HUMAN PASSION TO DENY OR TO DEVOTE! A REFLECTION

 

 

I am inspired to pen these words by Bishop Barron’s recent Sermon (Palm Sunday), on his YouTube channel. So, I thought of sharing some of his thoughts and my personal reflections with the readers on my blog.

 

Like Solomon, Jesus mounts a donkey and rides into the city of Jerusalem. The crowd cheer him, ‘Hosanna, Son of David, King of Israel,’ the heir to David’s kingdom. But, when Jesus enters Jerusalem unlike Solomon, Jesus will be crowned with thorns and reign from the Cross, while being abandoned by most of His closed associates. 

According to a 20th century theologian the Gospels are basically Passion narratives with long introductions, says Bishop Barron in a recent homily. Therefore, the Passion narrative is the whole of the Gospel. On a bit different note, away from Jesus’ passion, putting ourselves in the scene, Bishop Barron suggests that we could focus on a series of people around Him, see their different reactions to the Passion events. Can we identify with any of these persons as they react to Jesus’ awaited death? The passion opens up  with the scene where Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with the alabaster jar of perfumed oil, preparing for his predicted death and burial. She breaks open the jar of expensive perfume.  She pours it on Jesus' head. It scandalizes people around.  Judas explodes, “That's very expensive. Couldn't that nard be sold and the money given to the poor?” What a waste of an entire jar of perfume ! Yes, we could question it, “weigh it in the balance ethically”. Jesus, while dismissing his critique, praises her saying, “What she has done will be remembered for all time” and tell her to keep the rest of the oil for his burial. Mary is the first one to react to Jesus nearing his death. His death represents God's extravagant gift to us, that God went all the way down into our dysfunction. She responds with an extravagant gesture, she breaks open that jar of perfume, as though she's breaking open her whole heart.

According to Bishop Barron, the ‘odor of this woman’s perfume waft’, over the whole of the Passion narrative. This extra generous gesture suggests Jesus’ absolutely radical giving away of self – “nothing calculating, careful, or conservative”. Out of the heart’s abundance it flows,– “religion resists the strictures set for it by a fussily moralizing reason.” There are critiques who complain about the Church’s extravagance! Jesus gives himself away totally and lavishly, ‘pouring out’ his whole life for the world. Is our response to Christ a bit constrained, calculative and too careful? Are we ready to break open our hearts, pour ourselves out for the world?

In the course of the passion narratives, the disciples failed and abandoned Jesus. They fled from the soldiers when Jesus was apprehended. Will we too flee from Jesus? Or as Jesus’ disciples are we ready to take up our crosses, knowing that we too will be vindicated? How can I embrace suffering and sacrifice for Christ’s sake and for the needy ? How am I called to take up my cross today? Peter only follows at a distance. At the climactic moment of Jesus passion, while going through an inner struggle, he sweats blood at the Gethsemane. Peter, James and John – the intimate disciples – fall asleep. The disciples fell asleep several times; they could not keep awake. They dozed off into spiritual slumber. They did not accompany Jesus as he prayed. They did something disrespectful to their Guru. They showed their lack of spiritual attention, while a deep spiritual moment was taking place. They seemed to say: “we don't care” – quite indifferent to Jesus’ agony. It symbolizes contemporary secularism in the midst of God’s creative activity constantly happening around – God's love being poured out through the sacraments,  preaching of the Word of God and through social upliftment through acts of mercy.

We too who are intimate friends of Jesus,  often fall asleep into indifference. As Church members, what are we doing as the Lord is acting in the world? Snoozing away? Recall Prophet Eli  and Samuel ‘inside’ the temple, sleeping away! As Religious, we withdraw, we deliberately decide to fall asleep within the Church’s hierarchy, as the world’s evil and cruelty crucify Christ in the innocent people.

