The Passion: Witness at a Public Execution

The internet has given us chilling reminders how brutal and gruesome – how repelling and seducing -- are public executions. Seen on the grainy spate of videos going around cyberspace, the victims are routinely hooded, kneeling, pleading, shaking. It is our worst nightmare. How dramatic and chilling is this ultimate punishment handed out without trial to the innocent and after exhausting court proceedings and appeals for the guilty.

Last year curiosity overcame me and I logged on to a website to witness the end of Saddam Hussein. The scene was chaotic. There was shouting, taunting, politicking, voyeurism, and a publicly defiant and almost brave Sadaam facing his ultimate end – it was by many accounts the worst outcome the authorities could have hoped for. Yet the end result of any execution is the same: the person who is put to death can never again on this life breathe, eat, sleep, read, laugh, cry, torture, humiliate, kill or be killed. Whether guilty of the crime or innocent of all charges, the executed ultimately becomes a victim – even if only for a passing moment and even if in the eyes of a loyal few. They die as a victim of their own evil actions, a victim of an unjust and often racist justice system, a victim of mistaken identity, a victim of societies and grieving families thinking that the death of one human being can somehow bring about closure at the loss of another life. They become a victim to the false notion that an eye for an eye justice has any place in a Christian’s response to a crime.

Some of Christianity’s harshest critics have suggested that what is wrong with this faith is that it teaches happy people to be unhappy so that it can minister to their unhappiness. (Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing pg. 141) Christianity, they say, focuses too much on suffering, death and the next life, effectively destroying our capacity to enjoy this one. If those critics are right, and I do not believe they are, they could have a field day on Palm Sunday as we read the Passion Gospel.

Passion, we are reminded each year, is the word the church uses to describe Jesus’ suffering. What we do liturgically on this day is to reenact and then become witnesses to the public execution of the one we call our Lord, our Savior, God’s only son, the Word, the Lamb of God, the Good Shepherd. We have an impatient and pliable crowd, accusations of a purported crime, a trial, humiliation, last words, taunting by onlookers, and then the loneliness, agony and finality of dying.

History is filled with accusations about who is to blame for the death of Jesus. The Jewish people have long been blamed for killing Christ, a distortion that has led to centuries of anti-Semitism, bigotry, and the holocaust of the 20th century. The gospels paint a layered and mixed picture. Corrupt religious authorities collude with the Roman occupiers to deal quickly with a Galilean troublemaker who threatens the peace of Passover in Jerusalem. Crucifixions, a particularly Roman not Jewish form of death sentence, were meant to make a statement for all to see: we are in charge and you are not. Stay in line, pay your taxes, do not upset the status quo of power. In the gospels the followers of Jesus are far from firm. Judas crosses over to the other side and betrays the one he once followed. It is a muddied picture to say the least.

In the passion gospel, the crowd is given a central role to play. We are the ones who; given a chance to call for Jesus’ release, call for the freedom of Barabbas instead. We are the ones who call for his crucifixion.

When we leave this service today with blessed palms in our hands or tucked in our purses, as we enter this most Holiest of Weeks, we should allow the role of the crowd to sink in. As we think about the trials and sufferings of today – throughout the world and in our lives -- what does it mean to be one of the crowd? Have we ever assumed someone is guilty because everyone around us has already decided the outcome? I know I have, regrettably. How easy is it to collude with evil – even indirectly?

The suffering that Jesus endured, his pain, his abandonment, is a the terror shared by many to this day as they live through their worst nightmares: car bombs, abductions, random shootings, refugees fleeing for their lives, prisoners locked away without access to a impartial trial, spouses abused and afraid to leave. The depth of the cross is that though it may have appeared to be the case to all who watched, as Jesus suffered and later died, he was never abandoned by God.

In our collect this morning we prayed: Almighty and ever living God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.

For as much as we live and long for Easter Sunday, we can not avoid the implications of the cross. The point of reliving the passion is not, as the critics charge, to teach happy people to be unhappy so that we can minister to their unhappiness. This is what our collect of the day is pointing us to: As Christ has walked his path of suffering; he gave us an example of how to live through the trials, rejection, pain, loss, and death that comes with this life. Jesus said: Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.

Those who are able to make it through their worst nightmares do so by returning to the beliefs that have shaped their lives all along. For Jesus his life was about faithfulness to God, it was about his love and acceptance of all whom he met along the way, it was about the power of forgiveness and reconciliation to transform the world.