Luke 22:14 - 23:56
Passion Sunday - Year C
If we take a Wesleyan Trinitarian look at the last verses we do not see Jesus only dying, but G*O*D and Spirit as well.
In hymnody this is:
O Love divine, what hast thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father's coeternal Son
bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th'immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
In Luke the rejection, suffering, darkness, and death are not experienced as an absence of the Holy.
Here we can imagine "God the Son" emptying into "God the Father" through "God the Spirit". G*O*D dies, no less than Jesus dies or you or I die.
Where, then, are you commending yourself, committing yourself? Which, I think, asks how you are living. Are you living as noisily as Jesus? This question from the last lines of today's comment by Tom Ehrich: "This is a time for noisy footsteps, for standing up to forces of darkness, for shouts of outrage over what our culture is doing to its people. No more fascination with a fabricated 'passion,' while real tragedy happens down the street. No more pretending that our fortunes aren't all bound together. No more kisses of betrayal. No more silence."
We get here, in part, by claiming and encouraging one another with our experience that G*O*D is not absent. Beckoned or not, G*O*D is present even in our individual death, our particular darkness, our specific suffering, our unique rejection.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html
Passion:
There are different ways of emptying oneself. One way brings one to one's self (non-exploitation). Another way loses one's self (demanding). Both can be trancelike. Both are open to temptation and subversion.
We wrestle with this all the time. Is this a time to not respond? Is this a time to use every tongue at our disposal? What is obedience and what pride?
Pre-crucifixion, non-follower knees were unbent, goose-stepping toward mob rule. Post-crucifixion followers on bended knee demand a loyalty pledge be on the tip of everyone's tongue to roll off at a moment's notice.
We move from a passionate experience to being passionate about another's passion and, in turn, inflicting said passion upon others. What does it mean to follow one claimed to be non-exploitative and not exploit same for greater ends? This is an impossible line to walk without falling off on one side and then another.
So it is that someone's image of randomly handing some congregants a palm branch as they come to worship, while others receive a stone or nothing at all is a wonderful one. All of this: from exuberant praise, to stoning him softly with a cross, to not knowing what is happening or where to gain traction in the turmoil - is going on within and around us all the time.
May your right hand palm know what your left hand stone is doing that you might break both trances before they lead to one exploitation or another and someone ends up dead enough to require the preparation of spices and ointments. Such preparation is little enough sorrow and restitution for injuries done.
- - -
rail and roil
tumultuous living
claiming privilege
demanding rights
sturm and drang
rule our hearts
parade our passion
and on a sabbath
night and noon
rest happens
creation blooms
again
slavery breaks
finally
we take the bodies
harmed and killed
in careful hands
and perfumed bands
to lay in pieces
our own brokenness
peaceless
on bended knee
confession rolls
as it has before
tongues promise
yet again
calamity remembered
still
and on a sabbath
night and noon
hope happens
creation blooms
again
slavery breaks
finally
. . .