Matthew 21:1-11 | Philippians 2:6-11 | Matthew 26:14—27:66

Dearly Beloved, since the beginning of Lent until now, we have prepared our hearts by penance and charitable works.  Today we gather together to herald with the whole church the beginning of the celebration of the Lord’s Pascal mystery, that is to say, of his passion and his resurrection, for it was to accomplish this mystery that he entered his own city of Jerusalem.  Therefore, with all faith and devotion, let us commemorate the Lord’s entry into his Holy City for our salvation, following in his footsteps so that, being made by his grace partakers of the cross, we may have a share also in the resurrection and the life.  Amen. 

This celebration day marks the beginning of the most important liturgical week in the church year.  It’s the time we review, look at as deeply as possible, the fullness of the mystery of God in man made manifest in Jesus.  You hear me talking all the time about this union that we are destined to have with God, our humanity and divinity made for each other.  They’re not at odds with each other.  If there’s anything I could free you with, at least something I got stuck with in my own background of training in my faith, it was that God looked down on my humanity instead of seeing it as I really do believe he now sees it.  I see it as that thing that is the greatest gift I have, that unique thing that I am, that you are, that we need to be in order to be the vehicle of making the abundance of God clear to people.  When we love like he loves, that’s when we are at our peak, at our best, and so this Sunday that goes through the passion and death of Jesus has so many beautiful images in it about this mystery of divinity and humanity, and I want to focus on just a few.

Number one, I love the way, in the Book of Isaiah, that we hear this whole notion of God is the God who comes into our life, that wants to open the ears of those who can’t hear, to make people who didn’t know exactly where to go where their help is, because this God comes to the weary.  It’s like, “Listen to him, the God that comes to save.  He’s there.  He’s the one you trust in.  He’s the one you believe in.  He’s your help,” that wonderful name, Jesus, God Saves, God Heals, God Loves.  So the first reading sets on the path of recognition of a mystery that we must believe in.  We must have it somehow in our DNA that we fall back on it when we fall into all the traps that we have in our human nature of regression and keeping things unconscious when they need to become conscious.  And then Paul in the next reading, he’s so filled with an awareness of this wonderful thing that God has brought into the world through this man Jesus, and he’s trying to say something.  “Remember, remember,” he said, “That he looks just like us.  Do you see?  He’s God, and he looks like us.  That means God looks like us.  It means that unity that we’ve always felt was strained by our humanity is not as far apart as we think.”  Think about his life.  Think about how he rejected this God/man, and now he finds him as the source of life.  He went through a transformation that he longs for people to go through, and what he wants everyone to be so aware of is that name again, that name Jesus.  He saves us, not only his name but his life.  He was like us.  He struggled like us.  He had weaknesses like us, yet he was still divine.

And one of the things that I want to focus on most primarily from this gospel of Matthew — you’ll notice I took a little leeway in picking different parts — but thing the that I want you to focus with me on is the night — the night before this nightmare started for Jesus.  He had just spent time with his disciples, giving them the greatest gift that I believe he’s ever given to any believing community, his presence, his body, his likeness in us, his spirit in us, his blood.  He’s saying, “I want you to eat my body, drink my blood, because you have to do something in this world that is so hard for human beings to do, to surrender to things that you can’t accept and to believe in things you can’t understand.  And you can’t do that on your own.  I know what humanity is like,” Jesus is saying to us over and over again.  “I am the Son of Man.”  That phrase that he uses over and over again is so interesting.  It means human being.  Did you know that Jesus is made reference to in the gospels, the synoptics and all, all the gospels 83 times?  Son of Man, Son of Man, Son of Man — why would he stress so much his humanity unless he was trying to say, “Don’t you see?  A miracle is happening to me.  I am surrendering to a world that I didn’t necessarily choose, certainly one that I’m not necessarily pleased with every part of it, but I surrendered.  I surrendered.  I gave in.  I give in.”  And look what it did.  Look at the explosion that you see in the gospel, that explosion.  There were earthquakes and thunder and a curtain that separated divinity from humanity in the temple ripped apart.  It’s explosive what happens when someone surrenders.  

