Palms and Passion
Palm Sunday sermon by Rev. Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.
Scripture: Matthew 26:36-27:50
The Sunday of Palms and Passion is a complex one. We easily celebrate with the crowd running to the outskirts of Jerusalem to accompany Jesus into town, honoring him as a religious superstar. But when the readings for the day turn to his arrest, we lose our enthusiasm. For years, many of us have shuddered thinking the crowd shifts so quickly from “Hosanna” to “Crucify him!” But more recent biblical scholars point out that those who are in the Good Friday crowd are probably different people from the Palm Sunday crowd, stirred up to call for his crucifixion by the religious leaders. The conspiracy against Jesus was brewing for quite some time and finally it reaches a deadly culmination. I think we benefit from hearing the passion narrative each year, so relax into your seats. Open your Bible to Matthew 26:36 and read all the way to 27:50. It begins just after Jesus has shared his last supper with his closest friends. You might find it more meaningful if you read it out loud.
Jesus is reported to have said that God could have stopped the execution, but did not. How are we to understand the crucifixion?
Some people claim the crucifixion was necessary because Jesus was paying our debt. They believe our sinfulness deserves punishment, so Jesus took it on for us. You’ve heard me talk about this before. The theological term is “substitutionary atonement.” Jesus pays for our sin. What such a belief means is that God is keeping track of our sins, like a tab at the company store. Eventually the tab has to be paid, so Jesus undergoes an excruciating death which satisfies the debt. Jesus is willing to do whatever it takes to pay the debt. Which makes Jesus a glorious Savior!
But what kind of God does that describe? Many of us know parents who have forgiven some terrible behavior a child has done. Are those parents kinder than God?
Our President can try to get the government to forgive $10,000 of student loan debt for lots of people. Is Joe Biden more generous than God?
If Jesus must pay our debt, it means God is a meticulous bookkeeper, demanding a settling of our account. However if God is kinder and more generous than humans, and more powerful than our sin, in other words if God truly is love, then God can cancel any debt we have accrued whenever God wants. To forgive our sin, to cancel our debt, requires no payment, no humiliating treatment by soldiers, no torturous death. God can just tear up the bill.
I know you’ve heard me say much of this before, but substitutionary atonement is in the air church people breath around Holy Week. We praise Jesus for being willing to die as payment for our sin, completely ignoring how awful that makes God look. Either God is awful or else forgiveness does not require a human sacrifice. One or the other. I choose to believe those who say Jesus paid a debt for us are mistaken, because (as St. Paul is right to tell us) love keeps no record of wrongs. No payment necessary.
So, why in the world would God let Jesus be tortured and killed? Why didn’t Jesus slip away as he did on other occasions?
Here’s what I think. Because Jesus is intimately connected to God, he understood God’s unconditional mercy extending to all persons. When humans (we) do our worst and still God forgives us, then we really begin to comprehend God. Unconditional forgiveness means exactly that. Unconditional.
In Jesus we see the absolute self-giving love of God which pours out on us, not just from the cross 2000 years ago, but on every one of us even now, every moment. We live and move and breathe and have our being in God’s unconditional love. No matter what we have done, God’s grace is greater.
As Holy Week begins, we commit to following Jesus all the way to the cross, to see his willingness to pour out God’s love on humanity, no matter how ruthless we become. We do our worst, then there on the cross, we see the unfathomable love of God.