Wait with the Women

Palm Sunday C

On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment, Luke tells us. OK, but I’m not really sure I believe it. Just the day before, darkness had come over the whole land and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. That is to say, all the most reliable measures of life—the rotation of the earth and the holiness of the temple—had failed. Oh, and Jesus died. That sure seems like conditions for the least restful Sabbath ever.

In a matter of days, Jesus went from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the seat of his authority as the long awaited King of the Jews, to the mocking inscription “This is the King of the Jews” affixed over his cross. That is, the Roman Empire’s most shameful instrument for silencing challengers to their authority.

Admittedly, it probably wasn’t only or even primarily the Roman authority that Jesus and his movement threatened. The deeply entrenched temple leadership had become increasingly uneasy with the teaching of this unsanctioned prophet. Nor were they fans of Herod Antipas, the Jewish leader who ruled Galilee as a client state of the Roman Empire. Whose local governor was Pontius Pilate.

You could think of this government as something akin to contemporary colonial states which have both an elected prime minister and a governor general appointed by a foreign monarch. We saw the tensions between local and colonial leadership in full display during the recent Caribbean travels of Prince William and Kate Middleton. In contemporary times such an anachronistic rivalry is mostly polite. But in this Gospel, Herod and Pilate—the antagonistic local and colonial authorities, respectively—suddenly became friends in the face of an unpredictable leader of a popular movement and a crowd of angry chief priests and leaders.

The threat of instability makes for some strange bedfellows. And violence ensues. Where else have we seen such a disaster happen, with such speed and devastation? Well, clearly, in the invasion of Ukraine: our contemporary parable of autocratic power gone awry, with the uncritical support of the Russian Orthodox Church. But misuse of power doesn’t happen only in some faraway place. All of us have to account for the toxic mix of racism and law that built our current school to prison pipeline, or stand your ground laws enforced at gunpoint, or legislative refusal to acknowledge gender and sexual diversity. These civil liberties are often threatened with the silent (or active) complicity of the church.

“Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy,” warns priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor. “He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff’s office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar.”

All of which leads me to wonder: when push comes to violent shove, whose subjects are we, really? It’s a valuable spiritual exercise, at all times, to consider who we might be like in Bible stories. In a long, dramatic reading like today’s, you might try on a few different characters. Are you a hopeful Jew, waving a palm branch on the Jerusalem road in confidence that God’s promises are being fulfilled? Or are you one of the apostles at the table with Jesus, arguing about who is greatest? Are you Peter, making brave commitments but unable to fulfill them? I’ve surely been that kind of guy.

Or are you Judas? I’m serious about that question. Maybe you’ve been hoping so long and hard, and left everything to follow the man or the movement who seems to embody all your hope, only to see the mission apparently fail. Better to just be done with it—to be done with him—than to suffer more disappointment.

Are you Pilate, or Herod, the chief priests or elders, a soldier, or Simon the Cyrene, shouldering the shame of the cross? Are you a criminal, hanging on the cross alongside Jesus? Don’t be afraid to try on the role of a bad guy, of which there are plenty of variations in this story. We all have some bad guy in us, or we probably wouldn’t be here in church seeking God’s grace. This week, of all weeks, is the time to acknowledge our fatal entanglement in human sin. And return to our God, who stands ready to forgive.

It’s when we are honest about our inner landscape of good and evil that we can practice the classic Christian discipline of repentance and begin to make better choices. We could,  for example, choose to be like the unnamed women in the story we just heard. Do you remember them? Certainly, there would have been woman at the Passover meal; it didn’t serve itself! Then there was that truth-telling servant girl, who forced Peter to face his denial. And there were the women of Galilee who followed Jesus to Golgotha and waited, even under the very shadow of his cross. Which one of these characters might you be?

Maybe it’s the women who can guide our Holy Week soul work. That is, we can—like them—continue to show up: to serve, to tell the truth, to bear witness even when everything seems to being going all wrong. To observe Sabbath even when the circumstances seem like anything but restful. To follow Jesus in both triumph and tragedy, and—when it is finished—to prepare the spices. And, at the risk of getting ahead of the story, to carry them to the very door of the tomb.

All the while, waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. Like Joseph of Arimathea, waiting expectantly even when the best he could offer was to receive the body. Waiting expectantly, remembering that Jesus himself said that when he ate the Passover again, it would be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. That’s right, fulfilled. The kingdom, in the meal. That’s a promise, not just a good idea. This Holy Week, we’ve got stories to hear, tears to shed, and a whole kingdom’s worth of bread to share. Show up with us, my friends: listen, take and eat.