What Happened?

There is a terrible paradox at the heart of Palm Sunday. On the one hand, a hand raised high in exultation and triumph, it is a day of celebration and rejoicing, as we recall how Jesus is welcomed as a king into his capital city, Jerusalem, with the crowd waving palm branches and strewing their coats before him.

On the other hand, a hand clenching at our heart in fear and  shame, even as we sing, “All Glory, Laud and Honor”, we know that this king is on his way to betrayal, desertion, torture, and a cruel and grisly death without honor.

            Doug Davidson, writing in the periodical “The Other Side” (March 2002, p.9), was recently re-awakened to the paradox of Palm Sunday by his young son. He writes,

“Last summer, my three-year-old son and I stopped off at the seminary library to return a book for a friend. Our family has lived on the campus of this Lutheran seminary since Jennifer began classes here a year and a half ago. But this was our son’s first time inside the old stone building that houses the library.

As we stepped through the bright red doors into the darkened vestibule, Elliot stopped in his tracks. There, on the wall to his right, hung a sculpted crucifix, about five feet tall. I watched his young eyes study Jesus’ agonized face, the dying body nailed to a tree, the nails piercing his hands and feet.

I knew the image was a new one to him. Although he’s been raised in the church, the crosses in our Baptist congregation are all clean and sanitized; their Jesuses all resurrected and ascended.

For a moment, I considered hustling him back out the door, trying to shield him from this holy horror in the same way that I “rewrite” the violent plots of his beloved Batman comic books when I read them aloud. But it was too late; he had already taken it all in.

I thought he might cry. Instead, without ever taking his eyes off the dying Jesus, he slowly spoke words filled with great sadness, mystery, and wonder: What happened?”

            “What happened?” It really is a question that cannot be avoided today. If we can’t make some sense of what happened that led to Jesus’ betrayal and torture and death, then how can we even begin to make sense of what happened that first Easter day? If we cannot place ourselves in the triumphal march into Jerusalem, around the table with Jesus at the Passover celebration, in the garden with Jesus as he prays that he might be spared, or with the disciples as they flee after Jesus’ arrest, how can we possibly place ourselves at the empty tomb or on the road to Emmaus with the risen Christ?

            Again, what happened?

n      What happened that this spirit-filled and compassionate soul might be sold out by one his inner-circle for 30 pieces of silver?

n      What happened that this gifted healer became an object of cruel punishment and was subjected to the most exquisitely painful method of execution yet devised? 

n      What happened that this unarmed peasant who preached non-violence so threatened the religious and governmental authorities and their power that they conspired to silence him once and for all?

n      What happened that the joyous “Hosannas!” of the multitudes as Jesus entered the Holy City on Sunday only five days later were changed to blood-thirsty cries of “Crucify him!”?

n      What happened that on Sunday palm branches were strewn before Jesus, but on Friday Jesus was hammered to a tree?

n      What happened that of all those who followed Jesus on that ride up the mountain on Sunday, none stayed by his side on the night of his betrayal, or on the day of his death?

n      What happened that we could kill the incarnate God?

n      What happened that we have become so used to this shocking and tragic and humanity-indicting event that it is only through the witness of a shocked three-year-old that we might be re-awakened to its incomprehensibility?

            The Biblical scholars try to tell us what happened: that Jesus threatened the powers that be, that his over-turning the tables of the money-lenders in the Temple united the religious and business leaders against him; or that his defeat of the powers of death, illustrated by the raising of Lazarus, was too much for those who make out quite well, thank you very much, from the profitable ways of death. 

Yet even as they struggle to explain the depths of perversity in the human soul, or the willingness of humans in all generations to betray Jesus by turning our backs on the hungry and the homeless, the oppressed and the poor, or the ways in which unmet expectations can lead followers to desert and look elsewhere for fulfillment of their dreams, I find myself unconvinced, still wondering, what happened?

            But if human motivation and intent in the death of Jesus are difficult to fathom, how much more so is it difficult to understand and comprehend the faithfulness and love of God as revealed through Jesus.

            For let us not forget that Jesus could have turned from his path of radical obedience to God’s will, he could have turned from his self-giving love of us. Right until the end he could have avoided suffering and death – having been abandoned by his followers, he could have abandoned us; having fought the good fight and labored long and tirelessly to bring a prodigal people back to God, how could he have been blamed for calling it quits on those who had quit him?

And yet Jesus chose to endure it all so that we might know the full height and breadth of God’s love for us, a God who would stoop to take on our common lot and endure what it means to be human right through to the bloody end, a God who would model for us radical obedience and self-giving love, a God who was not content to give 95% and then get out of Dodge when the going got tough, but ran the race right to the end, and in so doing won for us the prize that we on our own could never hope to win, paid the debt we could never satisfy.

            On the cross, Jesus looks humanity’s brutality and cruelty square in the face and says, “I forgive you”.

Even as we pound the nails into his palms and feet, Jesus says to us, “Nothing can separate you from my love.”

Even as we throw dice for rights to his bloody clothes Jesus promises to clothe us with radiant garments fit for a heavenly court.

Even as his arms are stretched out wide on the cross-beam, Jesus freely offers to us an embrace of eternal love.

            What on earth happened? Or, maybe, what in hell happened? Or perhaps even better, what in heaven happened?

Who can comprehend the amazing and wondrous undying love of Jesus?

            Sometimes it causes me to

 tremble.          

-----------------