Sermon Passion Sunday

This is not exactly what I said but it is what I was working from:

Passion is a word which in modern usage means something quite different from the use we have in Church. Passiontide is about Jesus' suffering from the Latin word for suffering and so on Passion Sunday, today, we read stories which seem to be about life but are struck through to their cores with strands of crucifixion.

The pace which John sets for his narrative is careful – whilst the message to Jesus is hurried and urgent, Jesus response is measured in the extreme. Right at the beginning of the passage we learn that Jesus understood, immediately, what was going on with Lazarus and was in control of the situation.

But he waits. We can assume that he knew, as Thomas did, that there would be serious repercussions if he were to venture back into Judea. In the conversations with the disciples before he leaves there is the usual clutter of misunderstanding but then there is this point of clarity when Thomas says to the other disciples, let us go with him to die. They know what they are letting themselves in for, even at this early point, they understand the opposition and still are willing to step onward in faith.

When Mary and Martha are mentioned in Luke's Gospel it is in a different context, there Martha is chided for busying herself with household chores and telling Mary off for simply sitting and being. But here in John it is Martha who actually acclaims Jesus for who he is, the Son of God and Mary is the one who comes after.

And then they both say the same to him – if Jesus had been there Lazarus would not have died, but he has and he is buried, come and see they say and take Jesus to their saddest place, their saddest place. No doubt they feel let down, they had asked Jesus to come and maybe just maybe if he had been there on time things might have been different.

So John has reminded us of who Jesus is and what he is capable of – but then the biggest surprise is yet to come. Lazarus who is well and truly dead comes back to life. We do not know the mechanics of this and I am not sure they matter very much. The bottom line is that Jesus brings life, but in bringing this physical life back he opens the door to his own death and to life for the whole of humankind.

This story, set very close to Jesus death, is the watershed moment after which the Jewish authorities decide that they simply cannot ignore Jesus any longer, they must act and preserve their own authority.

Have you ever had that experience where you plan to do something or go somewhere and then get cold feet about it. Sometimes the cold feet are warning for a good reason but often we get to where we were going and realize that things are at least OK – sometimes they are really good and we are excited, sometimes we find we are in the place or doing a thing which makes us feel really who we are – that brings out of us something about ourselves that is important.

It is almost as if in this story John is doing that, it shadows the Passion narrative – but it also allows the characters around Jesus and Jesus himself to be shown for who they really are. In this story Thomas and Martha – for all their other faults elsewhere in the Gospels, are shown as prophets and proclaimers of the Christ. The Jews are grumbly but not all outright angry but the leaders are – they set their faces against Jesus. And Jesus himself, Jesus is slow and deliberate, the Son of Man is allowing all of this for God's glory and for the salvation of the world, there is no hurry, he prepares and he understands what is going on.

This understanding of the situation is probably important in understanding Jesus' tears. Whilst that traditional interpretation that tears prove Jesus humanity is no less true, it does seem odd that he would weep over Lazarus when he seems to have known right from the beginning that this death was not the end for him. There was enormous grief around and no doubt Jesus hurt for his friends as they mourned their brother, but perhaps there is a larger grief in Jesus, that grief that comes out in the Garden of Gethsemane – that grief that comes from allowing himself to be who he really is – that grief from taking on the burden which is asked of him.

It is some of this suffering which we take on board during Passiontide – there is the physical road to the cross but there is also the pain in Jesus, the pain in God as He looks at a world which is torn apart and away from him, and knws that he is the only solution to that rift.

The next time we see Jesus in John it is again at the house of Mary and Martha and John again uses his narrative to confirm exactly what is going to happen. Jesus really is taking on the griefs and burdens of the whole world as he is annointed by Mary, a symbol of the annointing which will happen again after his death.

So as John has set the scene for the jounrey to the cross we are invited to join that scene. We are invited to travel with Jesus on this road up to Jerusalem, we are invited to ask Jesus to come to our saddest places as we approach his. We will both acclaim him as saviour of the world and shout crucify over the next couple of weeks – the journey might make us nervous but we will be going to the very heart of who we are.

There is no easy and pain free way to pay real attention to the passion of Christ and to get to Easter. This should be a profoundly unsettling time of year as we contemplate, not only our own sometimes failed responses to the love of God but also the continuing brokeness of God's world. It is about repentance but it is also about a call to positive action – to commit to truly live in the light of the resurrection.

The fact that Thomas and Martha take roles of proclamation should reassure us as we turn towards Jerusalem in these next two weeks. We ourselves enter that same shadow of the crucifixion in which they stand. It should reassure us that no matter where we have been and what we have done – at this moment in time we are called to be those who proclaim Christ, we are called to be those who follow the way of the cross in all its pain and promise – that is who we really are – we are people of God.

Next week we will read Matthew's Passion narrative in Church, it is no bad thing to read one of the narratives through privately as well. However busy we are, we should be mindful that we are at a special time of the year, that we are on a journey. For some Holy Week services can be hard to get to, but if you have time commit to coming to as many as you can. Holy Week is meant to be a bit of leg work for Christians.

This week might be a good time to think about exactly where you are on your journey – to carefully and mindfully offer to God those places where things have gone wrong and to begin to think about what we will carry forward out of this Lent as positive action in the rest of the year. Passiontide is not all doom and gloom – there is a message of hope at the end – but if we simply skirt around the darkness of this journey and the suffering in it – we will not appreciate the light so clearly. Yesterday I heard a child counting one, two, three, four, ten......and I thought to myself that simply missing out Passiontide and Holy Week is a bit like that counting.....she got there....but how?

We are invited to use all the numbers, to mull over our steps, to prepare carefully. Jesus will come and will go with us in all our paths, transforming them with a new sort of life and vitality. The journey can be a hard one, but it is also a good one, a very good journey to the heart of who we are called to be.