Comments on Reading the Passion Narrative

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

These were the segments that we read, chosen to concentrate on the story line.

 Preliminary Remarks:

1) This is a narrative, a story of things that happened, because in the Bible most of what is revealed to us comes primarily in what happens only secondarily by what people say. What is said is often an interpretation of what is done, or what happens. So in this narrative of how Jesus died we see the basis of the interpretation of who he is and why we should listen to him. We listen to what he says because of what he did, and because what he did revealed to us who he is.

2) In this story we are to identify not with Jesus but with all the other characters. We are the scribes and Pharisees, the priests and Roman officials, the police who arrest him and the disciple who betrays him, the false witnesses who accuse him and the disciple who denies him. If we do not get this identification right we participate in one of the most grievous Christian crimes: we blame the Jews for his death when we should be blaming ourselves.

Concluding remarks: Using the principle of identification with the “others” I find twenty actions for which to question, blame or reproach myself (i.e. the things done to Jesus by these other characters in the story).

i)                   I applaud Jesus, as long as I can be one of a crowd that is applauding.

ii)                 I am equivocal about his authority. I say, “I don’t know.”

iii)               I accept his teaching but do not accept him. Patronizingly I congratulate him for seeing that the Great Commandment is to love God and the neighbor.

iv)                I do not give sacrificially like the widow, who gives all her wealth to the temple, but I hedge. We do not even give the biblical 10%. I conjecture 2% as the median in our congregation.

v)                  I sell Jesus for money – 30 pieces of silver – to the powers of this world.

vi)                I fall asleep when he needs my personal support (Gethsemane).

vii)              I do not believe him when he warns me that I shall deny knowing him.

viii)            I lash out with my sword just before I run away. I am the coward who literally cuts and runs rather than stand with Jesus. How brave!

ix)                I put Jesus on trial and accuse him of trumped up crimes.

x)                  I find his claim to be son of God blasphemous.

xi)                I deny knowing him.

xii)              I choose Barabbas, a man of violence and war, before I choose Jesus. Jesus I leave to die.

xiii)            I mock his kingship, kneeling before him as a joke. What irony! The only appropriate thing I do I do as a joke! Thus I ridicule the Kingdom of God and take membership in the realm of violence.

xiv)            I bear his Cross, but under duress, and deliver it to the place where it is set up with him hanging on it. Thus I assist in even the technical side of his murder

xv)              I crucify him, listening to his cry of utter loneliness. All of us have left him; Jesus is alone; even his dear Father has left him!

xvi)            I admit he is “a,” not “the,” son of god, a Greco-Roman way of saying “a very remarkable man.” I am willing to grant that he is extraordinary, but not that he is God incarnate, the second person of the Holy Trinity who thus commands my allegiance absolutely.

xvii)          I see the veil of the temple slashed and I see that behind the veil there is nothing. All that matters now is on the Cross, outside the city, not in the temple

xviii)        I bury him lovingly. Now that he is dead I can admit that I loved him all along.

xix)            I watch and see where they bury him so that I can come back on the day after tomorrow. I note that all of us watching are women, many of whom served his needs during his ministry, and came up to Jerusalem with him.

xx)              I resolve to return to that place on that day, and thus I set the scene for Easter, for my witnessing the greatest event in all of human history, the culmination of what began with the birth of Jesus, namely, the Resurrection of Christ from the dead.

This is a mere sample of all the riches in the Passion Narrative. Let us read it again and again so that we might come to Easter knowing the great work God has done to bring us to that point of victory.

Amen.