“Jesus the King of Pain”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Palm Sunday, April 13, 2024
Reading: Matthew 21:1-11
I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t have live animals here every week. Who’s for dragons and unicorns?!
Palm Sunday has a dual character to it. On the one hand, it’s a celebration—one donkey isn’t enough, let’s get a whole zoo in. Jesus rides into the city of David to claim his crown, and we all rise up to acclaim him. No king ever rode to a more glorious throne. In one gospel’s telling of the story, religious leaders shush the crowds. Quiet, you don’t want to freak out the Romans, do you? Jesus defends the revelers: if they stay silent, the very stones will have to cry out. In other tellings, children lead the cheers. In the Christian community we listen especially carefully to the very young and the very old—they see things the rest of us do not.
For contrast, consider other triumphal entries. Many remember British royal approaches to Westminster for weddings or funerals—white horses, velvet lined carriages, fabulous people, the stuff of tabloids. Jesus bumps into Jerusalem on a donkey acclaimed by a rabble of children. When German Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898 wanted to show the world he’d arrived as a real emperor, he arranged a glorious ride into Jerusalem: white charger, army bristling, up to the grand Lutheran church he’d built that still stands today. A little different than Jesus’ humble ride on a draft animal, feet grazing the ground. Some scholars posit that as Jesus rides into the city of David from one direction, Pontius Pilate rides in from another—two different visions of power, one a cross, the other a Roman lust for domination.
But there’s another mood in the church on Palm Sunday. This is also the beginning of holy week. Jesus offers his Last Supper and is turned over to sinners. And from there, one commentator says, the story has only passive verbs. Jesus doesn’t act, he is acted upon: Arrested, tried, tortured, sentenced, nailed, buried. In his life so far, Jesus has been active: healing and teaching and repairing. This week he is passive—others do to him. That’s why we call it his passion. Jesus’ “triumphal” entry ends with his self-emptying, death, and descent into hell.
And somehow, we Christians believe, this is all good news. We celebrate it. Even though we’ll never get our head around it.
Jesus is betrayed by a close friend. He is abandoned by all the rest. Judas betrays his master with a kiss. A sign of affection turned into a signal for death. The kiss makes sense. It’s dark, these armed thugs don’t know which Jew is which in the daytime, let alone at night. Jesus has just been praying in the Garden of Gethsemani for strength in his coming trial. His three closest disciples keep falling asleep while he sweats blood.
Anyone ever felt betrayal? Abandonment? Who am I kidding, all of you have. What it means to be human is that we fail one another. We’re frail creatures, even at our best. This week is humanity at its worst. Friends, I want you to know that whenever you feel most abandoned, plotted against, framed—there is another right there with you, face down in the dirt beside you. When you are crushed, you are not alone.
Remember Jesus himself had chosen Judas to be one of his twelve. Judas heard him up close and personal for three years. And Judas gives him up for money. Sobering thought. No matter how close we think we are to Jesus, we might not be on his team at all. I guess the reverse must be true too—no matter how far we feel from Jesus, we might be on his team after all.
Speculation abounds why Judas would turn his rabbi over. Maybe he was impatient that Jesus wasn’t bringing armed rebellion against Rome, so he took matters into his own hands. Lit the match. Maybe, like the Grinch, his heart was two sizes too small. On the hopeful side, I like the tradition that asks what Jesus is up to in hell on Holy Saturday: he’s searching everywhere for his friend Judas.
There are good questions to be asked about Judas. One is this: Did he take the first Lord’s Supper before going out to betray? The different gospels seem to disagree about it. The problem is not Judas’ fidelity, we know that’s no good, like ours is no good. The problem is God’s power—taking the eucharist from the Lord’s own hand should improve us, right? So, some suggest that Judas left the table before the meal.
When I was in Germany recently, I saw this image from Lucas Cranach, who makes clear his opinion: yep, Judas took the bread and wine, Jesus is there about force feeding it into his mouth. The first supper didn’t work. Will it work for us? Still TBD. It didn’t work on any of the other eleven, either. Like Judas, we all dine and dash.
