Palm Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Meister der Palastkapelle in Palermo

March 24th 2024

The desolation of Holy Week

I feel so desolate, not because of Holy Week, but because of the institutional Church.

I hear so many tell stories of how we, the Ecclesia have failed them, and no longer can I excuse us, as I experience like you, the failure of the establishment to support those who the Gospel considers so important, the lost, the little, the nobody. Instead at this point as we enter Holy Week, I realise that the Lord is challenging me to face the fact that I personally and we collectively, fail to live up to His commandments, far more than we keep them.

These words from Isaiah in or first reading, capture my imagination, may they do so for you:

'The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.'(Is 50:7)

These words shake me into a realisation that I need to share not only in the pain and grief of Holy Week, but also take into myself, a holy anger, that rails at the injustices of this world and cries out at the failures of our institutional religion. I cannot apologise for the terrible problems we as a Church have dealt to peoples, the imposition of a faith on colonial peoples without proper catechesis, the drama of the Inquisition, the hounding of people from holding different views under the modernist crisis , and the absolute ghastliness of abuse on so many levels of experience to name but a few.

All this is heavy, all this is part of the journey into Holy Week because it is the cry of the innocent who welcomed Christ into Jerusalem, the poor, the outcast, the children who had no rights, and to stretch an ecological theme the colt that young animal accompanied by its mother, a symbol of the non-human world Jesus so loved and we so destroy!

Palm Sunday a day of lost hope

Into Jerusalem rides Jesus, cries of Hosanna, the crowds welcoming him, the recognition of Jesus as Messiah gain momentum, but like so much in this world, those who are the little ones, whose recognition of Jesus lasts in our memories through the gospel account until this day, were at that particular moment ignored, rejected even, pushed aside in the corrupt connivance of religious leaders bent on getting Jesus out of public view.

The drama of human betrayal, conniving political plotting, the utter cowardice of religious leaders, the craven capitulation by some of the disciples, particularly Simon Peter and the erratic but also understandable betrayal by Judas, moves the story to its denouement of his death between two others on their crosses at Calvary. This is the lost hope, the ending of dreams, of a future that promised so much. Yet in face of this desert world of aridity and pain, the death of Jesus breaks a pattern, we hear it in his words given to us by Mark :

'Then Jesus said to them, "All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written:
'I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be dispersed.'
But after I have been raised up, I shall go before you to Galilee."
Peter said to him, "Even though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be."
Then Jesus said to him, "Amen, I say to you, this very night before the cock crows twice you will deny me three times."
But he vehemently replied, "Even though I should have to die with you, I will not deny you." And they all spoke similarly".(Mk 14: 27-31)

This is very much an admonition for each one of us. Don't for a moment rest in some sad moment of pious sorrow, the reality is harder to understand, for Christ does not wish us to hide from the pain of those who cannot speak for themselves , nor stand up for themselves. I'd rather remain in anger, facing the futility of huge frustration at the way the powerful got their way with Jesus and alas continue to do so each and every day and in that anger work towards changing and challenging the situation.

The hope of Christ

It is at this moment I realise, that like so many of us, these times of betrayal in the passion of Christ is not only of a person but of so many of our central values and gifts, such as that of truth, honesty, uprightness, justice and love. This betrayal is still shared across our world in so many places, Gaza, Haiti, Ukraine and in the battles of our inner cities. It is particularly there when good religious people get caught in their own supreme self-righteousness, not that of God's mercy.

This moment of Palm Sunday is one of the lost hopes of a kind we do not need. The triumph of `Palm Sunday leads to the another hope, that of the figure of Judas (for whom I have a great deal of love) committing suicide, and yet in that denigrated ending gives us a question, 'was it really thus? Was there no love or mercy for his rejection of that Christ, that Jesus could not handle? Then the scurrying away of `Peter and the disappearance of so many close to Jesus after promising to stay, remain faithful and in loving friendship with him. If things can go bad, then this moment after Palm Sunday of betrayal, of fixed justice, of corrupt officials and bad judicial sentencing, and a death is ours too, for following `Christ means all this will be ours in some way. Yet he will forgive and change our evil into goodness, our mourning into joy

Yet even as we start the journey of Holy Week, that light ever bright ever before us holds firm. In all of this one little defeated , despised, person holds fast to love, the defeated beaten, battered Christ of the crown of thorns, of the agony in the garden, of the betrayal and cross, this Christ remains in love and trust with us, often in the company of living human and animal life we betray by our unthinking cruelty.

Let the Christ of the colt, of the children of the little ones of life, be our hope now and always. Amen.

Lectio

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

"If we regard sanctification as a purely personal matter which has nothing whatever to do with public life and the visible line of demarcation between the Church and the world, we shall land ourselves inevitably into a confusion between the pious wishes of the religious flesh and the sanctification of the Church which is accomplished in the death of Christ through the seal of God. This is the deceitful arrogance and the false spirituality of the old man, who seeks sanctification outside the visible community of the brethren. It is contempt of the Body of Christ as a visible fellowship of justified sinners, a contempt which disguises itself as inward humility, whereas it was the good pleasure of Christ to take upon him our flesh visibly and to bear it up to the cross. It is also contempt of the fellowship, for we are then trying to attain sanctification in isolation from our brethren. And it shows contempt for our fellow-sinners, for we are withdrawing from the Church and pursuing a sanctity of our own choosing because we are disgusted by the Church's sinful form. By pursuing sanctification outside the Church we are trying to pronounce ourselves holy."

The Donkey, by GK Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient, crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hours and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.