EASTER DAY

Sunday 9 April 2023

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

John 20:1-18

 

The Church’s faith in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ hinges upon two items of evidence attested in the New Testament (and a third, about which I will say more presently). The first item is the empty tomb. The second is the series of the appearances of the risen Christ to women and the disciples beginning on the first Easter Day.

 

These New Testament accounts are remarkably spare and restrained. Nowhere do they attempt to describe what happened inside the tomb when Jesus came back to life. They confine themselves simply to the eyewitness testimony of those who were there that morning on the first day of the week, and in the days and weeks following: the empty tomb and the appearances of the Risen One.

Neither piece of evidence signifies that much on its own. An empty tomb by itself could result from the body being stolen or hidden, just as Mary Magdalene supposes in the Gospel we’ve just heard. And appearances of a dead person to the living were not all that uncommon in the ancient world – just as some would argue that they’re not that uncommon today either. Over the years, a number of people, both parishioners and friends, have told me about departed loved ones appearing and speaking with them in the days following the death and burial. Ghosts, spirits, hallucinations, or over-active imaginations? You decide.

 

No, it’s the combination of the two, the empty tomb and the bodily resurrection appearances, that affords the strongest evidence that something utterly unique and unprecedented happened that first Easter morning. And the Gospel reading from John, traditionally appointed for the principal Mass of Easter Day, explicitly brings out both these elements in wonderful detail: the tomb is found empty; the Risen Lord appears to Mary Magdalene.

Part of the beauty of John’s account is the way he describes the respective responses of the three principal characters: Peter, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene. Before dawn, while it’s still dark, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, finds the stone rolled away, and the interior empty. She runs to tell Peter and the other disciple, whom Jesus loved. This other disciple is generally believed to be John, the author of this Gospel, so this really does present itself as an eyewitness account. 

 

Peter and the Beloved Disciple run to the tomb. John is probably younger and in better physical shape than Peter, so he gets there first, but he doesn’t go in – perhaps out of deference to Peter’s position of leadership. When Peter arrives, they both go in. At this point, John’s description really does suggest eyewitness testimony: the linen cloths are lying there, and the linen napkin which had covered the Lord’s head is rolled up separately in a place by itself: not the sorts of details that are likely to be made up.

 

John does not explicitly tell us Peter’s reaction. But Peter seems to take it all in, not knowing what to think for the time being. By contrast, the Beloved Disciple sees and believes. Neither of them yet know the scriptural prophecies foretelling that the Son of God must die and rise again. But the Beloved Disciple—that is, John himself—has an almost mystical intuition that if Jesus isn’t here, he must be alive. Then, having seen all that there is to see, the two disciples return to their homes.

 

I’ll wager that some of us here today are more like Peter, and others more like John. Some come to church, listen to the biblical stories, take them all in, and don’t know what to think. The jury is still out. Others have no difficulty hearing and believing. Notice that John doesn’t say that either response is better than the other. He simply notes them both and moves on with the story.

 

Mary Magdalene doesn’t return home, however, but remains outside the tomb, weeping. Unlike Peter and the Beloved Disciple, she thinks she knows exactly what’s happened: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” And even when she encounters two angels inside the tomb who ask her why she’s weeping, she persists: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When Jesus appears and asks why she’s weeping and whom she seeks, she doesn’t recognize him. Supposing that he’s the gardener, she pleads, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

 

It’s only when he addresses her by name that the realization dawns on her. The penny drops. We can only imagine her joy as she exclaims, “Rabboni! Teacher!” Down through the centuries, commentators have spilled much ink on the meaning of the Lord’s mysterious words, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father …” But at least part of their meaning is that the Jesus Mary Magdalene has been seeking is Jesus as he was, the Jesus who died, the corpse for whom she wanted to complete the rites of burial. He exhorts her to let go of all that. Instead of trying to hold on to the past, her mission now is redirected to the future: to go and tell the disciples what she’s seen and heard; bear witness to the Lord’s Resurrection.

