April 4, 2004 - Palm/Passion Sunday
Isaiah 50:4-9a
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Luke 23:1-49
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"Loved with a Passion"

“Hosanna! Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the Highest!”

The crowds welcomed Jesus with exuberance as he entered Jerusalem in anticipation of the Passover.  They cried out in recognition of his identity as “Son of David,” one who came to them “in the name of the Lord.”  In some ways Jesus is once again confronted with the same temptations he faced as he prepared to enter his public ministry – to prove his identity.  Exuberance will give way to anger and accusation and, again, he will be asked to prove who he is.  “If you are the Son of God….come down off of that cross.”  It is not inappropriate to read the Passion for the first time on the day we celebrate the Lord’s triumphal entry because without the one the other doesn’t make sense.

People are looking and looking throughout Jesus’ ministry for him to prove himself.  Work a miracle.  Restore the kingdom.  Do something spectacular.  And when he does the most spectacular thing of all, give up his life freely for the sake of love alone, they miss it.  The whole key to understanding it is in the word ‘passion.’  Passion at once means suffering, unbridled emotion or enthusiasm for something, and even intense love.

 It shares a root word with ‘patience’ and when you put the whole picture of that word together you see the story.  We’ll use the expression, “I love you so much it hurts” and there we, unwittingly, describe passion.  It is unbridled, exuberant love, which is even willing to suffer it is so strong.  This is the love God has for us – this is the love demonstrated in Jesus the Christ.

Yesterday, reluctantly, I went to see what for me will always be, “The Gospel according to Mel Gibson.”  I saw this overwhelming, powerful, story of God’s passionate love taken down simply to the suffering.  While there were hints of what that film could have offered, what settled in was mind and emotion numbing violence.  What I saw was not Jesus the Lamb of God – I saw Jesus the action hero, a new version of ‘Lethal Weapon’ or some other film, who had a seemingly endless supply of blood and an ability to endure violence that would have left any of us in shock or dead, long before we could have gotten to the cross.  Mel, like so many who get caught up in the ‘Jesus suffered for you’ school of theology focus on this point and miss the totality of the Passion.  They reduce Jesus to this one point, and inadvertently they turn his suffering and death into an idol, missing the point that Jesus dies to embrace our life fully and transform it. Jesus came that we might have life.  He taught, he lived, and yes, he died toward life.

The Passion should not be some mind and heart numbing exercise, but a powerful reminder of God’s overwhelming love for us.  It should elicit in us not revulsion, but devotion and a determination to live life as God would have us live it: loving others as freely and completely as God has loved us.  It is appropriate that today we come to the Lord’s Table, where he gave that new commandment to love one another in that way, and then left us this meal as a reminder.  No wonder our Puritan forebears called it a “visible Gospel,” because in these simple actions we recall what Jesus did and taught.  With simple ordinary means we renew our own faith and dedication to be people of passionate love.