“When God was himself” (St. Luke’s: Palm Sunday, March 25th, 2018; Mk. 11.1-10; Is. 50.4-7; Ps. 22; Phil. 2.6-11; Gospel of St. Mk. 14.1 – 15.47)

Mass mask.  When was the last time you had a fight with a family member right before coming to Mass?  Maybe you’ve had the experience of beginning an argument at home, continuing the argument in the car, and then arguing all the way from the parking lot to the church door.  When this happens to us, most of the time, once we enter the church, we put on our “mass mask” and smile at the person who greets us.  We politely go through Mass – we even give each other the sign of peace – and then, once we’re back in the safe confines of the car and far enough away from all the “witnesses” in the other vehicles pulling away from the church, we pick up the argument right where we had left off… (I speak hypothetically; everything I’ve said is based on a childhood memory…).  It seems like our worst fights are with those we love – with those who know us, the real us.  Ideally, our relationships with those closest to us would be characterized by mutual trust and respect.  We all need people around us with whom we feel safe, people who we can allow to see us without our mask on, people with whom we can be ourselves.  If a relationship of this kind is to survive the inevitable conflicts that will arise, the issues must be confronted and reconciliation must be allowed to occur.  Reconciliation is a risky business – who will make the first move?  Who will humble themselves and make themselves vulnerable by admitting they were wrong?  Who will be the first to put a stop to the theatrics and honestly express how they feel?  Authenticity and reconciliation – there’s nothing easy about them.

Divine reconciliation.  The way the Bible tells the story, God – the Creator – desired to reconcile his rebellious world to himself.  God decided to reveal himself to his human creatures, i.e. to open lines of communication between himself and humanity.  The first person to “take the call” – so to speak – was Abraham.  God made him a promise – one of your descendants will do what is necessary to make reconciliation possible.  What Abraham couldn’t have imagined at the time was that there would be something unique – to put it mildly – about that particular descendant, whose life would begin two millennia later.  In and as that future member of Abraham’s family, the Creator himself would come into his world and restore the relationship that had been broken by sin.  What would it look like when the Creator did this?

When God is himself.  We just read St. Mark’s telling of the tale – this is what it looked like when the Creator took the initiative to come into our violent, fearful and confused world, to make himself vulnerable and invite us to trust him once again.  This is what it looks like for God to be himself – this is the story of when God allowed us to see him for who he is.  It looks like a young descendant of Abraham on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover – his nations’ national holiday.  This pilgrim-prophet enters the capital in humble majesty – seated on a donkey – and then proceeds to the most sacred shrine in the land – the Temple – and symbolically enacts the disaster that will soon befall the nation.  Immediately his authority is challenged and plots are hatched to do away with this Galilean trouble-maker.  The young man arranges to celebrate the feast with his closest friends, knowing that they will all let him down – one will betray him to his enemies, one will deny even knowing him, and the rest will abandon him when his enemies close in for the kill.  The young man is tried on a charge of blasphemy – of being a false prophet – and deemed worth of death.  His enemies hand him over to the authorities and manipulate the judicial process to ensure his destruction.  The sentence of death is handed down and this young man is first flogged, then made to carry his cross to the site of his execution.  Once there, he is stripped, nailed to the cross, and put on display where he will spend hours writhing in agony until the end comes.  All the way from his trial to his crucifixion, this young man has been humiliated and mocked – his enemies find him to be a joke, and they laugh and insult him as he hangs helplessly from the roman instrument of death-by-torture.

Hope for healing.  This is a strange and disturbing story, but if you’re wondering what God looks like, St. Mark is saying, “Look over here.  Look at this man dying on this cross.  This is the most intimate, authentic look at the Creator you can ever hope to get.”  This is indeed a revelation of a strange God – it includes the crucified man’s sense of abandonment: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  One theologian makes the following comment on Jesus’ sense of abandonment: On the cross, “God is no longer separate from him.”  Perhaps we’re used to holding God and the crucified Jesus apart from each other in our minds – St. Mark is inviting us to bring them together.  If you want to find God, you will find him here.  This God demonstrates his “power” to save and to heal by the helplessness, suffering and death of this man.  This is good news for a broken world, for broken people like me and you.  Our God is not distant and aloof from us and our pain.  This is the God who invites us to trust him, to be reconciled to him and to each other, this is the God “by whose wounds we are healed.”  Amen.