Again, we have a young man, running away ‘naked’ into the ‘night’ with the rest of the disciples from the Gethsemane, leaving his ‘tunic’ behind. This unexpected peculiar detail speaks of leaving our baptismal white garment that symbolizes our devotion to Christ. Like the Apostles we too have put on Christ. But at the moment of truth, when Christian faith demands our courageous witness, when things are “getting dangerous and dicey” because we are Christians, are we counting the cost? “Do we stand our ground or do we run off into the night leaving behind our baptismal identity?” Do we, like that young man, abandon our baptismal identity, run away from the struggle?

What's our attitude at those moments of truth?

The high priest, after hearing various witnesses, puts Jesus on trial at the Sanhedrin, and he asks, "Are you the son of God?” Jesus shockingly cites from  Daniel, chapter seven, saying that he sees the ancient days when one like the son of man coming on the clouds, someone who shares in the authority of God – a messianic prediction.  He affirms, "Yes, I am” – not mere a teacher, or a political leader, or just the Messiah in the conventional sense, but God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Jesus is not a distant historical figure, or a literary device, or an inspiring spiritual teacher that many modern men hold him to be, says Bishop Barron.  But he is God – the central claim of the Church. To fall short of this central faith identity, is effectively to be against Him. How often in our spiritual lives we make vow not to betray Jesus, yet like the apostles we too  deny Jesus’ true identity.

 Then we have the  “scapegoating mob” breaking out. The crowds who saw Jesus’ miracles and heard his words, abandoned Jesus. They asked for a murderous brigand to be released instead of Jesus. While  warming by the fire at the courtyard of the high priest's house, someone identifies Peter to be with Jesus. He retorts back thrice, “I don't even know Him." He denies knowing Jesus. He lies, “I do not know that man”. How often we as fellow sinners  who have pledged our complete loyalty to Him, deny as Peter the first pope did, when things get a little ‘dicey and difficult’!

Next, the Roman soldiers –if the Shroud of Turin is right – put a capped crown of thorns (not ringlet) placed upon the whole top of His head,  put the reed in His hand like a mock scepter. They put on him a purple cloth, laughing over his kingship. They beat Him and spit upon Him. Is not a lot of that going on today? There is so much of the mockery of Jesus and  of religion, through politics and religious fanaticism! And that is a kind of secularism – falling asleep, and indifferences. Have we mocked Jesus like these Roman soldiers with words, by saying/writing disrespectful things, or with our lives, or in associating with the crowd who jeered at Him?

Jesus cries out from the Cross “My God, my God, why have you abandoned (forsaken) me?” When Jesus breathed his last, women too were at a distance from the Cross. None of the remaining eleven apostles approached Pilate to ask for the body. Only Joseph of Arimathea had the courage to do so. Out of the various figures in the Passion narrative, who do we identify with?

Lastly, according to the scholars, the messianic secret is revealed at the foot of the cross after Jesus died.  Till then Jesus always told his closed followers or those whom he healed,  not to tell anyone about his Messianic identity. He quieted them down, muzzled them off. In fact, people were puzzled then, as we are now. Why would Jesus be so reticent? But as Jesus bowed in death, he no longer could silence anyone, reasons Bishop Barron. In fact, the Roman Centurion publicly reveals the Messianic secrecy, "Truly, this man was the son of God." Only the Gentile Centurian confessed publicly his faith in Jesus as the Son of God.

In short, these are signs of the vindication of Jesus: “Abandoned by his disciples, betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, accused of blasphemy by the priests, rejected in favor of a murderer by the crowd, mocked by the Sanhedrin and by Roman troops and all who came to the cross, surrounded by darkness, and seemingly forsaken by his God, in this one dramatic moment Jesus is fully vindicated. God has answered Jesus’ cry by replacing the Temple as the locus of worship and by offering in its place His own Son who will be confessed by Gentile and Jew alike” (Raymond Brown, Christ in the Gospels…, 163). 

To conclude, Bishop Barron says, the Roman centurion who put Him to death, is the proto evangelist, confirming Jesus’ as the Son of God in place of the Roman Emperor, Caesar, who was the “Huios tou Theou”(son of the God) by tradition. Can we too say those same words? And say loud and clear, with that same confidence?