Passion Sunday

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is also known as "Passion Sunday" and during the Mass a very lengthy narrative of the Passion - from triumphant entry into Jerusalem to death on the cross - is read. The priest reads the passages for Christ. Since the congregation reads the lines from the mob and others, the laity is left with reading inspiring lines like "Crucify him" and "we want Barabas."

I'll confess that in prior years I have had a low key resentment of this tradition. It seemed to reinforce the division between the laity and the priesthood by reinforcing the sinful and corrupt nature of the laity. Obviously, I understand that the priest represents Christ in the Mass and I understand that Jesus' crucifixion was made necessary because of the sins of each of us, but I always had the vague feeling that the Palm Sunday mass was another instantiation of the Church of Peter making sure that the Church of Mary knew its place. After all, I had never really cried out for Barabas or shouted "crucify him." That Palm Sunday stuff was all make-believe.

Because of Mel Gibson's The Passion, I think that has all ended. When I watched the crowed before Pilate, I knew that I had a real kinship with them and that in the right time and place, I would have been standing there with them, my brothers. Is that intuition simply 40 years of post-Vatican II propaganda finally claiming a mind? Or is it that a deep layer of theology was triggered?

I don't know, but I think that Rabbi Spero in this essay makes many fair points, including:

Moreover, Christians did not see the movie the way some Jews feared they would. While Jews focused on the Jewish faces in the movie--Sanhedrin, high priests, the mob--the Christian audience focused on the countenance of Jesus. And whereas Jews saw a suffering Jesus they thought would provoke anger at Jews, Christians beheld a loving Savior willing to endure suffering so as to provide salvation. As with a mother drawn to the specific cry of her baby among many crying babies, Jews focused on Jews, negatively depicted, while Christians were entranced by the sacrifice of their kindred Jesus. It was as if each group saw a different movie.

American Christians viewing the film did so as a religious experience, akin to how Jews who sit down at a Passover seder focus on the message of redemption and liberation, not Egyptian culpability. In contrast Jews view the crucifixion as an historical event, making it thereby more analogous to post-Biblical sagas such as World War II where the Germans, the Nazis, are the focal point of blame. To Christians, therefore, the circumstances and actors are secondary to the divine message. It is not viewed as a duel between specific participants.

This is truly positive news from a broader social perspective.

From a narrowly individualistic perspective, I found myself reflecting on images from the movie as we went through the Passion narrative. The Agony in the Garden became real. The scourging became real. St. Simon of Cyrene became real. Peter's denial became real.

Christianity is a religion founded on a belief in the essential truth and goodnes of reality. The world is true and good because it was created by a True and Good God. Christianity does not subscribe to the idea that the perceived world is mara and that a person's greatest goal is to escape this world of illusion. For Christians there must be meaning in this world world because it exists, albeit finding that meaning may be beyond our present capacity since the world is wrapped in mystery.

Even so with the Passion. There must be meaning in the way the life and death of Jesus actually happened. Although the Redeemer could have been a truck driver in Petaluma who returned from the dead after a hit and run accident, and we would be making the sign of the automobile, that's not what happened. As Raymond Brown points out, the tendency to de-emphasize the life and Passion of Jesus in the face of the glory of the Resurrection, was the issue which probably split the Johanine community in the First Century. Because the Passion happened the way it did, there must be meaning in the way it happened.

Which is something to ponder, but not to solve since it like the world is enfolded by myster.