So I love looking at the garden, because it’s so much about Jesus’ humanity.  He knows what’s happening.  It’s too late.  He knows what’s happening.  He knows what’s coming.  So what does he do?  He turns to God, and he said, “Father, I need to talk to you one more time.  Please, listen to me.”  But he didn’t do it alone.  So he took Peter, James and John.  You remember they were the three that he took on the second Sunday of Lent up on a mountain to say, “You are going to see something that affirms your faith that Jesus is not just another prophet.”  Did it last?  Did it penetrate?  Did they have the capacity to understand what it meant, and did they believe in it completely?  No, but there they were.  Jesus had them there, because he thought, “These are the ones who will understand.  These are the ones that will be there with me.”  It shows Jesus’ humanity of being in need of others when he’s facing his ultimate thing.  He’s not going to do it alone.  He wants his three best friends with him.  It makes so much human sense to me.  And then what happens?  He has this dialogue with him, and he goes into deep prayer each time.  And in this gospel of Matthew, we see it three times when he has these words that he said.  It’s not like he’s screaming at his Father as a human being saying, “I don’t want to do this.  I don’t want to do this.  I can’t do this.  Please, please, I say no.  I say no.  I say no.”  He doesn’t.  He says it so gently and so interestingly.  “Father, if there’s any other way — I know this is what you planned.  I know I’m going to surrender to whatever you want, but is there any way we could change it?  You could change it for me.  Postpone it.  Do something.”  Not now, that’s all that I hear in his humanity crying out, and immediately he said, “I’m there for you though, God.  I’m not going to not do what you ask, but is there any way it could not be this?”  I love that.  I used to think he was like, “Bring it on.  I know in three days I’m going to rise, and it’s all going to be great.”  He wasn’t super-human.  He was fully human, and he did that three times.  

In other gospels, it’s more detailed about the panic and the stress he was under.  One of the synoptic makes it clear he was sweating.  He was sweating blood, and angels came to comfort him.  His disciples weren’t there, but we trust in our friends.  We trust in the people around us, but do we trust enough in those other spiritual beings that are so powerful that are there when we have to face something that we can’t stand the thought of it happening to ourselves or someone else?  And maybe there isn’t any person there.  People are not always good at comforting people who are going through some horrible thing.  They often use phrases like, “Oh, it’s all going to better.  Don’t worry.  You’ll adjust later,” trying to get us out of the pain.  His disciples weren’t there to get Jesus out of his pain, but angels came and administered to him.  

The other thing I love about the whole notion of this incredible, incredible feast is the way in which it seems so clearly to me to underscore the fact that there is this ability humans have to be so far beyond themselves, and what it takes is something I keep going back to you and saying over and over again.  It’s an evolutionary process.  It’s a growth in consciousness.  It’s a beginning to see the reality, see with our eyes, hear what’s true with our ears.  That’s the thing that this gift of faith is showing up in this passion account.  It’s like he knew enough truth, but he still resisted the way it had to unfold, and to me, that endears Jesus to me so much.  And so it also endears me to one other very important aspect, and that’s me, my humanity, my weakness. 

I want to go back to one other image that’s in the scriptures, and it’s in today, and that’s the image of Barabbas.  Jesus loved that image, Son of Man, Son of Man, Son of Man.  “I’m a human being.”  And the word Barabbas is interesting, because it basically means Son of God, bar Abbas.  So I want you to look at the crowd for a moment, and think about the world and the way — the level of consciousness maybe in the world.  But it’s like the crowd represents this sort of mob mentality where everybody is, and it’s not always very reflective.  It just picks up whatever the person next to them is saying.  They start screaming the same thing, that unconscious part of us that’s so danger, but what I love about this image is the unconscious, even though they don’t know it, have deep within them a seed, a light, a truth, and they all scream out, which is so crazy when you think about it.  They’re all screaming out, when they say, “Do you want to kill the Son of God, the one who claims to be the Messiah?”  And they’re saying, “Yes, yes.  Release the Son of God.  Release the Son of God.  Release the Son of God.  Barabbas, Barabbas, Barabbas.”  Amazing. 

 There’s so much in this set of readings to give us hope, so much for us to now, in these days of quiet and stillness, to ponder, to wonder about in our sheltered-in-place places, but do it.  Open your heart to it.  Feel it.  See it.  It’s as real as every single thing you’re dealing with every single day of your life.  No, we’re not hanging on a cross every 20 minutes or so, but boy, there’s enough out there to irritate us and make us crazy and give us a loss of peace.  And each one of those is a time when we’re asked to do what Jesus did.  “If this is the way it has to be — I wish it wasn’t, but I accept it.”