We begin this week with this service today which starts on a jubilant note — the joyous procession, the happy songs, the waving of the palms, the shouts of hosanna! — and ends with a sharp plummet into the depths of darkness. We end this week on Saturday night with a service that reverses that process — beginning in darkness and ending in light and jubilation. But we cannot get there without first going through here. Without first going through what we are about to read together. Without first plumbing the depths of what our human brokenness leads to. Without first accepting that had we been in the crowd that shouted “away with him! Crucify him!” — we would have been no different than that crowd on that dreadful Friday morning in Jerusalem.
As we, together, once again lean into this story, embrace it as our own, I invite you to think about which person in particular strikes a chord with you today. Is it Peter who swears he will defend Jesus with his dying breath — and then denies him three times after he is arrested? How often have any of us sworn we would stand by someone and then when the going got tough abandoned them? Perhaps the mirror that looks back at you today is the disciples — promising to stay awake with Jesus but then drifting off to sleep — checking out of his agony in the garden.
And then there’s Judas. Perhaps none of us has ever betrayed someone to the point of death, but which of us has never engaged in even the smallest of betrayals?
Or Pilate. Wanting so much to prevent this whole thing, looking for a way — any way — out, but in the end helpless, overpowered by the rage of the mob.
The mob. Yes, that assembly of people caught up in what today we call groupthink. Individually they would never have called out for something so awful — why just five days ago many of these very same people were waving palm branches, shouting “Hosanna!” and “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” How can a group of people be swayed like that, we ask ourselves — yet that is the part that we will all be reading as we embrace this story as our own.
We read this story today, we lean into this story, we embrace it as our own, not because it is something that happened 2,000 ago, but because it is something that continues to this very day. And so we must claim this story as our own, we must look into the many mirrors it holds up to us. And we must go through this story before we can get to the next one, the one we will claim as our own at the end of this dreadful week.
Yet even today’s story, as devastating as it is, even today’s story carries within it the seed of the hope that is to come. Consider this: as he’s dying on the cross, Jesus looks heavenward and says “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Imagine — unjustly condemned to die, beaten, humiliated, and now nailed to a cross he does not condemn them (us), he does not curse them (us), he does not hate them (us). Instead he pleads that they — that we — be forgiven. Humanity has done our very worst to him, and he responds with love. Even in this darkest hour, there is hope.
And now we begin…