One time a gentleman, who you might guess rarely darkened a church door, complained, “Every time I go to Mass someone gives me a palm.”
He encountered something extraordinary, and concluded it was ordinary. That’s different from the woman who once greeted the priest at the church door after Mass and exclaimed “Now there’s something I’ve never seen: green vestments!” Something ordinary to us was extraordinary to her.
All during Lent we’ve been invited, with great urgency, not to view our spiritual and liturgical life with an attitude of “business as usual.” Everywhere our tradition gives us signs that something is different. We have no Alleluias, no flowers. There is no cloth on the altar, no gospel processions, no meat on Fridays.
And starting today, these stark, urgent reminders that something different is happening kick into high gear. Now aside from the fact that we began with palms and procession, what is different about this Sunday that is never done at any other liturgy?
That’s right, Palm Sunday is the only liturgical celebration that has two gospel readings. And therein lies an amazing liturgical statement, a shout, a cry, that something is happening that is extraordinary. We are presented with two stories that appear to be polar opposites.
Since the year began in Advent, we’ve been hearing stories of Jesus’ ministry, his miracles, his teachings. We heard the story of the man born blind, the Beatitudes, the wonderful story of the Prodigal Son. And our first gospel, read at the church door, was very much in this vein, the beloved teacher enters the Holy City amid praise and celebration.
But then we get to the second Gospel, and it’s clear that something has gone terribly wrong. Everything seems to have collapsed, the world has turned upside down. Jesus, welcomed into the Holy City as a hero, a celebrity, is suddenly a prisoner being tortured, subjected to a show trial and sentenced to the death penalty for treason. What happened?
And this off-kilter liturgy continues this week as we celebrate the Triduum, the single liturgy that spans three days beginning Holy Thursday and ending Holy Saturday. Liturgies begin without the sign of the cross and end without blessings. The altar will be stripped. The tabernacle will be empty. There will be no Mass on Good Friday. At every turn, our tradition is screaming, grabbing us by the lapels, see, everything is different!
Our liturgical tradition, handed down to us by millions of Christians who have gone before us over the centuries, contains great wisdom.
First of all, we begin by realizing that our liturgical year, especially what we will experience this week, is not just memorials of events that happened long ago, like Washington’s birthday. The purpose of our liturgical year is to make real all these events in our own time and place. In some way, everything we celebrate in the liturgical year comes alive for us today, for we Christians are not caught up in the past, but in the present.
The only description Jesus gives us of the last judgment is that we will have to give an account of how we saw Jesus in anyone we encounter who is suffering, and how we respond to them — today. That is a teaching of our faith more central than anything we hear debated in the media today. And it’s something we’re asked to consider this week as our usual liturgical practices seem to be tossed aside.
The Romans were tough on crime. Pretty much any crime was punishable by crucifixion. So it was common to see hundreds of people crucified at any given time. Now the gospels tell us Jesus was crucified with a thief on either side, but they don’t say these three were the only ones crucified that day. One movie of the life of Jesus – I don’t recall which – portrayed Jesus crucified amid a sea of other crosses. And that may very well have been how it happened. It’s not as neat and tidy as our usual image of this event, but life rarely is.
This week, as we deal with issues of life and death, that command of Jesus is presented to us with even greater urgency. We’re faced with difficult questions.
If we’d been there that day, and we went out of the city to see Jesus on the cross, how would we find him amid these scores of dying men, each dying on a cross? And here’s the tough question: as Christians, could we just pass by all those men in agony, ignoring their sufferings because we’re looking for Jesus among them?
Can we allow the story of the Passion to impact our lives here and now? Can we learn compassion from the Passion?
As we hear about Jesus betrayed, how do we respond to our national indifference to genocide in Darfur, where people are being raped and murdered even as we sit here today?
As we hear about Jesus tortured, we must realize that his blood is smeared on the floors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. How can we sit idly by, or worse yet, even justify such acts of terror done in our name?
As we hear of the show trial Jesus was subjected to, should we not be reminded of secret trials our own government conducts against people who have been held in deplorable conditions for years without charges?
As we hear about Jesus condemned to the death penalty, how can we ignore the fact that we still do this to people made in the image and likeness of God, who alone can take life? How can we be horrified at Jesus being condemned to death and still approve of the same thing happening to others?
And as we hear of Jesus dying alone and abandoned, can we allow ourselves to consider those dying of AIDS, the homeless dying in the streets of Los Angeles, the children killed by gang violence, the poor who die for lack of health insurance?
The liturgy of Holy Week reminds us that the blood shed by Jesus by whip and cross was not just shed one day long ago, is not only contained in our chalices, but also runs in the gutters of the streets of Los Angeles, in our government’s secret prisons, in the halls of our county hospitals, in the marketplaces of Baghdad and in countless other places.
If we only mark the events of Holy Week as commemorations of events long passed, our faith is dead. Throughout the year we hear liturgical whispers of how these saving events can impact our world today. But now, beginning today, there are no more whispers, only shouts.
We’re called here, now, to enter into the pain of the world, to cry and to reflect. This week we must hear the questions, until we arrive at the ultimate answer on Holy Saturday.
And the answer we will receive from an empty tomb on Saturday is this: Love hurts. But it‘s worth it.
