Mark 14-15
Holy Week runs the gamut of emotions, from the triumphal celebrations of Palm Sunday to the fearfulness of Maundy Thursday, the anguish of Good Friday, and the emptiness of Holy Saturday. Because we are conflating all the traditional services of Holy Week into one service this evening, you might be feeling emotional whiplash right about now. After our joyous parade, you had mere minutes of celebration before scriptures and songs yanked you into the grim Upper Room.
But sometimes life is like that. Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which you were expecting one mood but encountered a very different one?
Years ago I had baked brownies to deliver to a friend whose father was recovering from fairly minor surgery. I carried my basket of goodies to the hospital’s visitation area so the extended family could enjoy the treats as they waited. Unaware that my friend’s father had suddenly gone into cardiac arrest, I arrived, cheerily holding out my brownies, at the very moment the doctor entered to tell the family my friend’s father had died. Anguish descended before I could realize what was happening or change expression. My presence instantly became invasive at that intimate moment; my ineffectual brownies, a mockery of their loss. In fact, my jarring, ill-timed entrance registered so indelibly with my friend that, a few years later, he wrote a short story based on that very scene. I still wince a bit when I bake brownies.
You, too, have needed at times to read people rapidly and shift emotional gears suddenly. High hopes for happy holiday celebrations have been dashed. Personal moods don’t always correspond to the moods dictated by the calendar. At times we fake feelings when what we are supposed to feel is so different from what we do feel. Jesus’s disciples were unprepared for the mood that overtook their last Passover meal.
But worse than mistaking the mood is misunderstanding the meaning of an event.
The 2005 film The Family Stone depicts a family’s unmet expectations at one Christmas dinner. If you can give me a lot of latitude here, you might see the film as something like a modern day Last Supper story: a story set at a time of religious celebration when misunderstandings abound, expectations are dashed, and foreshadowings of suffering and death intrude. Diane Keaton plays Sybil, the mother of 5 adult children who bring their significant others and their significant egos to the family’s Christmas festivities. Against the background of an idyllic Christmas setting, the ensuing chaos and betrayals are magnified. The festivities are especially ironic when Sybil’s terminal cancer looms larger than the towering Christmas tree and when a brawl between brothers sends the Christmas meal crashing to the floor. Like the disciples, who misunderstood and betrayed Jesus, Sybil’s devotees disappoint and betray and risk missing the purpose of the gathering. Ultimately, however, the family Stone remains bound together in the mother’s spell of love. The film ends with a glimpse of the family gathering one year later. Sybil is gone. But the family’s holiday rituals continue that year and, the audience assumes, will continue every year in the future to honor Sybil’s memory.
I’ve tried to imagine what it was like when the disciples gathered for the Passover holiday in expectation that, at last, Jesus would, on the crest of his popularity, declare his plans to lead the Jews in throwing off the Roman yoke of oppression. What a fitting time to do so, they must have thought!
But they misunderstood. Riding that young colt humbly into Jerusalem was his wry impersonation of an imperial procession and a critique of those in power. Too bad the irony and satire were lost on the crowds and the disciples, then and now. Over and over Mark’s Gospel reveals that the disciples do not understand Jesus’s message and purpose. The disciples saw his entrance into Jerusalem as a grassroots coronation. They probably assumed Jesus at last was perfectly poised to announce his Messianic campaign. And now, what better setting for the Messiah’s proclamation than over the joyous Seder meal? While Jews throughout Jerusalem were ritualistically recalling the story of their liberation from the Egyptian oppressors, the disciples might have expected at their Seder meal that Jesus would weave his secret strategy into the ancient story and thus map out how he would lead them against the Roman oppressors. They failed to understand that his plan of attack was no attack. His plan was to continue exposing injustice in a way that exposed himself to possible attack.
We pick up the story again as the twelve tromp into the upper room and to the table, all but Judas brimming with excitement. The disciples had been patient long enough. Their new Moses would soon reveal the plans he’d been keeping secret for so long. That very night liberation might begin!
But Jesus allows no time for even the pretense of celebration. He picks up the traditional unleavened bread. He clears his throat. His first words are these: “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” Just like that. Mark’s Gospel continues: “They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely, not I?” He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.” (Mark 14: 18-20). Their eyes catch Judas’s hand in the bowl. The world shifts. Game over. Party over. Dream over. Jesus immediately predicts they’ll all desert him, that Peter will deny him, that his body will become broken for others—like the very bread they’ve broken together at table. They had misunderstood Jesus. Indeed, none of them would stand beside him through his trial or stand under his cross. As predicted, they deserted him. They did not stand by him. They did not stand under him.
