Palm Sunday
Passion Sunday
The God Who Weeps
To the church in the
diaspora
& to the church of
the unchurched
APRIL
1, 2007: PASSION
SUNDAY
Isaiah 50:4-7 Philippians 2:6-11 Luke 22:14-23:56
Introduction
Palm Sunday 2007
Holy Week which recounts the Lord’s Last Supper with his disciples on Holy Thursday, his crucifixion and death on Good Friday and his rising from the tomb on Easter Sunday begins with Palm Sunday. On the first day of Lent 2007 we received ashes. On this last Sunday of Lent we receive palms at Mass. Any left-over palms are burned to make ashes to be used for next year’s Ash Wednesday opening Lent 2008.
The first Palm Sunday
On Palm Sunday Jesus put an end to his incognito and playing it safe. On Palm Sunday he made a bold and public entry into Jerusalem and began an inevitable collision course with religious and political authorities. Crowds gathered to see this rabbi from Galilee. They shouted and sang “Hosanna to the Son of David.” They threw their garments on the pathway before him to cushion his ride, and they strew his path with palm branches—the symbol of triumph. When the Pharisees saw this, they told Jesus to put a check on his friends’ enthusiasm. But he said to them, “If I silence them, the very stones will cry out in their place” (Lk 19: 28-40).
The Passion of the Christ
Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday
because the gospel for this Sunday as well as for Good Friday is always
announced with the age-old venerable introduction: The Passion (the suffering) of our Lord Jesus Christ (in Latin: Passio Domini nostri Iesu
Christi) (Lk 22:14-23:56; Jn
18:1-19:42). From that traditional
introduction, Mel Gibson got the title for his very lucrative but controversial
movie The Passion of the Christ.
The scriptural Passion is a long account
of the sufferings of the Lord found in all four gospels. It’s a blow by blow description of his
physical sufferings: the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, the
carrying of the cross, the parching of his throat and the piercing of his heart
by a centurion’s spear. It’s also a blow by blow description of the Lord’s
spiritual sufferings: the jeers of human beings who have lost their humanity,
the disappointment of betrayal by one he had chosen, the painful sight of his
mother weeping at his side, and, worst of all, the seeming abandonment by God
his Father.
A god who terrorizes
In
the wake of 9/11 when with one fell swoop Islamist terrorists (in the name of
and with the full blessing of God Allah) brought down two towers and three
thousand innocent human beings in the World Trade Center in New York City, Christian
preacher Jerry Falwell said, “I point my finger in
the face of the pagans and abortionists and feminists and gays and lesbians and
the A.C.L.U. people, and the People for the American Way, and I say `You helped
this happen!’” Jerry’s god is a terrorist who uses Islamist terrorists to make
Americans suffer for their immorality.
The day after
Christmas, 2004, the worst tsunami in recent memory inundated southeastern Asia, ruthlessly sweeping away 140,000
people with one fell swoop. The worst casualties were the living: those mamas
and papas crying for their bambinos and those bambinos crying for their mamas
and papas. Along thousands of miles of costal regions people were crying out in
their own languages and with their own gestures of grief, “God, why are you
making us suffer so much?”
Soon clerics in
synagogues, churches and mosques all over the world were offering age-old and
worn-out explanations of why humans suffer. A Jewish cleric, Rabbi Shlomo Amar (chief rabbi of Israel) said, “This is an expression of God’s
great anger upon the world.” An Islamic cleric said, “The disaster was a
reminder from Allah that he who created the world can also destroy it.” Perhaps
Christian preacher Falwell pointed his finger again
in people’s faces and said, “All you pagans out there helped make this
happen.” Those diverse clerics agreed on
this: god is a terrorist who used a catastrophic tsunami to make people suffer
for their immorality or to simply remind them who’s in charge.
A
God who weeps
Into such a god-awful theological world where god is a
terrorist who make immoral sinners
suffer or who shows who’s boss comes the Christian’s God. He is a God who does
not make anyone suffer. What’s more, He is a father who weeps when any of his
children suffer! Mystic theologian Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin, whose voice echoed through the
deliberation chambers of Vatican II, writes, “It is fully in accord with the
Gospel to regard God as a father weeping across the ages over the sufferings of
his children, constantly trying to heal their wounds”(Divine Milieu).
It
is fully in accord with the Gospel to see God as the Good Samaritan pouring the
oil of comfort into the wounds of his suffering children and inviting us to
join him in alleviating the sufferings of others. Bernie Heeran,
a retired firefighter whose son Charlie was killed on 9/11, had it down right
when he said, “God is no terrorist. God had nothing to do with this. God
was fighting evil that day like he does every day, and He was inviting us to
join Him.”
