"Even Unto Death"

Sunday, March 13, 2014

While standing in line for my lunch today, I heard two high school students discussing their hectic choir schedule and how the varied service of Palm/Passion Sunday fit into it.  The one who I would guess was raised Catholic was explaining to his friend (who I think was hired to sing in the choir) that we have separate services on Good Friday for the Passion but "No one goes to those."

There is something jarring about a proper Palm Sunday Mass -- beginning outside in jubilation and palms and an altogether special, festive feel (if done well).  We enter the Mass with that energy, and then, all of a sudden really, it turns on us.  We know it's coming, but we still have a bit of joy in the half-acted out account of the Last Supper before we reach the agony in the garden, the arrest and mocking, and finally the death of our Lord.  It's a long story that we stand for to show respect and honor, like we stand at a funeral of a fallen loved one.

It feels a bit like standing at a graveside service, quiet and respectful and mournful and a huge block of text mostly washing over us.  It takes a special phrase to make it stick to us, and it's usually just one per event.

The priest lumped even more events together in his homily, talking about how we can't have Easter without Good Friday.  We can't have that joy and reunion without the pain first.  Which is a better answer than most of the ones we say about why bad things happen to good people -- or even just why bad things happen.

But the reflection booklet offers a different question: do we stand by even when it's hopeless?  The book does a good job of setting up that it doesn't necessarily make you a monster if the answer is no.  It makes a point of saying that energetic people who love to solve problems sometimes cave and run in the place of a helpless victim.  Illness is like that -- at some point, you realize you can't fight it.

Like the apostles, the booklet explains.  They were willing to fight in the garden, when they had hope.  When it was just Jesus under fire again, like the crowd that tried to stone Him not long ago.  But before the Chief Priests?  Condemned by Herod and Pontius Pilate?  Hanging on the cross?

Do we have the strength to stand and pray and adore God when it's not just hard but hopeless?  In the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  Or rather, not the shadow -- not the threat, the possibility, the probability of death, the actual unbeatable death coming for us.

Do we remember, then, all that Jesus promised?  Do we believe it then?

Do we keep the promises of Palm Sunday in the Garden?  At Golgotha?  Do we have the strength to believe and praise God there?

If not, it doesn't necessarily make our professions on Palm Sunday worthless...but we have lost our opportunity to do good and be instruments of grace in the world when it is most needed.