We have a different Passion Narrative for each of our three-year cycle of readings. Today we hear Matthew’s. How about this strategy for today’s liturgy: choose the full reading of the Passion (not the abbreviated) and prepare preacher and lectors to proclaim it in parts? Let the drama of the narrative, as Matthew presents it, speak for itself.
Well then, what about the preaching? Why not preach from one of the other readings: from the introductory passage from Matthew (Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem); or from Isaiah; or the letter to the Philippians, or even the Psalm Response? While the gospel proclamation will be long still, that shouldn’t excuse the preacher from our obligation to open and share the Word with the assembly. So, let’s follow that suggestion and take a look at the preaching possibilities of those other readings.
Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem is like the first scene to an important and dramatic play. Matthew does what he has been doing from the very beginning of his gospel: he shows how Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s messianic hopes. For example, he alludes to the prophetic writings of Isaiah (62:11) and Zachariah (9:9). The Jewish Christians Matthew was addressing would quickly catch his message: in Jesus, God’s promise to the Jews was fulfilled. Another image easily recognized by Matthew’s community: the ruler sent by God enters the Holy City on a donkey, a sign of royalty, not military might. The true king of Israel has arrived.
As we begin this most sacred week our spirits aren’t drenched in guilt (“Look what your sins did!”). Instead, we come together in a celebratory spirit, grateful for what God has done in Jesus for our benefit; grateful that in his obedience to God we now have the grace to live holy lives and can be faithful to Jesus’ invitation to follow him. At our Eucharist today we join the crowd in welcoming Jesus — but our praise is not fickle, for it comes from our baptismal faith, as we proclaim, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
The Isaiah reading should have special meaning for preachers, catechists and any parent/grandparent whose responsibility it is to share God’s Word with others. Some of us do it from the pulpit, others in the classroom and still others in less formal settings, like our home or workplace. Isaiah suggests that our first responsibility isn’t to speak, but to listen. God’s gift of a “well-trained tongue” comes because “morning after morning” God “opens my ear that I may hear.” After we give our attention to what God has to say then, in the figure the great homiletician Fred Craddock provides, we “break the silence.” If our words are to bear fruit they must come from the silence we observe as we listen for God’s Word.
What are the “listening posts” in our lives, the places we expect to hear God address us? A prime place, of course, is the Scripture. So, we pay particular attention to the proclaimed Word at our liturgical celebrations. To help us prepare for these prime listening moments we take up the practice of daily scriptural reading and prayer–short and sometimes rushed as it might be.
Today’s Isaian passage is the third of his four “Servant Songs.” This mysterious “servant” is described as an obedient prophetic voice, one with a “well-trained tongue” that comes from first hearing God’s voice. But notice the “sacred place” the prophet also goes to listen to God–to “the weary.” The faithful servant has an ear for the poor and those who are heavily burdened. Having been sensitive to their plight and anointed by God, the servant knows how to speak and what to do for the weary. What “rouses” them is the “well-trained tongue”; a tongue that, at first, is silent so that the servant can attend and listen to what is happening in their lives.
I write this as I travel on a transcontinental flight. While there are some simply dressed people around me on the plane, signaling perhaps their modest economic condition, for the most part, most of my companions on this flight seem to be middle or lower-middle-class folk. (Except for those business people up ahead in the first-class cabin, who right now are sipping wine!) If I practiced the listening discipline of a preacher I would need to be attentive to how these not-so-poor people on this plane, and in my daily down-to-earth world, experience their own kind of “weariness.” Those of us in the ministry of the Word have heard plenty of words of weariness. Our task is to have “open ears,” to be attentive listeners to them so that we can discover what God expects us to say and do for them. Listening and hearing what they are saying is the first gift we can give them.
Let’s not skip over the second part of what Isaiah says to us today. Those faithful, who serve and try to speak on God’s behalf, already know what Isaiah tells us is true. God’s servant should expect rejection and suffering in the course of our faithful service. A final encouraging reminder though from Isaiah: “God is my help” and so, God strengthens our resolve to continue our service to the Word. God is the One who helps us set our face “like flint.” Or, to use another metaphor, in the words of the spiritual, “Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”
The first Christians saw Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s anticipated servant. For them, Jesus, was the docile servant who was faithful to God, not only in his lifetime, but throughout his suffering and even his death. Psalm 22 is commonly used in Holy Week — in particular, as a response to the Isaiah reading. It is a most severe lament, as the prayer asks God very pointedly, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew says Jesus cried these words from the cross. (Not all of the Psalm is quoted today, just the verses the evangelists quoted in their different Passion Narratives.) The Psalm begins in dire lament, but its emphasis shifts to trust and hope in God for rescue. Psalm 22 is a link between the Suffering Servant in Isaiah and today’s narrative of the Passion.
While today’s reading doesn’t state it, the Letter to the Philippians was probably written by Paul from his prison in Rome. Paul is enfleshing the sufferings of God’s servant described in Isaiah and those of Jesus, which Matthew narrates. Paul does not focus on himself, but turns instead to Christ. He’s probably quoting an earlier Christian hymn as he urges the Philippians to make Christ their example. In order to take on our flesh Christ “emptied himself.” He deliberately chose our condition so that we could be filled with his new life.
Follow the path the Philippian reading takes us. First there is Christ’s descent down to us, “coming in human likeness.” Then, the hymn rises; after his death Christ is “exalted.” But he does not return empty-handed, just as Isaiah said about God’s Word (55:11): the Word carries out God’s will. For us this means, Christ draws us with himself to God–in our baptism we come up from the waters and live a new, divinely instituted life.