Maybe you’ve known what it’s like to be misunderstood. To be aiming for one goal as friends or partner or colleagues work in another direction. To have shared who you really are only later to realize that others did not quite “get” what you stand for.
Maybe you also know what it’s like to misunderstand, or understand too late. How hard it is to correct a misimpression once it has taken root. To unlearn something is much more difficult than to learn something new.
For the sake of argument, let’s allow the possibility that you and I, like the first disciples, have sometimes misunderstood Jesus. Maybe we’ve gathered at his table to celebrate things that have little to do with Jesus. We’ve come to his table with unforgiveness or unkindness in our hearts. We’ve accepted a too-comfortable or narrow vision of God’s realm. We’ve read scripture in ways that just reinforce our society’s values, even when they’re in conflict with the core lessons of love that are the final test of Jesus’s authentic voice. We’ve expected church to be a place of comfort and community for us—as it should be—but have forgotten that Jesus’s followers were also called to care for others and welcome all and not to count the cost.
I once thought Jesus wants me to worship him. I now think Jesus wants me to follow him. That, for me, was a major shift in understanding.
You may be understanding Jesus differently, too.
Holy Week is more about standing under than under standing, more about actively standing with Jesus than cognitively understanding certain facts or doctrines about Jesus.
To under stand Jesus, we stand under the cross. I am not recommending we dwell on the torture he endured, fixate on the details of the crucifixion, meditate on images of agony, gawk at passion plays or films like Passion of the Christ that manipulate our feelings through titillating violence. Notice that Mark’s spare and understated Gospel account, though grim in fact and tone, offers no gruesome details. We don’t need to study torture or be stimulated by violence.
Instead, let us stand under the cross and see . . . that the Divine Lover suffers with us, that Jesus forgave his torturers, that Jesus’s Way is creatively nonviolent and courageous, and that self-giving love is the way we can be freed from culture’s constrictions, from our own egotistical mindsets, from systemic injustice. Look upon the crucified Christ—not as a divine figure who judges but as the humble one who was misjudged yet who kept loving. Stand with Jesus, and stand with those who are likewise rejected. Standing is different from knowing. Stand under the cross.
When my daughter was young I would ask her, “Do you think I love you this much?” and show a space of an inch between my thumb and index finger of one hand. “No,” she’d answer. “Do you think I love you this much?” I’d ask, leaving a small space between my two hands. “No,” she’d answer. “Do you think I love you this much?” I’d ask, spacing my hands apart even farther. The game continued until my arms were fully outstretched. See: this is the picture of love that is absolutely open, and vulnerable. If we embody God’s love, if we become the body of Christ, we will love the world and heal brokenness and bring reconciliation. We will never fully understand the cross, but if we stand under it, we might open ourselves to love a world THIS much.
This is a week to stand under the cross. This is a way of life that calls us to stand with Jesus. We don’t all have to share the same precise understanding of Jesus’s life and death. But I, for one, do not believe his purpose was to die. Despite so many hymns and Gospel songs to the contrary, the cross was never God’s plan. Jesus died because his divinely-lit Way was already ushering in God’s realm and that threatened the systems of domination and greed. His death on a cross was the consequence of hate and violence that could be countered only by love and vulnerability.
Holy Week begins with the strangest holiday of the year because on Palm Sunday we reenact a basic misunderstanding about Jesus. We cheer his entrance into the Holy City as if we believe he was coming as a King. But the following events of Holy Week make clear he was not coming with military or political might. His stunned disciples finally had to face their misunderstandings and move from a false celebration to authentic emotions of bewilderment, fear, and grief. And eventually to move on to Easter’s true celebration of Life and Love.
This week the quick and easy answers will fail us. This week we are left to realize that the road to Easter rebirth will involve pain and loss and selflessness. This week we might need to admit we don’t understand everything about Jesus. But we can stand with him and with those like him who have become scapegoats. We may misunderstand. Our misunderstanding could cause us to miss standing up for those who are the neglected, the despised, the forgotten. Our misunderstanding of Jesus could cause us to miss standing with him on the side of peace and justice.
I surely misunderstand many things. But I don’t think Jesus wants praise. I think he wants our followship. I don’t want to be a deluded bystander at a parade, mindlessly cheering the next celebrity. I want to stand under the cross. I want to understand. In the words of a song from Cameroon which we’ll sing shortly, I want to “stand firm.”
I address the Spirit that animated the life of Jesus in this prayer:
PRAYER: Teach us, Spirit of Jesus, how to persist in making clear to others where we stand. Help us, Loving One, to stand beside you as you show compassion to a world where domination and hate too often rule. Prompt us now, Compassionate Christ, to give not only our financial offerings but to offer our very lives in service to your children. Lead us in this time and place to take our stand for what is of God.
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