 

And again, I’ll wager that Mary’s experience exemplifies the pattern for many of us. C. S. Lewis writes somewhere that “humanity’s search for God” – the topic of innumerable lectures, articles, and books – is a bit like the mouse’s search for the cat. That is, it gets things completely the wrong way round. We may search for God and God’s truth all we want, but ultimately the end of our quest comes not when we find God but when God finds us, calls us by name, and gives us some task or mission to fulfill during our earthly life. This was certainly my experience when I came to faith in Christ: not one of finding God, but of being found by him. It’s a little unnerving when one realizes that one isn’t nearly as much in control of one’s life as one thought.

 

And so, the third piece of evidence supporting the Church’s faith in the Resurrection – after the eyewitness accounts of empty tomb and the Risen One’s appearances – is the difference it makes in our own lives here and now. I believe in the Resurrection of Christ because I encounter the Risen Jesus here, in the life of his Church, in his Word and Sacraments, and not least, in the faces of his faithful people. The Church’s Easter proclamation is that Christ is alive. And as we seek him, he will find us.

THE GREAT VIGIL OF EASTER

April 8, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

The Easter Vigil is not only, in my opinion, the most exciting and powerful service of the entire Church year, but also one of the most ancient Christian liturgies we have on record. By the third century it was firmly established in many places as the Church’s annual occasion of administering Holy Baptism. While practices varied from place to place, the typical pattern was for adult converts to undertake a period of preparation for baptism lasting as long as three years or more. During this period, they were called catechumens. The final forty days before Easter – which gradually evolved into the season of Lent – comprised intensive instruction in the essentials of the faith, as well as fasting and prayer undertaken by the whole Church together with and on behalf of the catechumens.

 

Finally, between sunset and sunrise on Easter Eve, a long vigil service would take place, lasting many hours. (What we’re doing here this evening is a highly abbreviated version of that.) Down through the centuries, various ceremonies evolved to punctuate this liturgy: kindling new fire; lighting the Paschal Candle; chanting the Exultet; proclaiming the Easter Alleluia. 

 

From the earliest days, however, the heart of this liturgy comprised three basic components: first, a lengthy service of readings from the Old Testament, each pointing by way of anticipation to Christ’s death and Resurrection; second, the administration of Holy Baptism; and third, the celebration of the First Eucharist of Easter, at which the newly baptized adults would receive Holy Communion for the first time.

 

From the beginning, then, the Church’s celebration of the Great Vigil was paired with Holy Baptism – so nothing could be more appropriate than administering the Sacrament of Holy Baptism to our three candidates this evening. And the point I want to emphasize is that this pairing of Holy Baptism with the Easter Vigil was neither accidental nor arbitrary, but deliberate and intentional. To see why, we need look no further than our Epistle for this evening, from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

 

Here, the Apostle describes Baptism as a kind of virtual participation in Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection. “Do you not know,” Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” 

 

It’s a remarkable passage. Here baptism appears as a symbol not only of washing and cleansing, but also of death-by-drowning. And Paul is saying that this enacted sign of death-by-water becomes for Christians the means of participation in Christ’s own death and burial. In other words, Christ saves us not merely as external beneficiaries of, but rather as active virtual participants in, his crucifixion and entombment. And the vehicle by which we share in his death and burial is none other than the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

 

It’s not really that Christ pays the price of our sins on the cross for us as a kind of divine bookkeeping transaction. The supernatural reality at play here is more organic than forensic. We participate in Christ’s death through baptism, so that, as Paul writes, “we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.” In the background here is the ancient understanding that a slave is a slave only for life, but in death the slave gains freedom from the former master. So, by participation in Christ’s death through Baptism, we receive liberation from the former mastery that sin and death held over our lives.

