Liturgy of the Passion (Year A, RCL)

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?

In her most recent book, Blessed Are the Consumers, Sallie McFague focuses on kenosis as the key element in shaping a Christian alternative to the pervasive religion of consumerism. McFague says that consumerism consists of those cultural patterns and practices by which people “find meaning and fulfillment through the consumption of goods and services.” We may rightly identify consumerism as a religion.

Like Willimon and Hauerwas, Donald MacKinnon began with Philippians 2.

Bart Ehrman's conclusions aren't novel to anyone familiar with historical scholarship on Christology. But those aren't the readers he has in mind.

How does a crowd turn from shouts of joy to cries of murder in such a short span?

Some people conflate the two words; others see them as an oxymoron. Since leaving the army, I've found that they're both right in some ways and wrong in others.

If this Sunday's service seems crowded and discordant, there’s a historical reason for it: the lectionary readings are a combination of two different local liturgies.

“For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” When Paul appeals to the self-emptying nature of Christ as one of the central Christian impulses for generosity, he is ringing a familiar chord. Generosity for the Corinthians is grounded in self-emptying in much the same way that joy and worship are grounded in self-emptying for the Philippians.

This week is Palm and/or Passion Sunday, and choices will vary as to the form of worship and the point at which the sermon falls. Palm Sunday, with its palms waving and salutations sung to the Savior, is an event that children will enter into readily even if adults are a bit shy. If the choice is for a Passion Sunday emphasis, a dramatic reading is memorable for those who speak the parts and those who listen--and the passion narrative lends itself particularly well to this approach.

It is, after all, the greatest story ever told.

Another option is to focus on the second lesson.

At one end of Matthew, Jesus goes free. At the other, cruel, ritualized slaughter befalls him.

I once lived in a village in Germany that lay at the foot of a mountain covered in deep forest. A narrow farm separated the houses from the forest, and a cemetery occupied a piece of land part way up the mountain. Sometimes on my daily walks I stopped at the cemetery. It was the busiest place in town.

Maybe the real reason we show betrayers so little compassion is that we’re afraid there is some Judas chromosome within all of us.

The passion narrative is the story of a series of violations. Is it good for us to find our identity in it?