By Father Casey
Palm Sunday is this weekend. Holy Week is upon us. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
I know December has laid claim to that title, at least in popular culture, but for Christians – and especially for Episcopalians – there is nothing to compete with the stories and liturgies of next week. We are at our climax, our pinnacle, our mountaintop. Everything we are about as disciples of Jesus Christ takes its meaning from Holy Week.
I’m not sure what you have going on in your life right now, but I encourage you to set as much of it down as you can and embrace these next eight days. The obligations of work and the opportunities for play will remain available after April 20, so focus your life on making the main thing the main thing.
Let me go ahead and acknowledge that the liturgies will not be short, simple, or sweet. They are filled with 2,000 years of richness and beauty: readings, prayers, music, and rituals that have been transforming lives and deepening souls since the time of the apostles. In a note to our parish over 30 years ago, Fr. Roper wrote, “We live in a world that is confused, bored, frustrated, and harassed. In the face of this, Holy Week offers us the opportunity to participate in the greatest realities of life, to visit the mountain top of history, to have a vision of the meaning behind and beyond all human existence. This week the church has no need to apologize for the fact that its services are lengthy, serious, and emotionally demanding. These difficulties are a small price to pay in return for the renewal of our life, to which we are summoned by none other than the Lord of Life himself.”
This weekend we’ll begin it all with the paradox of Palm Sunday. We’ll wave palms and sing “Hosanna” to the Lord, and only minutes later hear of his crucifixion. It is a jarring contradiction, one made all the more unsettling because of our tradition of speaking the words of the mob in the Passion gospel. Just moments after singing “All Glory, Laud, and Honor,” we’ll say, “Crucify him!” It makes my stomach turn every year, but it is also utterly honest. Our mouths and our hearts contain both.
We’ll also say one more line – and it’s this line that I’ve been thinking a lot about these days. After Jesus has been brought before Pilate, and the Roman governor declares his intent to release Jesus after having him flogged, the crowd cries out, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!” The same people who welcomed Jesus as king on Sunday, by Friday want Barabbas instead.
So who was Barabbas? In several cinematic adaptations of the Passion, he is portrayed as a murderous criminal, some sort of semi-deranged psychopath. But that’s not it at all. Barabbas wasn’t a bloodthirsty bandit, but a political prisoner. He led an insurgency against the Romans and killed someone during the uprising (Luke 23:18-19). He was viewed by the people of Jerusalem as a sort of hero, someone who had taken the fight to the occupiers, a rebel ready to kill for freedom. In this way, we should be imagining William Wallace, rather than Jack the Ripper.
In some ancient manuscripts, we are actually given his full name: Jesus Barabbas, which means “Jesus Son of the Father.” This makes the moment in the Passion all the more stark and striking. Which Jesus will we choose? Jesus of Nazareth, who calls us to the way of peace by loving our enemies and practicing radical forgiveness, or Jesus Barabbas, who is ready and willing to kill our enemies in the name of patriotism?
Whenever American Christians dismiss the politics of power over the politics of peace, what we’re saying is, “Release Barabbas for us!” When we claim faith in Jesus of Nazareth, but look to weapons and warfare to solve our problems, we are saying, “Release Barabbas for us!” When we say we are citizens of the kingdom of God, but look out at the world with anger and hostility, what we’re saying is “Release Barabbas for us!” It’s a choice that continues to be put before us all the time, and so far as I can tell, most of us are still choosing Barabbas.
So, when you read the Passion this weekend, and you are asked to be the voice of the mob, remember that their choice is our choice: will we hold fast to the way that leads to life and peace – the way of radical forgiveness, the way of nonviolence, the way of self-emptying love – or will we choose the way that will only lead to more of the same. Which Jesus do we choose?
Fr. Casey