Liturgy of the Passion (Year A, RCL)

Matthew's writing is terse. This hasn't stopped some from imagining grimmer details.

The story of Jesus’ unjust trial and wrongful conviction must not be romanticized.

Let me cut to the chase, brothers and sisters. Is this what you think living in Christ looks like?

Do antisemitic appeals to the Bible always constitute an abuse of scripture? Would that it were so simple.

What heals me may harm another.

Isaiah’s suffering servant plays on our own ambivalent ideas about violence, passivity, and retribution.

In the hours before the Passion, the Jesus who was hidden becomes revealed.

In Matthew, Jesus’ identity as king is the major source of conflict.

When does compromise descend into treason or apostasy?

Pontius Pilate shows us what happens when the historical and the eternal intersect.

Judas is hardly the only one who lets Jesus down.

“One second-century pagan critic of Christianity was willing to tolerate everything else about Christians if they would only worship the gods.”

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Matthew 26:14–27:66; Philippians 2:5–11

During Holy Week, it's common for worship leaders to ask people to consider their place in the drama of Jesus' final days. To what extent do we betray him, deny him, insult him, crucify him? When do we, like the crowds, find ourselves gawking at suffering with prurient glee? When do we, like the thieves, alternately ridicule the truth, then believe in it? When do we, like the centurion, make our confession--though perhaps a moment too late?