Rev Peter W NimmoCrowds, leaders and faithfulness- Sermon for Palm and Passion Sunday, 2 April 2023
The texts I’ve used for this Sunday are: The entry into Jerusalem- Matthew 21:1-11; and the Passion Narrative- Matthew 27:11-56.
The cross of Christ is the central symbol of Christianity. Over the centuries, millions of words have been written about it. Theologians have created various theories about it all. But on this Sunday, as we have listened to the story as told by Matthew the Gospel writer, we have heard no theories. Instead, the accounts of the death of Jesus in the Gospels are very human stories. I’m not going to offer any theories, but I do want to ponder three groups of people in the story we have heard.
Firstly, there is the crowd. Holy Week, the last week of Jesus’ life, is framed by the Jerusalem crowds. On Palm Sunday, Jesus is welcomed with enthusiasm. Riding into the city on a donkey, people think that their liberation has come. He’s a prophet, they say. He’s the special king who is predicted to come riding on a donkey.
And then, over a few days, they go sour on him. During those few days, it’s almost as if Jesus sets out to be controversial. He makes enemies of the religious leaders, who want to get rid of him, and they eventually hand him over to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. As Pilate tries to decide what to do, turns to the crowd again.
There is this weird tradition that at the Passover, the governor can ask the crowd if he should free a prisoner. It’s first century reality television- who will you vote for, he asks the crowd. And the crowd chooses, not the Jesus, but Barabbas, who is an actual criminal. Pilate, fearing a riot, condemns Jesus and frees Barabbas.
Why did the crowd turn, from adulation one day, to wanting Jesus dead a few days later? We are told that ‘The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask Pilate to set Barabbas free and have Jesus put to death’. There must have been lots of conversations, sermons and discussion conversations, as the religious leaders planted doubt in people’s minds, persuading them that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, but a heretic.
Would that happen today? We are supposed to live in a scientific age, but millions have been fooled into denying scientific realities, such as the dangers of Covid, or the consequences of climate change. It’s easy us to be fooled by people who seem to know what they are talking about. When you read or hear a news story or an opinion piece, to you ever think to ask who is feeding this information to you, and why? Did the people on the streets of Jerusalem ask themselves ‘why are the chief priests and the elders saying this about Jesus?’ Apparently, not enough of them did ask that critical question.
But Pilate knew what was going on: Matthew says that ‘He knew very well that the Jewish authorities had handed Jesus over to him because they were jealous’.
And that brings us to the second group of people- the leaders of church and state in Jerusalem at the time.
Israel was an occupied country- it was ruled, ultimately, by Rome, either directly through governors like Pontius Pilate, or an indirectly through puppet kings such as the Herod family. The Romans tolerated the local religion, because it made it easier for to rule the population. So the Temple in Jerusalem still functioned, and the priests and the elders in charge of the Jewish religious were allowed power over the people in religious matters.
But that made the religious leaders collaborators with the Romans. So once they decided that Jesus was a heretic who ought to die, they went to the Roman governor, Pilate- for only he had the power to put someone to death.
Pilate, however, had his doubts. After all, this young preacher didn’t seem to be guilty of anything. Even his wife was worried about the situation- as Pilate is sitting in judgement, she sends a message to him: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, because in a dream last night I suffered much on account of him.” Will Pilate develop a conscience?
He decides, however that he will do (the morally wrong, if politically convenient thing)- condemn Jesus- but convinces himself it is for the right reasons- to prevent a riot. It is a classic politician’s dilemma. In front of the crowd, he washes his hands of the affair- trying to put the blame on them. But I’m sure he couldn’t wash his conscience so easily.
Yet Pilate sends Jesus to be tortured and mocked, and his Roman soldiers take a sadistic pleasure in doing so, spitting on him and beating him, dressing him up as a king with a purple robe and a crown of thorns. The Romans are the people with power in this story, and they use it to humiliate Jesus, who is by this time utterly defenceless, having been abandoned by most of his compatriots and the leaders of his religion.