 

And through Baptism we participate not only in Christ’s death but also in his Resurrection. This sharing in Christ’s risen life is both a future and a present reality. On one hand, Paul writes, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” That’s the future aspect: the hope of sharing in the glory of resurrection on the last day. But at the same time, Paul writes, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, through Baptism we enjoy an anticipatory foretaste here and now of the life of the world to come, making possible new lives in this world marked by love, joy, hope, self-giving, and sacrificial service to others. As Paul puts it, we were buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” 

 

Holy Baptism is, then, the link between the first Easter Day two millennia ago, and our life together in the Church today. The Easter Vigil liturgy commemorates not only Christ’s victory over death, but also our death to sin and our resurrection to new and eternal life in him. On this most holy night, then, we have fittingly renewed our baptismal commitment, and we celebrate the power of Christ’s resurrection in our lives today.

GOOD FRIDAY LITURGY

April 7, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

The cross is the archetypal symbol of Christian faith. Apart from its historical role as the instrument of the Lord’s torture and death, some commentators see its intersection of vertical and horizontal beams as a visual symbol of Incarnation. The vertical beam symbolizes transcendence. It points to heaven above, and to eternity. The horizontal beam symbolizes immanence. It points to the world around us, the here and the now. So, the cross’s intersection of vertical and horizontal beams signifies the union of transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, spirit and matter, divine and human, in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. 

 

At the historical level, moreover, the Lord’s actual death on a wooden cross on the hill of Golgotha also exhibits both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Up the vertical axis, the suffering Jesus is offering to his Father in heaven the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; and the Father looking down from heaven is lovingly accepting his Son’s sacrifice. Along the horizontal axis, the dying Lord is stretching out his arms of love to gather in all humanity and all creation; and conversely his life, forgiveness, grace, and strength are flowing from his outstretched arms to the world’s remotest ends.

This ancient Good Friday liturgy exhibits a fourfold structure, which oscillates back and forth between these vertical and horizontal orientations. First, our attention is drawn upwards, vertically, to Jesus lifted high upon the cross. Then, our attention is redirected outwards, horizontally, to the world he died to save. And then the pattern repeats itself.

 

We begin with the Liturgy of the Word, culminating in the Passion according to Saint John. It focuses our attention on Jesus, on what actually happened to him on Good Friday. In some churches, the Passion is read dramatically, with readers taking the various spoken parts. In parishes that have the resources to do so, the Passion is sung to the ancient chants, with the cantors and choir taking the various parts. Either way, the goal is a performative recitation, aiming not merely at remembering something that happened in the past, but making it vivid and real, transporting us back, so that we become virtual eyewitnesses; or, conversely, bringing it forward into the present so that we experience it here and now in all its naked terror and awe. In this way, we’re able to give an affirmative answer question posed in the old spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Yes, we were there. We are there.

Then, following a sermon or homily, which is ideally kept brief, we turn our attention from the cross outwards, towards the world, reciting the ancient prayers known as the Solemn Collects. This movement has a deep inner logic. It’s not simply that since there's really nothing left to say, we may as well say some prayers. No, having just listened to the Passion Gospel, we ask God the Father to apply the benefits of his Son’s death “to all people everywhere, according to their needs.” We make these prayers in the assurance that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” The Church’s liturgical response to the proclamation of the Lord’s death is thus to pray for all those for whom he died.

 

Continuing our alternation between the vertical and the horizontal, we turn our attention once again to the cross, this time in loving adoration. A cross is brought in for the congregation’s veneration. The rubrics specify that this cross must be made of wood, like the cross on which Jesus was crucified. This ceremony dates back to the fourth-century Church in Jerusalem, where worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher would line up for hours on Good Friday to kiss a large fragment of the true Cross that would be unveiled and exposed for that purpose.

 

Then comes the fourth part of the liturgy, the Mass of the Presanctified. We retrieve from the Altar of Repose the Blessed Sacrament reserved at last night’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In many churches, the Sacrament is reserved one kind only, the sacred hosts but not the wine, to emphasize that today’s liturgy is not another Mass, no fresh offering of the Holy Eucharist, but a Communion from the Reserved Sacrament—an extension of the single extended Triduum liturgy that began last night.

 

The Church’s sacramental theology teaches us that we receive the grace of Holy Communion just as fully in one kind as in both kinds. The Pandemic brought this teaching home to us, I think, when Communion in both kinds was taken away from us under emergency conditions. 

