Cycle A | Holy Week | Palm Sunday
REFLECTION
– By Fr Ugo Ikwuka
Archway, London
With the very lengthy passion narrative preceded by the blessing of palms and procession, one may be tempted to suspend preaching on Palm Sunday. However, it is fitting to say something by way of introducing the Paschal Mystery which we celebrate beginning with the events of this Palm Sunday. It includes the suffering, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus into glory and the sending of the Spirit on the disciples to continue the work he began.
For liturgical and catechetical expediency, the Paschal Mystery is spread over a period of seven weeks but it should also be seen as an indivisible single experience. Partly due to traditional and commercial influences, we tend to make more of Christmas than Easter. But, in terms of our faith, Christmas only has meaning in the context of what happened in Holy Week and Easter. The feast of Christmas did not even exist for the first two centuries of the church’s life, but Christianity is inconceivable without Easter.
The Gospels report that Jesus approached the Holy City of Jerusalem with carnival from the east (Bethphage). That is very significant. In one of the most devastating passages of the Old Testament, the prophet Ezekiel (10: 18 – 23) had described in haunting details how the glory (shekina) of the Lord departed from the Temple through the east gate escorted by the cherubim because of pervasive corruption therein. It was the ultimate calamity. However, Ezekiel (43) also foresaw the spectacular return of the Lord from the same east gate by which He had left and the subsequent restoration of the corrupted Temple.
As Jesus entered the Holy City and the Temple, he pronounced judgment upon it and used a whip to drive out those who had turned the House of God into a shopping mall. The discerning mind must therefore be stunned at the precision with which Jesus and the events of Palm Sunday are the fulfilment of these prophecies of old. Jesus would later dare the Jews to destroy the Temple and he would rebuild it in three days. When they eventually destroyed his body in death and he rose to life in three days, he proved that the ultimate Temple of the Lord is his body.
It is equally instructive that Jesus focused on this pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover immediately after Peter’s confession of faith in Caesarea Philippi where he correctly answered that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. The feast of Passover is the memorial of Israel’s liberation from Egypt and the sign of its hope of definitive liberation. In Egypt, the blood of the Passover lamb sprinkled on the doorposts secured the homes of the people of Israel as the angel of death passed over and slew the firstborn of the Egyptians.
Jesus knew that what awaited him in Jerusalem was a new Passover and that he would take the place of the sacrificial lambs by offering himself on the cross thereby opening the door to a new path of liberation and fellowship with the living God. Thus, we join the crowd of disciples in this procession, in joyful witness to Jesus the Messiah and Liberator. Discipleship entails both walking literally behind the Master in his sojourns but even more by living by his ways such as by the self-emptying of Jesus which is the key to unravelling the events of this Week.
This is referenced in today’s Second Reading from Paul’s Letter to Philippians. “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death on a cross”. This expresses the mindset of Jesus which Paul urges us to also have if we want to identify fully with him as disciples.
In spite of sharing the same nature as God, Jesus did not insist on his status. He first of all took on our human nature in its fullest sense, being like us in all things but sin. But, even more, he descended to the very rock bottom of human destitution – the servant, the slave. That was still not the end. He let go of all human dignity, all human rights, let go of life itself to die, not any “respectable” form of death, but the death of a convicted criminal in shame and nakedness and total abandonment.
This is the vision statement for the Christian. Yet, our instinctive self-preservation and the sensitivities we show over the slightest hurt or humiliation demonstrate just how far we are from having the “mind of Jesus.” Jesus emptied himself of all that we stuff ourselves with in the bid to dignify ourselves before the world; ego, anger, fear, anxiety, self-love. When he did, he became filled instead with the Spirit of God; the spirit he released (gave up) at his death.
His followers will soon become filled with that Spirit which will empower them such that they, who like Jesus in the garden were filled with fear, will become filled with a fearless courage and joy to witness to him to the ends of the earth.
On the face of it, Jesus suffered and died for political reasons; he had become the object of hate for people who saw him as a threat to their self-serving political and religious agenda. He therefore had to be eliminated by hook or crook. However, his radical behaviour was the result of his unconditional love for all, including his enemies. In doing so, he expresses his Father’s will that all come to be aware of God’s unconditional love for them.
As we participate in the liturgy of Holy Week, let us solemnly observe Jesus our Saviour and reflect on the values he championed in thoughts, words and actions so that we may walk in his footsteps in the circumstances of our own lives. Let us not simply focus sentimentally on his sufferings as though they are ends in themselves for they only have meaning because they lead to new life and new joy – the resurrection. When we identify with the mystery of his suffering, death and resurrection, we ourselves experience a great liberation, a pass over from the enslavement of sin and selfishness to the new life of joy and freedom.