Good news: God suffers
The
Christian’s God suffers and weeps! That, indeed, is news! I am not sure whether
Yahweh—the God of the Jews—suffers and weeps. I am not sure whether Allah—the
God of the Muslims—suffers and weeps. I am sure, however, that in the
Incarnation Christians have a strange new God who suffers and weeps!
When
God entered into our atmosphere to become one of us, God lost a heat shield against suffering (to use a simile from the
space age). After the Incarnation, God in Jesus is
no longer Scot-free from suffering. God is now one of us and now suffers like
us. St. Paul declares nothing less than
that in the second reading from Philippians:
“Have this mind in you
which was in Christ Jesus:
though he was very God,
he did not cling to his equality
with God
but emptied himself
and took the form of a servant.
He became a human being like the rest of us,
and he became obedient to death,
yes, even to death on a cross
(Phil 2: 5-8).”
That the Christian’s God suffers and weeps
is such strange news that St.
Paul declares it to be
“offensive to the Jews and pure nonsense to the Gentiles” (I Cor 1: 23). But it is also good
news. After eons of gods who were Scot-free of suffering but made everyone else
suffer and weep, a God who now suffers and weeps is not only strange news but
also good news (Gospel).
Better good news
The good news (the Gospel) gets even
better still: the Christian’s God suffers not only because of his children’s
suffering, but now, after the Incarnation, he suffers and weeps also because of
his very own suffering!
Some time ago
the news reported that two spokespersons from the War Department drove up to a
home, knocked at the door and announced to a father that his marine son (a
dearly beloved young man in whom his father was well-pleased) had been killed
in Iraq. Overwhelmed with rage and grief the father tore out of the house and
torched their car. In his heart of hearts he was crying out at God asking, “You
who sit up there Scot-free of all suffering! Where
were you, and what were you doing when my son’s life was cut short in Iraq?”
After the Incarnation in which God begot
an earthly Son, God can now fire back at the grieving father and say, “Just a
minute, dear father! I, too, am a Father. I, too, have a Son. I was doing just
what you are doing now: I was weeping over a Son of my own in whom I was
well-pleased (Mt 17: 5) but whom men nailed to a cross.” Yes, the good news gets better
still: we humans are not alone in suffering: earthly fathers have their
suffering and the Father in heaven also has His.
R.I.P.
Colette Cameron
B. Feb. 19, 1952 -- D.
March 22, 2007
This past Monday, March 26, 2007, we laid to eternal rest a great lady-- Dr. Mary Colette
Cameron-- after a three-year battle with breast cancer. In her profession she
specialized in healing wounds. She was the inspiration and love-force behind a
wound healing center at Columbia-St. Mary’s Hospital which concentrates on
healing stubborn wounds on people’s limbs instead of cutting off them off. Her
obituary reads, “She was adored by her patients and highly respected by her
colleagues for her intelligence, humor and compassion.” She wasn’t simply
“liked” by her patients; she was “adored” by them!
Colette had everything to live for: a
dearly beloved family, a host of true friends and a very promising future in
her profession as a Good Samaritan pouring compassion into people’s stubborn
wounds. But like the marine son in Iraq her life was cut short at an early age of 54 years .
All of us who knew and loved this great
lady are grief stricken, and in grief’s early stage of anger we cry out, “You who sit up there Scot-free of all
suffering! Where were you, and what were you doing when Colette’s life
was cut short on the battlefield of cancer?” And now, after the Incarnation,
the Lord God can answer back at us and say, “Dear grieving friends of Colette,
I was doing just what you are doing now: weeping. For I, too, have someone whom
I love very much--an only-begotten Son. He, too, went about healing people’s
wounds but for only three short years when suddenly his life, too, was cut
short at the very early age of 33. For His life and Colette’s life and all your
lives are not according to your schedule but mine, and for that you will have to forgive Me!”
Conclusion
The God who weeps
The cross and crucifix are our most cherished
religious symbols. The cross is lifted aloft to city skylines by the strong arms of
church steeples. Crosses dotted the
cemetery where we laid Colette’s remains to rest. At Sunday Mass the crucifix held on high
marches through the parish church filled with a sea of the faithful wearied by the crosses of the past week. At the coronation of kings and
burial of popes the crucifix held on high solemnly processes down long
cathedral aisles. The crucifix hangs indiscriminately from the necks of popes
and prostitutes, paupers and princes. And what the cross and the crucifix
announce is the good news (the Christian Gospel) that the Christian’s God is
a Father who doesn’t make
His children suffer and weep
but He Himself suffers and
weeps
not only because of the
sufferings of his children
but also because of a
suffering of his very own,
for He has a beloved Son
who was crucified,
who died and was buried.