But still, Communion in one kind diminishes the symbolism. The English Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols writes: “

We are invited to come to Communion under the deliberately deficient symbolism of the single species. As orthodox Catholics we know that our Lord is wholly present in his full Godhead and his full manhood under either Eucharistic sign. Yet we also respect the ways in which he allows himself to be given to us ... Today we receive him, quite deliberately, by the symbolism of incompletion … Today we have only a truncated Eucharist … for today Christ our Lord suffered the disintegration of his very being.

Even in one kind, the Holy Communion of Good Friday conveys the Lord’s life, grace, and power to all who receive it. Having venerated Christ on the cross, we receive him into ourselves—not just for our own comfort and consolation, but also for our empowerment as ambassadors of Christ’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. So we have another turn to the horizontal. Just as in the Solemn Collects we prayed for the world that Christ died to save, so now in the Communion of the Presanctified we offer ourselves as living vessels to carry forth Christ’s salvation into that same world. 

 

Then, following Communion, we leave in silence. There’s nothing left to say. For the time being, the Incarnate Word has been silenced. We do well to keep silence too, waiting in hope and expectation for what God will do next. 

 

THE FIRST STATION:

JESUS IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH

 Noonday Prayer & Stations of the Cross

Good Friday, April 7, 2023 

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury N. J.

 

In a few minutes we shall participate together in the Stations of the Cross, a devotion brought back to the Western Church by pilgrims to Jerusalem who retraced our Lord’s final journey carrying his cross on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows. Rather than trying to cover the whole waterfront, I’ve discovered over the years that reflecting on just one of the Stations can have the effect of illuminating them all. So, I will here confine myself to the First Station: Jesus is condemned to death. The theme is judgment.

 

What kind of person was the Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate? Historians have rendered widely varying assessments. Some have portrayed him as an honest and honorable administrator doing his best under difficult circumstances. According to this version of the story, Pilate knows full well that Jesus is innocent and wants to let him off, but ultimately yields to political pressure from those seeking Jesus’ death.

 

Others dismiss that reading as a whitewash. Pilate, they argue, is a callous and cruel military governor who wouldn’t give a second thought to condemning an accused man – especially when the charge is sedition and treason. Those who take this line argue that when the Gospels were being written, the early Christians wanted to get along in the world of the Roman Empire, so it was in their interests to emphasize the responsibility of the Jewish religious authorities for insisting on Jesus’ death, while minimizing Pilate’s role in imposing the death penalty.

 

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. But in the end, it was still Pilate’s decision. He bears the responsibility and authority of judgment. And all four Gospels are unanimous in suggesting that Pilate made his final decision in the interests not of truth or justice but of political expediency.

 

The deep irony is that in condemning Jesus, Pilate is judging his own Judge. Just as Jesus stands now before Pilate, so in the Last Day the roles will be reversed. Then Pilate will stand before Jesus and render account for the judgment that he rendered.

 

Judgment is an inescapable dimension of human interaction. To have any meaningful relations with other people, we constantly exercise our critical faculties, sizing up those with whom we have to deal, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and vices. Our choice is not between judging and not judging, but between judging badly and judging well. One of the key ingredients of good judgment is the humility borne of the recognitions of how often we ourselves fall short by the very same standards we use to judge others.

 

What I like to call “the paradox of judgment” is that every time we render judgment we simultaneously subject ourselves to judgment. The story is told of a brash young American tourist visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. After taking half an hour to breeze through the dozens and dozens of rooms that often occupied other visitors for days on end, he announced to the guard at the entrance: “Well I certainly don’t think much of your old masters.” Unfazed, the guard replied, “Yes sir, and they don’t think much of you either. Unfortunately for you, however, it’s not the old masters who are on trial here.”

 

The Dean of my seminary had a stock speech he used to give about student evaluations. Every year, a faculty committee would convene to evaluate the progress of each seminarian. They would then write a report to be sent to the seminarian’s bishop. In the third and final year, the evaluation would include the faculty’s recommendation for or against ordination.

