Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Lectionary Readings

The crowds preceding him and those following kept crying out and saying:

“Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is the he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest.”

Holy Week begins with the glory and dark irony of Palm Sunday. The Holy City of Jerusalem seems to welcome the “Messiah” and yet there are secret conversations plotting his death. Readers of Saint Matthew’s Gospel cannot forget this is the same city that sent an army to kill the infant, not many years before.

Nor can we blame the conspirators alone. Despite their enthusiastic greeting on Sunday, the fickle mob will threaten to destroy the entire city unless Jesus is crucified on Friday.

That sudden, fatal shift seems almost unimaginable, but we have only to read the newspaper to discover it happens all the time. How many entertainers, athletes, and politicians are at the top of their game one day, and are dragged through the mud the next? Something was said, or discovered, or revealed that instantly destroyed this individual’s life work.

If there is a difference in our day, we’re not so eager to brutally murder them in public. But the savage irrationality is the same, as is the unwillingness to hear a plausible excuse, explanation, or apology. As Holy Week unfolds Jesus will offer none to his accusers, the authorities, or the crowd. He is silent, like a lamb led to slaughter.

The impulse that kills him – let’s call a spade a spade – is human sacrifice. The mob hopes that by destroying this individual it will be purged of sin and restored to original innocence. They fasten their uneasy guilt, shame, and remorse to a “scapegoat” and drive him into the wilderness with the burden of their sins.

You’ve heard the term before. Perhaps you have not read the original passage from the Old Testament Book of Leviticus 16:

When he has finished purging the inner sanctuary, the tent of meeting and the altar, Aaron shall bring forward the live goat. Laying both hands on its head, he shall confess over it all the iniquities of the Israelites and their trespasses, including all their sins, and so put them on the goat’s head. He shall then have it led into the wilderness by an attendant. The goat will carry off all their iniquities to an isolated region.

When the goat is dispatched into the wilderness, Aaron shall go into the tent of meeting, strip off the linen vestments he had put on when he entered the inner sanctuary, and leave them in the tent of meeting. After bathing his body with water in a sacred place, he shall put on his regular vestments, and then come out and offer his own and the people’s burnt offering, in atonement for himself and for the people, and also burn the fat of the purification offering on the altar.

The man who led away the goat for Azazel shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; only then may he enter the camp. The bull and the goat of the purification offering whose blood was brought to make atonement in the inner sanctuary, shall be taken outside the camp, where their hides and flesh and dung shall be burned in the fire. The one who burns them shall wash his garments and bathe his body in water; only then may he enter the camp…

The Letter to the Hebrews recalls this passage as it says Jesus was “led outside” the city like the scapegoat:

…The bodies of the animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as a sin offering are burned outside the camp. Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate, to consecrate the people by his own blood.

He then invites those who believe in Jesus and will follow the Lamb wherever he goes

Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.

 This is the invitation of Holy Week. We have followed the Lamb into Jerusalem. We will go with him to the Cenacle and the Last Supper, to Gethsemane, Calvary, and Easter.