Palm Sunday – A
Transcribed from a sermon given
3/31/96
At St. Alban’s Brentwood
By Rev. Valerie A Hart
This service on Palm/Passion Sunday is
such an emotional roller coaster. We begin in celebration. Rejoicing, as did
the people of Jerusalem with the arrival of Jesus. We say and sing “Hosanna to
the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna
in the highest heaven!” We play out the role the crowd that acknowledged Jesus
as the Christ.
And then, only a few minutes later, we
participate in reading the Passion Narrative. We the congregation once again
play the role of the crowd, but this time, instead of “Hosanna” we shout
“Crucify him!” “Crucify him!”
How could the crowd have changed it’s
mind so quickly? In less then a week they went from celebrating Jesus as the
savior to calling for his death. There were such high expectations on his
arrival. Somehow he let them down. Or was it a different crowd that clamored
for his death? But if so, what happened to the people who had so loved him? Did
they just stay home that fateful Friday?
How is it that the crowd that was there
would call for an innocent man’s death? Why would they be so blood thirsty? It
seems so heartless, so foreign to us, as civilized people. But is it really so
foreign?
Jesus’s death was a religiously and
politically motivated sacrificial death. Even the high priest had acknowledged
that it was better for one to die to save the whole nation. This practice of
sacrifice has been part of most religious observances throughout human history.
The Aztecs were not the only society that sacrificed their fellow humans. The
story of Abraham and his almost sacrifice of his son Isaac, and God’s
intervention to substitute an animal represented how Judaism would be different
from the cultures around it. Throughout the Old Testament the prophets refer to
the practice of offering children to the fire.
One writer, René Girard, suggests that
the use of human sacrifice was important in maintaining the cohesion of
society. In the sacrificial rituals for which we have information, we almost
always see a unanimous act of the crowd. When the society is under pressure,
when there is drought, or pestilence, or epidemics, or general economic and
political upheaval, in other words when the people feel that things are out of
control, what appears to be the automatic solution is to control the situation
by agreeing to kill somebody who can absorb the blame for the crisis. We find a
sense of bonding, cohesion, by having a common enemy. And we find a sense of
power and control by destroying that enemy.
Who becomes the victim? Sometimes it is
chosen at random but mostly it is someone at the fringe of society - usually
the most powerless, such as children or captives from a neighboring tribe. It
was someone whose full humanity could be denied. Jesus was from Galilee, Jesus
was seen as powerless because his was not a power of this world, Jesus was seen
as expendable. What a rush it was for the crowd, to stand together, putting all
their frustration with Rome, with their life, onto that weak looking, helpless
man. They had a sense of unity with the leadership of their nation, a sense of
belonging to the community that was united in getting rid of this blasphemous
outrage. They enjoyed mocking him. They felt powerful to see him so weak.
Of course the social and psychological
drives that lead a community to find a sacrificial person did not go away with
Christ’s awful death. The history of Christianity is full of finding an enemy
to blame and then destroy. There were the heretics of the early church who were
sometimes stoned by the crowds. The crowds cheered as the powerless old women
accused of being witches burned. And when Christianity came to the New World,
the Native Americans were the other, the sacrificial victims of “progress.”
Our century has seen it’s sacrificial
deaths. The lynchings of blacks brought cohesion and a sense of power to the
economically outcast white community of the south. The crowds cheered Hitler as
he laid the blame on the Jews and looked for a final solution.
But we are different now, right? Who
could get joy from watching someone die, yet every time there is an execution,
the crowd outside the prison is mostly there to cheer, not to protest. And the
families of the victims of the crime are allowed to watch, with some sense that
seeing a person die will take the blame and the pain away.
And our community, our “crowd” still
looks for someone to blame. Someone who we can see as the reason for our
problems. Someone we can get rid of. And the illegal alien fits that role so
well. They are powerless, they are different, they can be seen as less that
human. It is not the big companies that have laid us off from work, it is not
the rich CEO’s, it is not the economic system, it is not our own poor training
or unwillingness to work, it is THEM who are the source of our problem. If we
just got rid of THEM we would be fine. The crowd no longer gathers in front of
the Pilate to yell crucify him, it gathers in front of radios, and calls in
with anger and blame.
Our society continues to seek for
cohesion by finding someone to blame. We still look to dehumanize people so
that we can get rid of them.
But each year we remember the
crucifixion of Jesus. Each year we contemplate the agony of this victim’s
death. And as we remember we are called to compassion. Compassion for his
suffering, for the pain of the innocent victim. We feel the grief that anyone
could have done this to him. But Jesus calls us to remember that whatever we do
for “the least of these” we have done for him. Our compassion for Jesus must expand
to compassion for all victims. To realize that we cannot, we must not,
dehumanize anyone, for all are children of the one loving God. No one is
expendable.
When we join the crowd, when we feel
that rush of being part of the community that has focused its anger and
frustration on a sacrificial victim, we are yelling “crucify him” and we are
hammering another painful nail into Christ’s precious flesh.
But you may say to yourself, I don’t
join in that kind of thing. I deplore that sort of hatred.
I’ve often tried to imagine what I
would have been doing had I lived in Jerusalem at the time of Christ. I might
have cheered his entry, but I can’t imagine myself yelling for anyone to be
crucified. I think I would probably have stayed at home that day, not wanting
to become involved. I would not have yelled “crucify him” but I also would not
have been there to say “No this is wrong.” I would have assented by my absence,
by my silence.
Most German’s did not actively
participate in the holocaust, most just were silent. Most Southerners did not
join in the lynch mobs. They stayed safe in their homes. Most of us do not get
involved in the anger and hate spoken today. We don’t get involved, and we
assent by our silence.
Today we spoke the words “crucify him.”
to remind ourselves of our own complicity in Christ’s death. Let us also
remember the complicity of those who are silent and let the crowd destroy
another victim.
