St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes
March 24, 2024● Palm Sunday (Year B)
Gospel: Mark 15:1-39
The world is in need of a good love story. I was moved by a love story between a grandson and his grandmother. Social justice activist, and author of the book, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” Bryan Stevenson, shared a powerful story about his grandmother, the daughter of slaves, and how she responded to him out of love, and fear, with the advent of integration.
Stevenson recalled that when he was about nine years old, every time his grandmother, the powerful matriarch of the family saw him, she would squeeze him so long and so tightly that he thought she was trying to hurt him. An hour or so later, she would say to him, “Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you?” If he said, no, then she would hug him even more. By the time he was 10 he says that he knew that the first thing to tell his grandmother was, “Mama, I always feel you hugging me.” As a college student, Stevenson found himself at his grandmother’s bedside as she was dying, holding her hand, not even sure if she could hear him as he poured his heart out. When he stood up to leave, his grandmother opened her eyes, squeezed his hand and said, “Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you? I want you to know, I’m always going to be hugging you.”[1]
The world needs a good love story. And while the Passion Gospel in Mark focuses on Jesus’ suffering on the way to the cross, and on the cross, we must remember that it is one part of the unfolding story of God’s self-giving love poured out for humankind and all of creation. The passion gospel is an unlikely love story, but it is a love story nonetheless.
Having been handed over to the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, the Jewish chief priests accused Jesus of many things against which he was expected to defend himself. This encounter came after Jesus had gone before the Jewish religious council, where he had told the high priest that he was the Messiah. In his claim of divinity, Jesus was condemned to death as a blasphemer. This encounter with Pontius Pilate also came directly after Jesus’ beloved disciple, Peter, had denied even knowing Jesus three times.
This love story sounds a lot like a one-sided story of unrequited love. But in the tension of rejection and abandonment, by his own people, whom God sent him to save, Jesus the lover of souls, remained obedient to his purpose in God’s plan for universal salvation. So, how did the Jewish religious leaders get to a point in their relationship with Jesus that it cost him his life? The simple answer might be that they had no love for Jesus.
Jesus was a threat to the Jewish religious leaders’ authority and influence with the Jewish people, and he was a threat to their established relationship with the Roman empire. The agenda-seeking religious leaders, certainly had encounters with Jesus, many confrontational, and knew enough about who he claimed to be, his teaching and preaching with authority, as well as his miraculous works amongst the Jewish people. Instead of being drawn to Jesus, they set their sights on erasing him.
As Jesus was handed over to be crucified, the assaults to his humanity escalated with the whole cohort of Roman soldiers mocking his supposed kingship and beating him. When Jesus was crucified, passersby and the chief priests and scribes taunted him to save himself and come down from the cross. “…Come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe,” said the religious leaders. Even the bandits on either side of him taunted him. The onlookers, the religious leaders and the cohort of Roman soldiers were all watching Jesus suffering on the cross because they were waiting for one of two things to happen. Either Jesus would inevitably die, or he would save himself and come down from the cross as the crowd taunted him to do.
They must have wondered, “What if Jesus really is who he says he is? Let’s watch and see.” The irony, which you and I know on the resurrection side of the cross, is that Jesus endured the inhumane treatment, and remained on the cross to die, so that the very people who persecuted him could have everlasting life.
Within the crowd of spectators, was a Roman centurian, a gentile, who, after Jesus’ death (in which he participated) confessed, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39). What happened to evoke his exclamation? We know that the centurian was physically facing Jesus; and we know that he was close enough to Jesus to see him take his last breath. Whatever he saw and heard, in the closeness of that most holy moment, changed him from being an active enemy of Jesus, to a confessor of his true identity.
Twice in Mark’s gospel, leading up to the cross event, God’s voice was heard by Jesus at his baptism and by Jesus’ disciples at the Transfiguration which affirmed that Jesus was God’s beloved son (1:10-11, 9:7). And, here in chapter 15, I cannot help but wonder, that when Jesus breathed his last, if the centurian also heard the voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son the Beloved.” And, with his confession, the centurian, an unlikely participant in God’s love story, became the willing beloved.
The passion gospel reminds us that Jesus’ crucifixion is inextricably bound to God’s love story with humankind—a love story that is at once communal and deeply personal. As gruesome as it was, the cross event, invited, and still invites, humankind into relationship with God through Christ. The experience of the suffering servant must be experienced from a position that is up close and personal, and there’s nothing more personal than the depth of one’s own soul.
Nurturing a deeply personal relationship with Jesus makes it possible for faithful people to optimally witness those holy moments when the separation, between the heavenly and the earthly, is torn in two—holy moments, which are occurring all around us—that turn human hearts toward the eternal love who created them.
There will be times in our lives when we need to feel the embrace of Jesus; and need to be affirmed that we are loved and cared for. We need that divine embrace that assures us that God is with us, even in the midst of human suffering, and that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.
As you move through this Holy Week, and ponder who Jesus truly is, in your life, and for your life, gaze upon the cross. Gaze upon the cross, especially on Good Friday, with the expectation of the risen Christ on Sunday. Be reminded that Jesus really is who he said he was. And, be reminded of God’s unfolding divine love story, of which you are a part, because you, too, are his beloved.
Amen.
[1] “The Richmond Forum–Bryan Stevenson,” The Richmond Forum – Bryan Stevenson on Vimeo, first accessed March 28, 2021 (private viewing, available until April 7, 2021).
