Twelfth Station
After a mass shooting in Paris in 2015 a hashtag went viral: #PrayForParis. Almost simultaneously was a rebuttal meme, “Friends from the whole world, thank you for the #PrayForParis but we don’t need more religion! Our faith goes to Music! Kisses! Life! Champagne and Joy! #ParisIsAboutLife.” Holy Week is of course a time for prayer. It is also an opportunity to contemplate faith through: Music! Kisses! Champagne and Joy! Rather than looking outside the Episcopal Christian tradition I invite you to use the Holy Week liturgy and Biblical texts as a starting point. Palm Sunday is a powerful place to begin.
Some background information may help you better understand that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, was a political story before it was a religious one. Most Biblical Scholars agree, “Everything from the colt to the staging place of the procession is carefully choreographed. It is the mirror image of the ways political elites entered Jerusalem—the city of power. Each Gospel offers a version of the account which highlights an alternate expression to Rome’s exploitation of people.”
Though I tend to agree with the consensus that Palm Sunday was a Poor People’s Parade; I’m cautious of conflating 1st century politics and economic models with those of the 21st century. There’s wisdom in the adage, “if you’re not careful, some will have you hating people who are being oppressed and loving people doing the oppressing.”
I was reminded of this by a minister on a clergy Facebook group. He asked colleagues for help. He said he was uncomfortable with the tradition a previous minister had begun — members pounding nails into a cross. His objection was theological. He believed that people putting nails in the cross placed too much emphasis on individual guilt and individual salvation. You don’t have to have a sophisticated understanding of scripture or tradition to understand that one of the suggestions made as an alternative to this ritual was deeply problematic. The advice giver wrote: “I saw one congregation, where they were invited to write their ‘most terrible sin’ on a small post it note and add to a cross that was burned ‘for new Light’ as a way of connecting our sinfulness and God’s new light in Christ.”
The problem with this idea was highlighted in a question afterward, “You burned a cross?”
Of course they didn’t. They burned pieces of paper. But the implication that they did, showed the pain and perversion the Christian message has sometimes undergone. Crosses placed in yards by bigots in white robes and hoods remind too many that branches from trees were used not only in Jerusalem to lynch people but also in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York where recently deceased Professor James Cone pioneered the field of studies called Black Liberation Theology. Cone’s work unpacks the parallels between lynching and Jesus’ execution. These features of the Gospel are important ways to establish the importance of the Black Church tradition. They are also a way to remind us that sometimes Holy Week can be turned into what it is not, a vigilante attack on non-Christians in defense of Christ. (See Professor Amy-Jill Levine’s commentary, “Holy Week and the Hatred of the Jews: Avoiding Anti-Judaism at Easter.”)
These words are not to diminish an exercise of faith. It is, indeed right and salutary to pray. As you do, I invite your faith to use more music, kisses, life, champagne and joy; so that religious words and actions are used in the spirit of love and peace they were intended.
Jesus Dies on the Cross
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you: Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’ And when Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished!” And then, crying with a loud voice, he said, ‘Father, into your handsI commend my spirit.’ And he bowed his head, and handed over his spirit.
Christ for us became obedient unto death: Even death on a cross.
Let us pray.
O, God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten son to death on the corss, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; who lives and reigns now and forever. Amen,
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy upon us.