 

Now, the Dean would say every year, this process might seem unfair and, well, judgmental. Who were the faculty to judge the seminarians in this way? Only God knew what was in their hearts. But notice, said the Dean, that we all evaluate one another all the time. “From the moment you entered this seminary,” he continued, “you’ve all been evaluating me. And while your judgment of me may not have the immediate effect on my future that the faculty evaluations will have on yours, nonetheless, I know that if over time enough of you form negative judgments of my performance as Dean, then I will have to face the consequences.”

 

We were all impressed by his honesty and humility. Here was a senior academic and ecclesiastical administrator presiding over a process that systematically evaluated people’s fitness for ordained ministry. Yet at the same time he acknowledged that in the very act of rendering judgment he was rendering himself liable to judgment by the very people it was his responsibility to judge, not to mention their bishops, the seminary trustees, and so on.

 

But whatever judgements we render or receive in this life, we need to remember that ultimately God is our judge. C. S. Lewis remarked in his essay “God in the Dock” that by the middle of the twentieth century, human beings had adopted an entirely new posture towards God. Ancient men and women, he wrote, approached the divine as accused criminals approach their judge: confessing their sins and begging for mercy. For modern men and women, however, the positions are reversed. We have put themselves on the judge’s bench and God in the prisoner’s dock. We fancy ourselves quite kindly judges, Lewis continued, and if God has a reasonable explanation for being the sort of God who permits war, poverty, disease, and famine, we’re prepared to give him a fair hearing. But, Lewis concluded, the important point is that we’ve made ourselves the judges and God the defendant.

 

That is the very scene anticipated two thousand years ago at the judgment seat in the place called Gabbatha, the pavement, where Jesus stands before Pilate. And we put ourselves in Pilate’s place when we presume to judge God. But judgment has this odd boomerang effect. As we evaluate God, so God evaluates us. If we question Christianity and find it wanting, so Christianity questions us and finds us wanting. If we reject the Church as unworthy of our membership, so the Church rejects us as unworthy of its membership. Our Lord himself said as much in the Sermon on the Mount: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure that you get.” 

 

This picture may seem terrifying, and so it is. But God has the last word; and in the Cross of Christ God’s word is not condemnation and death, but forgiveness and life – made possible by precisely the judgment that Jesus underwent for our sakes. In the first Station, Jesus stands before Pilate and accepts the condemnation of death. In so doing, however, he makes it possible for us to stand before him as our Judge. He calls us to repent of our sins and place our faith and trust in him. Then, having done so, at the last Judgment we shall receive the verdict of forgiveness, acquittal, and life—on account of the very death to which he was unjustly condemned for us and for our salvation.

 

MAUNDY THURSDAY

April 3, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Exodus 12:1-14a

I Corinthians 11:23-26

 

The events we commemorate on Maundy Thursday, and indeed throughout the coming three days, all take place within the context of the Jewish celebration of Passover. Our Old Testament reading from Exodus recounts the institution of the Passover meal, known in Judaism as the Seder. 

 

According to three of the four canonical Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—the Last Supper was a Passover Meal. Jesus sends his disciples to the upper room in Jerusalem to prepare the Passover, and they gather that evening after sundown for the meal itself. 

 

The Gospel of John, by contrast, describes the Last Supper as taking place a day earlier. John, it seems, wants to emphasize that Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross occur on the same day that the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the nearby Temple precincts.

 

Scholars have debated which of the two accounts is accurate. Either way, the Last Supper takes place when Jesus and his disciples have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to keep the feast. Passover is in the air. And for all four Gospel writers, Passover supplies the wider field of meaning illuminating not only the Last Supper but also the unfolding drama of the Lord’s betrayal, arrest, trial, suffering, and death.

 

Our reading from Exodus recounts God’s instructions to the Israelites for the first Passover. Despite a series of nine terrible plagues, the Egyptian Pharaoh has persisted in refusing Moses’ repeated demands to let the people go. Before sending the tenth and most terrible plague of all, the death of all the firstborn sons throughout the land, God instructs that the head of each Hebrew household slaughter a lamb and smear some of its blood on the house’s doorposts. The lamb is to be roasted and eaten that night, with nothing left over. Then, when the angel of death traverses the land and sees the blood on the doorposts, he will pass over that house, sparing its firstborn.

