The Gospel reading for this Sunday is "Luke's Passion" in it's entirety: Luke 22:14-23:56.
(https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A14-23%3A56&version=NRSVUE)
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"Jesus entered Jerusalem to the acclaim of crowds strewing branches before him and proclaiming him the king. A few days later, the same crowd gathered before Pilate to cry out for Jesus' crucifixion. What happened?
"[...] One can't help but suspect that people are crying out because everybody else is crying out, no matter what the outcry is about. Advertising usually does not advertise the product but its alleged popularity. Political campaigns do the same thing. What would happen if people stopped to listen to what people were actually saying instead of crying out what they think everybody else is crying out?
"It so happens that the Gospels do precisely this. The suggestion that the Gospels are Passion narratives with long introductions gives short shrift to what the Gospels are about. What these “long introductions” do is tell us at great length what Jesus actually said and what he taught. They also tell us what Jesus did before he was nailed to the cross, i.e. he healed people and cast out demons and he unilaterally forgave sins. These “long introductions” also tell us why the power brokers in Judea and Jerusalem wanted Jesus dead. By reading these “long introductions” to the Passion narrative, we are drawn away from crying out what everybody else is crying out and waving signs that only proclaim what the current fashion is believed to be.
"Instead, we are drawn into a very different social mimetic process, a process that builds up mutual respect between people, seeing people as they really are and as they really can become when they receive the unilateral forgiveness that Jesus gives them, a social process of not retaliating for wrongs done, a socially mimetic process of forgiving debts, of sharing what we can, of offering healing to others.
"It is instructive that the [Roman Catholic] Palm Sunday liturgy begins with everybody playing the part of the crowd welcoming Jesus with palms and then, a bit later, we hold these palms while acting the part of the crowd in crying out for Jesus' death during the reading or chanting of the Passion. What we need to do afterward is return to the “long introductions” to see what the fuss was about and hopefully, hear the cock crow as did Peter."
- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “Crying Out with Palm Branches in Our Hands.” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2013/03/22/crying-out-with-palm-branches-in-our-hands/)
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"In the Gospel Passion stories, it is the unity of an otherwise diverse crowd that is most telling. In Luke's Gospel, Pilate sends Jesus to the Jewish king Herod, and Herod sends him back, to which Luke observes, “That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies (Luke 23:12).” Do you see? This story is about the coming together of a crowd. We can be behaving like enemies toward each other, when all of a sudden a common enemy comes along and we are friends. [...]
"The Christian Gospel, as we said, isn't about this group or that group needing forgiveness. It's not about this person or that person needing forgiveness. It's about all of us needing forgiveness for our way of gaining a relative peace against common enemies. [...] That's why it took the Lamb of God to give himself up to our sacrificial slaughters. It literally took the Lamb of God to take away the Sin (and it is singular in John 1:29) of the world, that song we sing as we come to Holy Communion because our Risen Lord is our means of Holy Communion.
"In other words, our way of communion, our way of having peace since the beginning of human societies, doesn't have to be our way of communion any longer. In the Lamb of God and his forgiveness we have a new source of peace for a Holy Communion, a new way of coming together as human beings which doesn't have to be over against anyone else. [...] We have all been baptized into that Holy Communion. We come here again this morning to be fed and nourished in it, a new way of peace. So that when we leave here this morning we might serve him the Lamb of God and truly be witnesses to that new way of peace in this world, that Holy Communion, that holy way of coming together as God's children, all of God's children."
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on April 13, 2003 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/passionb_2003_ser/)
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"That's what's happening here today in the triumphal entry narrative: Jesus comes in on a colt, trying to signal that he's not like Caesar, and the mob still treats him like he is. You see, the mob doesn't get it, the crowd doesn't get it. They still don't get it. [...] Why? Why can't they see what's right in front of them, a king on a [donkey] colt? [...] They wanted him to come in, they wanted him to save the day, they wanted a 'deus ex machina', they wanted a god out of the sky, they wanted a thunderbolt, they wanted a Zeus! They wanted a Rambo Jesus like you get in the conservative churches with their militarism. Any they wanted a Che Guevera Jesus like you get in the liberal churches with their progressive so-called politics.
"But none of them, none of them, want a God who will die. Because when the god dies, well, that's the end of the story. There's no more free lunch. Nobody wants that, but that's what's coming. And this is what they cannot see. They cannot see this, why? Because they're a mob. All they have done is imitated each other's desires. All this 'happy clappy' stuff you see - joy, joy to the world, and all this stuff that's going on with the triumphal entry narrative - it's the same thing you see at a football stadium, it's the same thing you see at a rock concert, it's the same thing you see at a Macy's day parade in New York City. It's just a group phenomenon. [...]
"What is it they cannot see? Here's their king riding on a colt, getting ready to go down in flames, in infamy, and they can't see it yet. And what they don't see is that within a week they will be shouting “Crucify him!” Same crowd, same mob, same set of disciples will abandon, betray and deny Jesus. Just like we would today, just like we still do.
"[...] Every one of us has a Caesar, alright, nobody doesn't have a Caesar. We all have Caesars, we all use Caesar's coins, so we're all bound to Caesar. Caesar runs a debt economy, that's how Caesar works. Now, the Gospel's about forgiveness of debts. The whole Gospel is infused with forgiveness of debts. The Jubilee is about forgiveness of debts. What the human species needs is forgiveness of their debts, and that's what's accomplished on the Cross. God has forgiven all debts. There are no debts in the Kingdom of God. You owe God nothing, I owe God nothing. Nothing can be owed to God because God doesn't require anything. In the same way, on this planet where God reigns, debts are forgiven. Sin is forgiven, and debts are forgiven.
"[...] Jesus understood [this]. He took all societal debt to the Cross, and cancelled it. It's over. Which means we neither owe God, nor do we owe each other. When we give, remember Jesus said, “Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” [...] Forget that you even gave, don't be comparing yourself out there. Forgive debts. If people owe you, forgive them. That's how the world's going to turn, folks, into something positive."
- Michael Hardin, from FB video (https://www.facebook.com/michaelhardin1517/videos/290303259782889)
[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog post and Paul J. Nuechterlein sermon, and for further discussion and reflection on the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/passion_c/]
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