jesus, death cannot be the last word about life.

We know Jesus died and was raised from the dead. His resurrection is different from Lazarus who will die again. This is why the Paschal Mystery must matter to us: in Jesus’ death, we die, but in his resurrection, we are raised to eternal life—God alone makes this possible. The story of Jesus raising Lazarus therefore prefigures Jesus’ own death and resurrection. In Jesus, our Lenten journey does not end in death; he leads us through it to life eternal. Death then cannot have the final claim over us.

Jesus does four actions in today’s story that assures us of the certain power of God working through Jesus to raise us up from death. 

The first is that he stayed where he was after hearing of Lazarus’ death. There was no reason holding Jesus from going to Lazarus. He intentionally waited; he delayed going; he stayed. Why? Because he saw in Lazarus' death the in-breaking of God's glory, and he wanted to make sure no one missed it. By staying two more days before returning to enact the miracle, he made sure Mary, Martha and the mourners accepted Lazarus’ death but more so that they would ache for God’s saving presence. Their ache is nothing less than humankind’s poignant, fragile hope for God's saving action.

The second is that he wept. He wept because he identified with those who had lost a loved one and who simultaneously have lost confidence in God's redemption and power laboring in their midst. When Martha confessed that she believed Lazarus would rise again at the last day, Jesus reminded her of God’s immediate presence: "I am the resurrection and the life", even now, even here. Jesus can say this because he is God-with-us; he shares in our humanity and in our human life.

The third is that he commanded Lazarus to come out. Jesus’ command bestows life where there is nothing, only death. By calling Lazarus from death into life, Jesus reminds us that the responsibility for life—for creating it in the first place and recreating it once again—is exclusively God's.

The fourth is that he instructed others to unbind Lazarus. His instruction reminds us that everyone has a role to show forth God’s mercy. While creation and redemption are God's work, activity, and responsibility, God needs us to play a part, and so, glorify God.

Staying. Weeping. Calling out. Unbinding. Individually and collectively, these actions Jesus does confront and overcome death. More significantly, they witness that God is with us and that God wants to save us and raise us to eternal life.

Soon you and I will face another death. It will end differently from how every human life ends. It will end when a stone is rolled away from a tomb and the one who consoled a grieving sister with the words “I am the resurrection and the life” will snort at death because God called him forth from the dead and raised him to fullness of life. Jesus Christ is this risen one. And in his risen life, you and I will find our own.

What other destination than Jesus would you and I want to arrive safely and happily at when our Lenten journey ends? And as we come home to the risen Jesus, don’t we yearn to hear him say to us, “I am the resurrection and the life”?

Inspired by Debra Murphy

Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore

Photo: jornalmaker.com