The Gospels give the impression that the religious leaders really didn’t try very hard to understand Jesus. But do you remember a few weeks ago we talked about Nicodemus? He was a Pharisee- a religious group Jesus was often in conflict with. Yet John’s Gospel tells us that he went to see Jesus one night, for what was a genuine effort at a conversation. Later, he would speak up for Jesus at his religious trial, and the end Nicodemus helped prepare Jesus for burial. Nicodemus was a religious leader who showed some integrity, who tried to get beyond the groupthink of his colleagues.
And at the very end, people see Jesus crucified and insult him- the same people who welcomed him with palm branches a few days earlier, the same people who the day before had been persuaded by their religious leaders to cry ‘crucify him’ when Pilate tried to set him free. They are egged on by those same religious leaders who also insult the dying Jesus. Even the actual criminals who are being crucified with Jesus jeer at him.
Yet, as he dies, one Roman soldier comes to a new insight. The army officer in charge of the crucifixion, and some of his soldiers, say ‘He really was the Son of God’. That army officer, and his soldiers, were part and parcel of the Roman power complex. They may have been torturing and humiliating Jesus just a few hours before. Yet, like Nicodemus, they are able to step outside of their role, and understand that God is at work.
Human life is complicated. We are all caught up, in some way, in power structures, in betrayal, in lies. We do the wrong thing, and convince ourselves that we did the right thing. We are easily swayed by what sounds like the truths, easily persuaded by plausible liars because they are leaders we thing we should trust.
Yet there is always the opportunity to be a Nicodemus, or to be the Roman officer at the cross, and to realise that God is at work, and to confess to the truth. An employee blows the whistle on criminality by their company; a soldier refuses to take part on a war crime; a politician resigns instead of supporting a policy which goes against their conscience- we can all admire such integrity. It is a refreshing change to the murkiness of human life.
And there is my third group of people- the few honest people in this tale. At the every end of our reading today, we hear of some people who stood by Jesus, all way to the cross:
There were many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed from Galilee and helped him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the wife of Zebedee.
Matthew 27.55-56The male disciples had largely deserted Jesus. Even his chief disciple, Simon Peter, denied knowing him. But the women stayed faithful. Those women, who had followed him from Galilee, who are so often overlooked in our teaching and preaching about Jesus- they didn’t deny or abandon him, but went with him, all the way to the cross.
And there is one other person of integrity in this story, isn’t there? The one who goes to Jerusalem even when his disciples try to persuade him not to. The one who rides a donkey into the city, who chucks the traders out of the Temple, who heals and forgives even when it will upset the religious leaders. The one who stays silent in the face of Pilate’s questions, and the mockery as he is tortured and killed. Jesus- the one at the centre of it all- shows incredible integrity through all this horror.
He is brave, but he is not superhuman. In Gethsemane, he prays for a way to avoid death. At the very end, he wonders if God has abandoned him.
Whatever else the church has said about Christ over the centuries, this story reminds us that Jesus was fully human. Like you and me, he finds it hard to stick to doing God’s will. He, like us, has moments where his faith wobbles. He, like us, feels the pain of rejection and betrayal. He has tried to live by his law of love, but he dies a horrific, violent death.
Today, I offer no theories on any of this. Today, there is just the story. And a dark, violent, murky story it is, too. This is not humanity at its best. Yet Jesus, and a few others, too, stay faithful- creating a hope that maybe, just maybe, something good will come out of this, and that love and truth will defeat hatred and lies eventually. Amen.
Biblical references from the Good News Bible, unless otherwise stated
© 2023 Peter W Nimmo
Featured image: John August Swanson, Entry into the City (1990): Painting at Notre Dame University, Indiana, USA. From Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56544 [retrieved March 29, 2023]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/. The artist has granted permission for the non-commercial use of this image with attribution. The artist must be contacted for other uses.
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