FINDINGS II

Palm Sunday - C - March 28, 2010
Isaiah 50: 4-9a; Philippians 2: 5-11; Luke 22: 14-23:56





Harry T. CookBy Harry T. Cook
3/22/10


RUBRIC

It is ironic that on the Sunday with perhaps the richest biblical texts, the homily or sermon is often attenuated, if not considered mostly beside the point, because the Passion Sunday liturgy tends to the ornate and lengthy. In some ways, Passion Sunday is the climax of all that has been going on liturgically and scripturally since Advent I. The long passion gospel of Year C is accompanied by two readings: 1) the third Servant Song from Isaiah and 2) the quasi-creedal passage or hymn text that Paul either appropriated from an unknown source or, as other textual scholars insist, found coming off his own lips during a passionate moment of dictating his Philippian epistle.
 
The easiest homiletic course to take on Passion/Palm Sunday is to let the "story" speak for itself as if the event depicted in the gospel actually occurred. The more difficult thing is to find in it what may actually have been intended by its original tellers, remembering that none of the gospels (save, perhaps, Thomas which includes no such narrative) existed in written form before 70-75 C.E., fully 40 years or more after the events they depict would have occurred.
 
Two things to think about: first, Zechariah 9:9-10, part of an oracle not to be attributed to the prophet so named, who did his work in the latter couple of decades of the Sixth Century B.C.E. The oracle is from what is known as the "Greek period," somewhere in the Fourth or Third Century B.C.E. The image drawn in those two verses is what the writer(s) of Matthew imagined, and so quoted them at 21:5. Mark and Luke omit the Zechariah quotation. But all three synoptic gospels go on to depict what is known as the triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem.
 
Second: the procession imagined by the ones who first depicted it may have intended that depiction to be a thumb in the eye of whatever Roman emperor might have been reigning at the time. The Caesars loved their victory laps after subjugating a people, sect or nation. Perhaps the depiction of a Galilean mystery man riding into town on the sway-back of a beast of burden was meant as a run-up of caesarean pomp.
 
The point of it all is that a questionable person was entering upon a venue the establishment thought it owned outright. It was as if the porter were to enter the mansion by the formal front door instead of the servant's entrance. The famous white-only lunch counter sit-ins by African Americans in the 1960s is another example. So is Mohandas Gandhi's appearance at the viceroy's residence.
 
That's what is being said in the Passion gospel. The image is that of the anti-Caesar arriving with an anti-Caesar message of distributive rather than retributive justice, to put down the mighty from their seats and to exalt the humble and meek, to level every mountain of privilege and to lift up its victims from the valleys, to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain.
 
As the story goes, the anti-Caesar did not succeed, but there is every reason that his 21st Century followers, being thus self-identified, should keep trying.




WORKSHOP

Since we have a go at the passion texts every year, our task now will be to look at Luke' singular contributions to the genre. It is a fact that the passion gospels (all four) are remarkable for their unanimity. Each of them -- Mark, Matthew, Luke and John -- attests to the execution of Jesus at the hands of the Roman military with some complicity of certain Jewish authorities suggested. The crowd (ochlos) plays a part as well. So does one Judas Iscariot. All four canonical evangelists created a role for him (Mark 14: 10-11, Matthew 26: 14-16, Luke 22: 3-6, John 13: 21-30 and 18: 2-3).

Some who work with these texts make a case that the passion narratives were at the core of the original material that became the gospels. They point to the extensive nature of the narratives and the details that are preserved (or fabricated), and suggest that what Christian hear in their churches on Palm Sunday represents the earliest Christian oral and written traditions. The late and peerless Raymond Brown believed that.

Yet an equally good case can be made that the passion-resurrection narratives are among the latest material, arrived at initially by Mark as, after the signal events of 70 C.E., he created the form that became known as a "gospel," with a beginning, middle and end -- a story with Jesus at the center. The Gospel of Thomas, by contrast, is constituted by a series of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus with no accompanying story at all.

Israel Knohl in a 1999 volume/1 offers evidence and interpretation to suggest that the suffering and dying messianic figure was already part of early First Century Palestinian lore and therefore available to some one like Mark who wanted to turn the itinerant Galilean sage (to use J. Dominic Crossan's helpful image) into a suffering and dying son of God.

