How quickly they all turned on Jesus. All the time that they spent with Jesus as they walked through Galilee along the shores of the sea going from town to town now seems a distant past. Jesus cured many people, instructed them using remarkable and beautiful images of God as their father, and offered them the hope and the promise of eternal life. Now, as the large crowd amassed at Gethsemane where Jesus was praying, threatening them with clubs and swords, they fled, taking off across the valley into the back streets of Jerusalem. Judas, called Iscariot, was the one who led the crowd there, betraying the safe place where Jesus went to pray during their visits to Jerusalem. One of the disciples drew his sword and struck one of the servants of the High Priest and severed his ear, but Jesus rebuked him for his show of force. The rest, fled. Peter hangs back and will follow the events at a distance, though even he, when discovered, denies three times that he even knows who Jesus is much less that he actually was one of Jesus’ disciples.
So goes the events of the final moments of Jesus’ life. Everyone abandons him, even those closest to him.
Each of us as we hear in the proclamation of Matthew’s Passion this Sunday, will be prompted to shout the lines of the crowd gathered in the courtyard of Pilate’s headquarters in Jerusalem: “Let him be crucified!”
While the ritual of Palm Sunday is triumphant – red vestments, procession, incense, chanting of Hosanna! – the focal point of the Liturgy of the Word is not triumphant. Rather, it draws us into the ultimate rejection of Jesus. He is abandoned by everyone, only a few women stand at a distance bearing witness to his crucifixion and burial.
While is suspect that many of us cringe at shouting “Let him be crucified!” we often live our lives in a way that demands his Crucifixion.
There are two ways to consider this reality. First is indeed a fundamental tenet of our faith that our sins, our rejection of the promise of salvation that leads to the necessity of the death of Jesus on the Cross. His Death is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. As it is our sins that he bore on the Cross, then indeed it is our sins – both corporate (as persons in a failed community) and individual – that cause us to cry out “Let him be crucified!”
At the same time, and in a more specific and particular way, it is the daily rejection of faith, the daily rejection of our neighbor, our daily failure to love, our daily failure in compassion, our daily failure in charity, that becomes a conscious and willful rejection of Jesus. It is then when we most clearly cry out with our lives: “Let him be crucified!”
If we made this a conscious reality in our lives – if we could authentically bring to mind this fundamental truth in our lives – it would, or at least should have a significant impact on how we interacted with others in our lives. It would shape our attitudes, our actions, our thoughts.
As we enter into the holiest week of the year, and we reflect on the Passion of Jesus Christ, let us weigh carefully and prayerfully the core of our experiences of faith and assess how often throughout the day we run away and hide, betray, and deny Jesus in our lives. Each one of those moments is a moment when we join the crowd and exclaim: “Let him be crucified!”
April 16 – It takes the eyes of faith to witness to the Resurrection
On Sunday morning, we find Mary Magdalene and the disciples in a difficult situation. Everything that they have sacrificed, worked for and hoped for over the past several months and years of their lives came crashing down on Friday afternoon. Jesus is dead. He was arrested and crucified by the Romans in collusion with the Jewish authorities.
They are desperate and afraid. It was one of their numbers, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, and now it appears that he has hanged himself in the turmoil. Peter feels the guilt and pain of having denied Jesus three times, and now he must face the others, although all of them had fled and went into hiding.
Having suffered the trauma of the Death of Jesus just days ago, they live in the fear of the moment and not in the hope of what is to come.
When Mary comes to the tomb only to find the stone rolled away and the body of Jesus gone that he was raised from the dead never crossed her mind. So overcome was she with fear that she did all that she could do to get back to the disciples and inform them of the horrible thing that she discovered. It was bad enough that they executed Jesus on such trumped up charges and right at Passover, did they have to add even further insult by stealing and desecrating his body?
Peter and the beloved disciple took off for the tomb immediately to investigate the scene themselves. We are unsure, as they must have been, as to what they would do about the situation anyway. Afraid for their own lives, they had remained hidden in the upper room since Jesus was arrested. We know that they will remain there for another 50 days before they emerge under the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Peter checked out the scene and remained confused, probably even angry. The other disciple entered the tomb and, when he saw the burial cloths on the ground he “saw and believed”. Peter and Mary Magdalene did not yet imagine what had happened. Often in his ministry Jesus instructed them that the Son of Man would suffer much, that he would be killed, but also that he would rise from the dead. Nonetheless, the evangelist notes: “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
Overwhelmed by and enveloped by the distress of the darkness of death in the moment, the disciples did not move to an understanding of resurrection as the present reality. As at times all of us feel overwhelmed by the presence of death and despair around us. It can be easier to wallow in the pain of the moment, to shake our angry fists at the horror and tragedy of suffering and death, than it does to enter into the mystery of eternal life.
The disciples did not experience what they expected when they went to Jerusalem. They were forced to retreat into themselves and hide from the world. Since Jesus had been betrayed by one of them, could they really trust the each other not to do the same to the rest of them? How much fear and suspicion must there have been among the disciples during that Passover weekend?
The disciples did not experience what they expected when they went to Jesus’s tomb. They saw emptiness and could not imagine that emptiness means fulfillment, completion, eternal life. Jesus’ words, his promise, the mighty acts he performed, did not resonate with them there.
It is painful at times for all of us to move beyond death, despair and hopelessness whether intellectually, emotionally or spiritually. Instead, challenged by the promise of Jesus, we pray to have the full faith and confidence of the beloved disciple who “saw and believed.”
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.