 

This last dreadful plague finally persuades Pharaoh to relent and let the people go. For the Israelites, then, the Passover lamb becomes the sign of deliverance and salvation. However, the Passover meal is not left as a one-off event. The Israelites continued to keep Passover, year by year, as the annual commemoration of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. 

 

Some Old Testament scholars have suggested that down through the centuries this annual celebration was not merely an occasion of piously recalling events from the distant past, but rather a means of dynamically re-appropriating and re-experiencing those events in the present. Subsequent generations of Jews may not have lived through the Exodus themselves, but by re-enacting those events liturgically they became one with their ancestors, and so were reconstituted as God’s people Israel in the present. This mysterious quality of the Passover commemoration is conveyed in the Seder’s opening words, spoken by the youngest child present: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The child represents, of course, all the future generations who are to be incorporated into God’s chosen people by their liturgical participation in the long-ago events of their deliverance from Egypt.

 

The Greek word for this transformation of time is anamnesis, the making-present of past events, which translates rather lamely into English as “remembrance.” Saint Paul uses precisely this same word in rendering the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: “Do this in remembrance of me.” In Greek: do this for my anamnesis. A better translation might be: Do this to make me present; Do this to recall me into your midst.

 

Earlier in the same letter, Paul has explicitly likened Jesus to the Passover lamb in words that we adapt at the Breaking of the Bread at every Eucharist: “Christ, our Paschal lamb has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (Paul’s reference there to “unleavened bread” explicitly invokes the matzo bread used in the Passover meal.)

 

At the Last Supper, moreover, Jesus takes up and transforms powerful religious symbols inherited from the past. Until now, the Passover lamb has functioned as a sign of God’s deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt. (And so it continues in Judaism, for God’s covenant with Israel is irrevocable and remains in force until the end of time.) But in the Christian dispensation, Jesus himself becomes the new Passover Lamb, the sacrificial victim whose death delivers all people everywhere from the power of sin and death for all time and beyond.

 

During the meal, Jesus adds new words to the familiar blessings said over the bread and the wine, investing them with new meaning: This is my body; this is my blood. In the context of the Last Supper, these mysterious words have a double significance. 

First, they predict what’s going to happen the next day. The Lord’s body will be nailed to the cross and his blood will be poured out. Obscure as these words may be when Jesus speaks them, his disciples will later remember and understand: Yes, it’s what he said at the supper the night before about his body and his blood! His words not only predict but they also interpret his death—not an ignominious and meaningless defeat, but the inauguration of a new covenant in his blood.

 

Second, his words prescribe the pattern that his disciples are to follow henceforth until the end of time: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup,” writes Paul, “you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” From now on, this pattern will define the Church’s life: meeting together weekly and even daily to break the bread and share the cup, thus perpetually setting forth the Lord’s sacrificial death for our salvation.

 

On Maundy Thursday, then, we give thanks for our Lord’s gift of himself to us in the Holy Eucharist. We remember with gratitude the Eucharist’s origins in the Passover meal, which Jesus celebrated faithfully throughout his life. We pray with gratitude and love for the Jewish people, our “elder brothers and sisters in the faith” as Pope John Paul II so memorably called them, who celebrated their Passover Seder yesterday. And we rejoice that Jesus is our Passover lamb, who feeds us with his own Body and Blood every time we gather to break the bread and share the cup in his Name.

PALM SUNDAY

April 2, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Matthew 21:1-11

Matthew 26:36-27:66

 

An iconic moment in the concluding stages of the Second World War was the Liberation of Paris on August 26, 1944. One commentator remarks that it was neither the most dramatic nor the most decisive event in the war, but certainly one of the most romantic. The day after the commander of German forces in the city surrendered, General Charles de Gaulle led a victory parade down the Champs Elysee from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where he addressed the wildly cheering crowds. He then went to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was packed for a Solemn High Mass offered in thanksgiving for the city’s liberation.

