Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion
Mark 14:1 - 15:46
(homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, Indiana)
Truth.
Beauty. Goodness.
In theological talk
These three attributes of
God/God-likeness are called the Three Transcendentals
Truth---not
popular or fashionable-but ultimate
Beauty---not
the plastic shallow kind…but deep radiating beauty
Goodness---not
chicken soup for the teen-age soul…but
real love in action
And you can’t have one
without the other two.
Something can’t be true…if it
is un-lovely or unkind.
And something can’t be
beautiful…if it is false or spiteful
And something can’t be good…if
it lies and hides ugliness
What I noticed this week about
the Passion Story according to Mark
Was Truth. Beauty. And Goodness.
That Woman and all that oil
BEAUTY
Her gesture was beautiful
It spoke in the language of
sacrament
Words…always fall so very
short…
Even as we pile on more and
more of them
Actions…beautiful ones…point
way beyond themselves
They reach inside our hearts
That woman’s action was also
True and Good
devoid of ego…just taking what she had and giving it all to Jesus
and the image of her extravagance still speaks
GOODNESS
Simon, the Cyrenian
One line
“They pressed into service a passer-by,
Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander
and Rufus, to carry his cross”
Jesus couldn’t die on the way
to the hill
The spectacle demanded the
crucifixion
Ultimate shame and
degradation
Worse than the scourging and
beating
Simon …from Cyrene
That is in present day Libya
1200 miles away…
Was he there for Business…for
Passover
Either way
Cross-Carrying was not on his
agenda
I can see him…in the
crowd…wondering what is going on
Standing on his tiptoes
And then…he is singled out…conscripted
…saying ‘no’ was not an
option
The Roman soldiers were well armed
Perhaps he was singled out because
he was young and strong
…not just any body would do
for this task
That cross needed to get to
the top of that hill
For Simon it was
Wrong place – Wrong time
Was he thinking:
Why did I leave Cyrene?
Unwanted, unpleasant, unfair
But GOOD…
Simon…the Cyrenian
He has a name
His sons have names
Which means they were known
to the community of Mark’s Gospel
It is like saying “You can go ask them! Alexander and Rufus...they are right over there! Ask them...they'll tell you how Jesus forever
changed their lives!”
The spiritual writer Henri
Nouwen once wrote:
“I used to get upset about all the interruptions to my work
until one day I realized
that the interruptions were my real work.”
and TRUTH
The Roman Centurian
“When the Centurian who stood facing him
saw HOW he breathed his last he said,
‘Truly, this man was the Son of God!’”
Where oh where would such a
confession come from?
A gentile…A Roman soldier
It was his business to
carry out the empire’s justice
His world was so very clear
on this:
On The Cross = GUILTY
It was almost routine
He has none of the background
of the Jewish scriptures
No categories
I mean---there is nothing in
him that would be even slightly welcoming
to a revelation from a guilty crucified nobody.
YET…it happened
The word is HOW
When he saw HOW
he died
There was something in HOW he
died that pushed him into confession
I wonder if
Seeing the HOW
Turned the question around in
his mind
Seeing HOW, the Centurian
said to himself:
“Wait a minute…who is sacrificing what
to whom?”
All this violence
We’ve been putting it on God…or maybe
Gods
But it turns out…I can now see
it was us all along…all of us!”
A complete about-face
Looking up at Jesus
Now he saw…innocence…he saw
TRUTH
And that truth is
That Jesus’ way of dying
seems to suggest that
Real Power is not at all
conventional
And that finding God’s
presence in suffering
is always and ever more a place of revelation
The secret is revealed…
It is the words of the Jewish Mystic Martin Buber
that speak so clearly:
“always and everywhere
in the history of religion
the fact that God is
identified with success
is the greatest obstacle
to a steadfast religious life”
TRUTH, BEAUTY, and GOODNESS
In the story…And at this
table
Where we will again say Amen
Amen to that request:
‘Do this in memory of me’
Do it all
the True
the Beautiful
and the Good