But first! A ruckus. A flash of steel, a scream, blood. Maybe this is it, the spark of revolution. A disciple cuts off an ear. Now, this is odd, how do you swing a sword and only get an ear? Some artists make it explicit—there’s Peter about sawing the poor guy’s ear off. Are we such bad freedom fighters that a sword at close range yields such a poor result? Apparently so. In another gospel we get the slave’s name, Malchus, and Jesus heals him. This isn’t his way, swords and slashing. His way is patiently accepting suffering and death, not inflicting them. And pausing in the middle of saving everything to heal a slave, to give us ears. If that’s hard to remember or understand, take comfort—his twelve hand-picked disciples don’t get either, after all that personal time with him. Someone has even stored a cache of weapons for just this moment. Jesus is king of pain. Not the inflictor of pain.
Then we get one of his last bits of his teaching, where he denounces violence for three reasons.
Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?
With swords, you might think you’re inflicting injury on your enemy, but you’re only really inflicting it on yourself. If Jesus wanted armed defense, God would send it. But he does not. Remember back in his temptation where the devil suggested he throw himself off the temple? Angels would come and rescue him. No, that’s not his way. He is in danger of death like the rest of us. And the scriptures must be fulfilled: with betrayal, suffering, and death.
We all want leaders who protect us and punish our enemies, that’s what those on the campaign trail right now promise to do better than their rivals. But Jesus just surrenders himself and us. Some king.
Some stories in the Bible tell us what to do with ourselves or what to believe. Some, we preachers can squeeze em and find a directive of some sort. This story? Not so much. I wrote part of this sermon early in the week and then got stuck. Because ... what’s the good news here? One of our scripture readers warned me after preparing to read—not sure how you’ll get a word out of this one. Who chooses these texts anyway? Dayle?!
This series is called The Stuff in the Middle, challenged by Jewish friends to look at the saving significance of Jesus’ life. It follows on our work on our pillars as a church from last fall—how do we live out the basics of our church’s mission? Well, by being like Jesus, following him, becoming more like him. The problem is good stories are not object lessons. They don’t easily yield morals or points, and we distort them if we try and make them cough up such secrets. What are we supposed to say about this one? Don’t betray your friends to the authorities with a kiss?!
But the themes here are close to the bone of our lives. Loyalty. Betrayal. Loss. The crumbling of everything once hoped for. I once thought our most important relationship in life was with a spouse. I still think that to a degree, but nowadays I wonder more whether our friendships aren’t more important still. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. In the ancient world, philosophers spoke of friendship as a moral test. Do your friends make you better, more virtuous, brave, wise, moderate, just? If so, they’re keepers. I laugh now when I remember the melodramatic pain of old romantic relationships lost. But friendships lost—those haunt me. I don’t just miss lost friends, I worry whether I’m not actually a good friend to have. If there’s a takeaway from this sermon it’s this: Be a good friend. It’ll save your life.
In Jesus’ day, it’d have been a particular humiliation for a rabbi to be abandoned by his disciples, especially when he’s in trouble. To have them all up and flee looks like it calls his whole teaching, his whole life, into question. “All of his disciples deserted him and fled”—not sure there’s a sadder verse in the whole Bible. We so emphasize Jesus’ physical suffering on the cross, the pain of the nails, all the blood. I wonder if we under emphasize the pain of abandonment, betrayal, and flight. ‘I spent every waking moment with these guys for years and just a hint of trouble comes and they’re like “Jesus who?”’ If you’ve ever been stung by abandonment of those closest to you, please know, Jesus has too. He’s not only a friend who sticks by; he’ll repair all the friendships we’ve lost. How do I know that? Because he repairs everything eventually. No idea how. But he will. You watch.
I was talking with one of you about Martin Scorsese’s new series Saints, and you asked, why do the saints all come to bad ends? Why doesn’t God protect them? The answer is always, I don’t know. But here’s a try.
God could have not created anything. Just been happy in his eternal triune life, Father Son and Spirit. But no, God is relationship, so God makes more relationships.
Those relationships go badly with creatures. We humans are not God: we fight, steal, squabble. God tries wiping us out and starting over with “better” people. Doesn’t work. We human beings don’t ever get any better than we were in Noah’s day, and if we were, we are proud of being better, which makes us worse.
So, God chooses one people, his favourite, to model how to be human. Israel. The rest of us gang up and mistreat that people too.
So, what does God do? Violently protect his own? Wipe out his enemies for good? No God becomes human. Dangerous thing, we’re so vulnerable. God becomes a Jew—one of his own people, mistreated for all time. God becomes a convict. A victim of mob violence. One betrayed by friends he’d spent every moment with. God becomes alone. Suffers. And dies.
So, let’s celebrate today with palms and live animals and children’s cries. Let’s also notice: God’s life among us ends in death... I wonder how his death will end.