Palm Sunday cycle C

 Palm Sunday

Luke 22:14 - 23:56)

Once again we read the passion, this year, Luke’s version.  All the versions tell us that Our Lord suffered severely and died in a shameful way.  We always see pictures of Jesus nearly naked except for a loincloth, but we know from historical documents that the Romans usually crucified people with no clothing at all.  This was to humiliate them even further.  We aren’t sure that  capital punishment in the modern age is really a deterrent to crime, but it was in Roman times.  Our scriptures tell us that Jesus was beaten until he couldn’t stand up, nailed to a cross, and suffered death by asphyxiation, since if you are hanging on a cross your respiratory muscles eventually  don’t work anymore.  It was a horrible death, and the question down through the ages is why did Jesus have to die for us?  I think we have to assume that he had to die, because at the last minute Jesus begged his Father to allow him to avoid the cup of suffering, the Father did not grant his prayer. 

John tells us that Jesus is the light of the world, the true light that enlightens everyone,  but that the people loved darkness rather than light.  What is this light?

Jesus revealed the true face of God -- no longer a God who executes, a God who is to be feared, but a God who wants to save every person.  Jesus also shows a new way for humans  to be -- he overturns this world’s values and pronounces that true greatness is service to one’s brothers and sisters.  Jesus proposed a new religion, not built on rituals and obedience to commandments,  but rather, a religion that draws its followers to act out of love -- love of God, love of neighbor, even true love of self.  And Jesus called for a world where the poor, the marginalized, the weak, widows and orphans come first and those who have everything come last. 

Jesus in a sense did not choose to die, but if he avoided death he would have to renounce all those proposals.  He would have had to adopt the mentality of the world and resign himself to the possibility that there would never be a change, that evil would triumph, and that people -- his  brothers and sixers, would be abandoned into the hands of the “prince of this world.  If he had embraced the ways of this world he probably would have been adorned with honors -- after all, more than once the people were set to make him king, and in the shaky peace of the Roman empire, who knows what might have been possible?  But he would have become part of the kingdoms of this world that Satan had promised in the  beginning of his ministry.  

During this holy week, let us ask ourselves if we have accepted the kingdom, his kingdom, his revelation of God, his new religion, his new vision of man and society.  Are we living that way in our own lives?  Or are we like the apostles at the last supper, asking “Is it I Lord, is it I who is standing in the way of your kingdom?”