Just over five weeks ago we began our journey through Lent and now, on Palm Sunday, we come to the final stretch of the journey as we enter the season of Passiontide and the start of Holy Week. As the name Passiontide suggests, this is the time of the Church’s year when our thoughts turn towards the climax of our journey through Lent, and indeed the climax of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, the time that he himself often called his ‘hour’, the time of his Passion and Cross.
On the First Sunday of Lent, as always, we read in church the story of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness. This year, being the year when we concentrate on the Gospel according to St Mark, we didn’t actually read what those temptations were but, as I said in my sermon that day, I’m sure we all know well enough what they were; the temptation for Jesus to satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread, the temptation for Jesus to prove his identity by forcing God into a miraculous act on his behalf, saving Jesus from harm after he’d thrown himself from the top of the temple, and renouncing God by serving the devil in return for earthly power and glory. And we know that in each case, Jesus resisted the temptation and answered the tempter by quoting from scripture.
This morning, as always on Palm Sunday, we read the Passion Gospel, this year St Mark’s account of Jesus’ Passion and Cross. The Passion narratives in the Gospels can be read in different ways. Of course, they’re the story of the last hours of Jesus’ earthly life but each of the Gospels tell the story in a slightly different way. The differences are sometimes said to be the result of the stories being eyewitness accounts and those witnesses having seen, heard and remembering different things. That’s quite acceptable because we know from personal experience that people can and do remember the same event in slightly different ways. People see and hear different things and some parts of an event will have a deeper impact on one person than it will on another and will be more memorable to one person than to another. So people do remember things differently from one another. It’s also said that the Passion narratives are told in slightly different ways because the evangelists who wrote them wanted to highlight different parts of the story because these were of most immediate concern to the people they were writing for – they answered the questions uppermost in the minds of those people at the time. Another way of looking at the Passion narratives though is to read them as attempts to prove Jesus’ identity as the Messiah through the events of his Passion and Cross, and they do that by appeals to scripture.
All the Passion narratives are full of quotes from scripture and allusions to scripture, and in that sense we can look at them as complimentary to the stories of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness. We can see these as narratives as the bookends of Lent, and we can see the Passion narratives as a reworking of the Temptation stories. In those Temptation stories Jesus resisted temptation and answered the tempter through the words of scripture and in the Passion narratives we see Jesus as someone who not only lived “by every word that that comes from the mouth of God” but who died by those words too.
In answer to the first temptation, Jesus quoted from the Book of Deuteronomy and said,
“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
And in the Passion narratives we see Jesus as someone who does live and die by God’s word. We see it in his Agony in the Garden where, in spite of his own feelings he says to the Father,
“Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
And so, as he said he would, Jesus goes the way it is written of him, according to God’s Word. And as we read the Passion narratives in each of the Gospels we’re told repeatedly that what happens, and what Jesus himself says and does is all in order that the scriptures, or what was written, may be fulfilled. Even his cry,
“’My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
is taken from scripture; they’re the opening words of Psalm 22.
In Jesus’ second temptation, the tempter uses scripture, Psalm 91, to try and manipulate Jesus; he uses God’s word to tempt Jesus into disobeying God’s word. But Jesus’ answer to this was to use God’s word, again from Deuteronomy, to counter the temptation;
“‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
And again in the Passion narratives we see Jesus refusing to put God to the test. When Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane and one of the disciples drew a sword and cut off an ear of the High Priest’s servant, Jesus said,
“Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”
And on the Cross when one of the criminals called on Jesus as “the Christ” and urged him to save himself and him and the other criminal too, Jesus said and did nothing. So too, when the onlookers and chief priests and scribes said similar things, and also called on Jesus to save himself, he said and did nothing. Even when they said,
“He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
Jesus would not call on God to save him from the Cross; he wouldn’t put God to the test.
In his third and final temptation, Jesus resisted the lure of earthly power and glory with another reference to Deuteronomy, the commandment to serve God alone by saying,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”
In this third temptation, Jesus had been tempted with ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their glory’. As the Messiah, knew that he would be a king and that his kingdom would have no end, that’s prophesied in scripture. But Jesus wasn’t interested in an earthly kingdom. He knew he was a king, he said so to Pilate but said that his kingdom is “not of this world.” He accepted the so-called repentant thief’s request to “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” So Jesus was a king and knew he was a king, and yet it wasn’t through any great act of earthly power that he showed himself to be a king, but through the way he lived and died according to God’s word. And we find that in the Passion narratives at the very moment of his death on the Cross when we read,
‘And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”’
The Son of God, the Messiah, the King of the Jews and because of his living and dying in accordance with the word of God, soon to be the Christ, our King, our Lord and our God and Saviour of the world.
Our journey through Lent is supposed to bring us a little closer to Christ. It’s supposed to help us be able to live our lives a little more like the way Jesus lived his life. So as we think about these bookends of the Lenten journey, let’s try to make our lives accord a little more with God’s word so that we can resist the tempter, in whatever way he shows himself to us, so that, at the end of our lives, we can join Jesus, our King, in paradise.
Amen.
Propers for Palm Sunday, 24th March 2024
Antiphon
Hosanna to the Son of David, the King of Israel.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.
Introduction
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, during Lent we have been preparing by works of love and self-sacrifice for the celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection. Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the Church throughout the world. Christ enters his own city to complete his work as our Saviour, to suffer, to die, and to rise again. Let us go with him in faith and love, so that, united with him in his sufferings, we may share his risen life.
Blessing of the Palms
God our Saviour,
whose Son Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem as Messiah to suffer and to die;
let these palms be for us signs of his victory,
and grant that we who bear them in his name may ever hail him as our King,
and follow him in the way that leads to eternal life;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Palm Gospel
Missal (St Mark’s) Mark 11:1-10
RCL (St Gabriel’s) Mark 11:1-11
The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race,
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh,
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Isaiah 50:4-7
Psalm 22:8-9, 17-20, 23-24
Philippians 2:6-11
Mark 14:1 – 15:47
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Isaiah 50:4-9
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 14:1 – 15:47
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 