John Kloppenborg's and Burton Mack's important work on the Q material/2,3 which is clearly earlier than Mark, helps the case that the "sayings" of Jesus (one version of which appears in Thomas) may well have been among the first oral and later written material. In any event, it seems clear that Luke appropriated the passion narrative first proposed by Mark (perhaps, as Knohl suggests, with roots in an earlier messianic tradition). We will assume that Luke was also aware of Matthew's appropriation of Mark's work.

Withal, here are some of the interesting alterations Luke made to then-extant works:
  • Luke's Jesus bids "disciples" to pray that they would not be tested in what would ensue. In Mark, Peter, James and John are merely asked to sit and wait;
  • Luke's Jesus does not use the words "Abba, father;"
  • Luke's Jesus heals the ear of the high priest;
  • Luke omits the fulfillment sayings of Mark 14:49 and Matthew 26:56;
  • Luke's Jesus is accused at 23: 2-5 of forbidding tributes to Caesar and of saying he was "a Christ."
  • Only Luke takes Jesus before Herod (23: 6-16). Authorities vary widely as to whether or not such a thing would or could have occurred, as neither Mark nor Matthew makes mention of what would certainly have been an extraordinary event. More to the point is the question of why Luke would craft such a story and what the idea of doing so might have been. Is this an oblique allusion to the "kings" and "rulers" of Psalm 2:2?
  • Luke 23: 27-31 is exclusive to the third gospel, a passage, say several authorities, that may come from an earlier document denominated "L" known only and used exclusively by the writer(s)/editor(s) of Luke. A hint that v. 29b may be a kind of Aramaic proverb is that Thomas preserves a parallel saying at 79: "Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk."
  • Luke gives extra color and dimension to the brief Marcan mention of those crucified with Jesus (Mark 15:32). Matthew says they were robbers (lāstai). Luke has them as criminals (kakourgoi), who are made to engage in a war of words, the one depicted as taunting Jesus, the other repentant and saying that Jesus was not deserving (as they were) of capital punishment. That becomes the setting for one of the familiar "words from the cross" -- "Amen, I say: on that Day you will be with me in paradise" -- (paradeisō, an enclosed park or garden . . . of Persian origin and perhaps an allusion to the garden of Genesis 2).
  • Luke adds drama to Jesus' death scene as alone among the evangelists he puts words to the wordless cry Mark and Matthew mention: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (24:46), seeming to be a direct quotation from Psalm 31:5a, a variation of which Luke will use again in Acts 7:59 as Stephen's imagined last words: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
The preacher has an embarrassment of riches from which to draw for a Passion homily, especially in this Year C as Luke, the epic novelist, illuminates the natural poignancy of the story.

/1 Knohl, Israel, The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1999University of California Press
/2 Kloppenborg, John S., The Formation of Q, 1987, Fortress Press
/3 Mack, Burton L., The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins, 1993, HarperSanFrancisco

 



HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
 

Assuming that in most churches on Palm Sunday, the homily or sermon will of necessity be shorter and at best a secondary concern, the suggestion to the homilist is to draw attention to what is at center stage anyway, the narrative of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. It might be pointed out that, even as a Jew and even in the Passover season, Jesus was nonetheless depicted by the gospels as a Galilean outlander, no doubt of peasant background, otherwise a somewhat countercultural, gadfly figure.

From that observation the homilist might go on to say that individually and collectively those who identify with the gospel Jesus is generally believed to have personified might seriously consider standing apart from business-as-usual society and entering their own Jerusalems -- first figuring out what the truth about a thing is -- and then speaking that truth to power. (This may be a task more for tenured clergy with the security of life incumbency than those dependent on bishops and parish councils for employment.)

If the venue for this homily/sermon is an Episcopal congregation, the homilist could refer its members to page 305 of the Book of Common Prayer 1979 and to the final and climactic vow of The Baptismal Covenant: "Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?"

The homily might close with the premise that one cannot effectively "strive" apart from involvement in the fray. He or she must then decisively enter the venue in which the striving needs to take place, and once there do the striving so that justice may be done, peace realized and dignity respected.

The Poor People's Campaign of the late 1960s and the establishment of Resurrection City in Washington, D.C. was just such striving, even as the poor and their advocates processed en masse into a venue of power and privilege to state a legitimate case. The campaign's aim, to persuade Congress to enact an economic bill of rights for African Americans, was the brain-child of Martin Luther King Jr. who did not live to see the campaign's robust advance, its retreat and finally the refusal of Congress to pass the legislation. Yet there is every good reason why King's successors -- Americans of all skin hues -- should keep on trying.

"All glory, laud and honor" to that.




� Copyright 2010, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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