 

Consciously or not, de Gaulle was re-enacting the ancient ceremony known as the Royal Entry. In the time of Jesus, the ceremony was known as the Adventus or “arrival” of the King or Emperor. 

 

Whenever such a ruler would arrive in one of the cities or towns in his realm, a delegation would go out to welcome him and escort him in through the city gates to the acclamation of the crowds lining the road. Then, in the town square, arena, stadium, or some other public place, the ruler would address the citizens, exchange gifts with local officials, and bestow public favors or privileges on the town or city itself.

 

A well-known variant of this ceremony was the Roman Triumph. After a great wartime victory or successful campaign of military conquest, the conquering emperor or general would return to Rome and stage a festive procession into the city, featuring exotic animals, like elephants and camels from far-away, captives in chains, and wagons loaded with the spoils of war – some of which would pay for the ensuing public entertainments. This procession always included two spotless white oxen; the conquering hero’s first stop was always the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, where the oxen were sacrificed in thanksgiving for victory and military supremacy.

 

This background illuminates Our Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. All four Gospel writers want us to understand that the King is arriving at the gates to take possession of his capital city. He rides on a donkey in fulfillment of Zechariah’s messianic prophecy: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass." 

 

The crowds come out to meet him, spreading in his path their garments and—as Matthew’s Gospel puts it—“branches from the trees.” (John’s Gospel alone specifies that they were palm branches.) Palm leaves were signs of victory and dominion; coins minted in Judea in the early second century show children bearing palms to greet the Emperor Hadrian. 

 

The acclamation hosanna means something like “Lord, save us!”—said not in despair but in joyful anticipation of imminent deliverance. Drawing on verses of Psalm 118, the crowd’s acclamations “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord” clearly identify Jesus as the Messiah, the Lord’s anointed, the true King of Israel arriving to take possession of his capital city and end its long subjugation under enemy occupation. 

 

Upon entering the Holy City, Jesus goes into the Temple. This, again, follows the standard pattern of the Royal Entry: the first thing the Emperor did in a Roman Triumph was to offer sacrifice in the Temple of Jupiter; the first thing de Gaulle did after his victory parade in Paris in August 1944 was to enter Notre Dame for the celebration of Solemn High Mass.

 

None of the four Gospels tell us, however, that Jesus offered any sacrifice in the Temple. The reason for this omission may well be that Jesus knows that he is himself the sacrifice. Here, then, lies the deepest connection between the two liturgies of Palm Sunday, the Liturgy of the Palms and the Liturgy of the Passion. Unlike the Emperor bringing oxen to be sacrificed in a Roman Triumph, Jesus enters Jerusalem not only as the triumphant King of Israel, but also as the spotless victim who, within the week, will shed his own blood upon the altar of the cross.

 

Every year I like to incorporate the hymn “Ride on, ride on, in majesty” into the Palm Sunday procession. For its lyrics make explicit this deep connection between the Lord’s Triumphal Entry and his coming Passion:

 

         Ride on, ride on in majesty,

         The angel armies of the sky

         Look down with sad and wondering eyes

         To see th’approaching sacrifice.

 

The great irony is that many among the same crowds who shout “Hosanna” to welcome the Lord into the Holy City shall, within the week, also be shouting “Crucify Him.” The same Lord who enters in through the city gates shall, within the week, carry his cross outside another set of gates on the other side of the city to the place of execution. Palm Sunday challenges us to open up the gates of our hearts to him—and, having done so, to remain faithful even at the cost of taking up our cross to follow him on the road to Calvary.

 

Today, then, with joy we commemorate the Lord’s Triumphal Entry within the walls of Jerusalem, and with sorrow his Passion and Death outside those same city walls. Still, as we shall see next week, both events are preludes to a greater victory than anyone present can possibly imagine:

 

         Ride on, ride on in majesty,

         In lowly pomp ride on to die;

         Bow thy meek head to mortal pain,

         Then take, O God, thy power and reign.