8^th April 2010

 

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley (28 March 2010)

Lessons -- Isaiah 50:4-9a; Luke 19:36-42; 23:26-28

'And when Jesus drew near and saw the city (Jerusalem) he wept over
it, saying, "Would that even today you knew the things that make for
peace! But now they are hid from your eyes." (19:41,42 RSV)'. 'But
(later) turning to the grieving women he said, "Daughters of
Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your
children." (23:28 RSV)'

Jesus weeps over the city's failure to see God's presence in him. But then
he stops others weeping for him as he goes to the Cross! The texts for
Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday (which is one day in the Church year)
reveal the grief-stricken love of God for an often inhuman world and
faithless Church, as well as summoning us to participate in God's
suffering love for humanity.

In the 'triumphal entry into Jerusalem' the expectant 'crowd of
disciples', as portrayed by Luke, sees in Jesus a sign of hope. Dispirited
by years of mourning because of the inhuman state of the world, and
feeling in their bones the 'silence of God', they greet him
enthusiastically as the bearer of hope. Here is God's prophet bringing
'salvation'. No wonder they cry, 'Hosanna! Praise God!'

But all is not as it seems. Jesus isn't a godlike political figure, like
Caesar Augustus of whom similar things were said when he brought 'peace'
to the provinces after nearly 100 years of civil war. When Jesus comes
into the city he is not at the head of a vast army on a powerful steed but
is alone on a humble ass. He doesn't promise personal happiness, Jewish
domination or world peace.

Instead, he weeps! Not 'tears of joy' but 'tears of sorrow'. He weeps at
the hostility of citizens in Jerusalem, the Holy City, to God's presence.

Luke alone of the Gospels tells us that Jesus wept on coming into the
city. He is also the only one to tell us about the Prodigal Son, the Good
Samaritan, Zacchaeus and others where the compassion and goodness of God
is displayed in what Jesus says and does. Luke wants us to see Jesus'
distress that the 'People of God' do not see the mercy of God in him.

So Jesus wept! In this he stands in the line of prophets, like Jeremiah,
who are distressed by the presence of evils within and beyond their faith-
communities -- false teaching, pagan worship, immorality, injustice and
self-pity! Jesus wept because, despite their enthusiasm, these folk too
were blind to the reality of God. Unlike other messianic figures, he
doesn't celebrate! No enthusiasm. No joy. He weeps!

These are not tears of self-pity. 'Do not weep for me,' he says to the
distraught women who were with him on the way to the Cross, 'weep for
yourselves and for your children!' (23:28)

At Easter we often feel sorry for Jesus as the tragic victim of hard-
hearted priests, politicians and people. Such feelings are natural in a
society or culture where claiming the status of a victim is a sure way to
get sympathy -- and power. We sympathise with Jesus 'the victim'.
Liturgies for the Stations of the Cross often equate our unfair pain and
suffering with his. As our natural reaction to unjust suffering is to say
'poor me / them', so we are inclined to say of him 'poor Jesus'.

Why then does Jesus say, 'Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves.'?

In Death on a Friday Afternoon (2000), Richard Neuhaus says that we should
weep for our lost innocence so starkly displayed in Jesus' crucifixion. We
should weep at the way in which we / humanity / Church have lost the
vision of what is Absolute, Good, True and Beautiful and turned on the One
in whom they were perfectly embodied (p40).

In Meditations on the Cross and the Resurrection (1985), JV Taylor goes
further, noting that Jesus rejects 'easy spontaneous emotion -- the quick
release of tension -- because it is misdirected and dangerous. Tears for
the physical suffering of the Crucified . . . are too shallow; it focuses
attention on the wrong things.' (p2ff.) We must guard against this,
especially because 'we are accustomed to watching the misery of others on
our TV or cinema screens without ever having to do anything about it. But
it is very rarely that we weep for truth. It is very rarely that we weep
for our sins or for the love of God. Pity is too cheap. We need the
bracing realism of Jesus who turned out the professional mourners -- Why
this crying and commotion?' (p3.)

Until we learn to weep with Jesus at the evils which afflict the world and
Church, our pity will be merely an excuse to avoid involvement with the
suffering love of God. 'Weep for yourselves,' says Jesus, not from self-
pity, but because you are in danger of evading the demands of
discipleship.

We aren't called to feel sorry for Christ, but to recognise that the
victim of inhumanity is also, and at the same time, the victorious Son of
God who gives his Church courage to withstand evil. As Neuhaus puts it,
the Cross of Jesus should cause us to have a deep sense of 'holy
dissatisfaction' with ourselves, the Church and the world, which is not
introspective pitying but rejoices in the restoration of our humanity in
Christ and enables us to preach the word of hope in the midst of our
grieving world.

Thus we are summoned to resist inhuman, unrighteous, self-righteous or
self-indulgent actions which scar the minds and bodies of so many of our
fellows. We cannot hear these words today without thinking of violence in
Zimbabwe and Burma, terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan, forced
abortions in China and India, continued trafficking in human cargo, and
the like. In so many places where people cry out for justice and dignity,
'tears of blood' ('tears of God') are being shed where 'tears of shame'
('tears of confession') should be shed.

We only begin to see the victorious suffering love of God in Christ when,
at his calling, we become more deeply involved in the world! Not by
throwing ourselves into causes to justify our existence, but by seeing
real sin, evil and death (in ourselves as in others) in the light of the
Cross.

On Palm / Passion Sunday we are faced with the true mystery and triumph of
God's suffering love. Here 'every human suffering, agony and grief and
every human evil, wrong and injustice is focused into a single event --
the dying of the Son of God' (Taylor, p3ff). Here is the One who bears the
suffering of humanity. Here is hope for our scarred world!

Remarkably too there is also hope for a faithless Church! When Jesus says,
'Do not weep not for me but weep for yourselves and your children,' he
particularly has in mind Jewish and Christian communities of faith which
have rejected the reconciling love of God in him or forgotten their
responsibility in and for the sake of the world.

* Weep for yourselves when you tolerate the atheist depiction of the Cross
as 'divine child abuse'.

* Weep for yourselves when you tolerate politicians, church leaders and
citizens who trivialise sexual relations and demean the sanctity of
marriage between a man and a woman.

* Weep for yourselves when you tolerate abuse of children (unborn and
living), girls and women, frail old people, the disabled, refugees,
migrants and the Indigenous people.

* Weep for yourselves when you begrudge forgiveness to those who have
wronged you.

* Weep for yourselves when you tolerate contempt for God and are
embarrassed to confess 'Jesus as Lord over her (the Church's) own life . .
. and Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new
humanity' (Basis of Union, par 3).

Luke's Palm / Passion story invites us to 'weep' with Jesus for the plight
of the world and the Church by entering more fully into our
responsibilities in and for the world. We are called to 'weep' for the
world and the Church -- in the manner of Christ's love for us and our
broken world, not out of self-pity. Then we shall see in him the Son of
God who reconciles the world to 'the Father' and be empowered to commit
ourselves to sharing in his costly love for our grieving world.

If we see in the Cross of Christ the restoration of our broken humanity
then we will be prepared to resist powerful forces in Church and community
that are contemptuous of what God has done in him for us / humanity and
mock the unique dignity for which we have been created and redeemed.

May our 'tears of blood' and 'tears of shame' also be 'tears of joy' at
the restoration of our humanity in Christ!

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt
Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of
Confessing Congregations within the UCA.