April 4, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Mark 1: 1-10 Palm Blessing + Isaiah 50: 4-7 + Psalm 22 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Mark 14: 1-15
I am not exactly sure what it is or why, but we have so sensationalized the death of Jesus Christ that we have lost something very siginificant that is right here in the text no matter which of evangelists you read. The truth of the matter is that there were at least three executions that day outside Jerusalem. There may well have been more. It was a very common and ordinary event. Internal disputes among the Jews were common as well. The factions pushing and shoving for power and inflence were at each all the time. Pilot was there because of it. He knew their intrigues. He knew how to play them against one another. Keeping them divided was the easiest way to keep them in check.
It did not take much to draw a crowd in those days, especially during the seasons of High Holy Days. Outside of the Temple and its rituals, there wasn’t much to do. Children did what children do: they play games, march around, sing, and dance. They play with sticks and branches and anything else they can find. The children of Jerusalem knew the rituals and the story of the Feast of Tabernacles, its procession with branches waving in the wind was deep in their imaginations.
Roman soldiers did what Roman soldiers do: they oppress, torment, humiliate, and the steal. Paid little, far from home in a very alien and unfriendly land, they took the spoils and what was left from those they executed day after day.
What’s the big deal here? Nothing; and that is the tragedy of it. This death we have just recalled was perfectly ordinary and perfectly legal. There is no blaiming Pilot, the Jews, the Sanhedran, Herod, or the High Priest. This death was not some rare insanity of a few evil people. There is a deeper flaw, a deeper tragedy to be addressed that will not allow blaim or the shifting of responsibility by sensationalism. The people in this Gospel are convinced that they are acting rightly, morally, and justly. What frightens me is that Christ was executed by good people. The same people who brought the Palms brought the Cross. The fault here is not that they were evil or bloodthirsty, but that they were complacent. so compacent and easily swayed that they shout “Hosanna” one day and “Crucify Him the next.”
What ought to disturb us most of all with this scene is not the cross but the crowds. Tools of execution are common enough: guns, gas chambers, electric chairs, ropes, chemicals in syringes, pills, swords, rocks and clubs Sadly, what is just as common and the harshest image of all is a crowd doing nothing. Standing there, ready to watch if there is something interesting, and just as ready to move on if there is none. No one seems to say: “Stop this?” The only one who questions what Jesus has done to deserve death is Pilate! What irony is this?
To whatever extend we are still part of the crowd, we are part of the tragedy, the injustsice, the sadness of life. We cannot hear this Gospel and wonder, “What was wrong with those terrible people.” Every one of us has stood around and said nothing in the face of injust, evil, and cruetly. It happens everywhere from school yards to coorporate offices. Jesus shows no anger at the crowd, or to those who nailed his hands;
but He did have strong words for the luke-warm, those who never could speak up, stand up, question and step out of the crowd’s fickle mediocrity.
As we ponder the events of our religious past against the events of our own time, rather than be appalled or sorrowful about what happened in Jerusalem a long, long time ago, we might take a closer look at our own passion or lack of it for justice, for truth, for peace and for life itself.