A homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, April 2, 2023
Mt 21:1-11, Is 50:4-7, Phil 2:6-11, Mt 26:14—27:66
Some spring morning early in the second half of the 20th century, the fourth- or fifth-graders (I forget which …) at St. Leo the Great School in Lincroft had an assignment: If you invented a time machine that took you back to Jerusalem in 33 A.D. and saw Jesus along the Way of the Cross, what would you do?
The answers — most of them illustrated as best as we Warhol wannabes could — ran a wide gamut as we each stood up and presented them to the class.
Some of my classmates insisted they would snatch the cross from our Messiah and take his place on Golgotha. Some said they would comfort him as he walked past, offering him water and snacks. Some promised to be yet another Simon of Cyrene.
I guess my answer was Cyrenian, sort of.
I said I’d drive a pickup truck alongside the Nazorean, tell him to toss his cross in the back and hop in the front, and I’d drive him to Calvary.
The reaction from Sister and the kids? Lead balloon. Or maybe it was like I sat on a whoopee cushion. Another detail I have conveniently — fortunately — forgotten.
The kids who would have taken Christ’s place got the highest grades and the biggest kudos. And yet, they didn’t really understand what they were proposing. And I can say this some 55 years later: Shame on our teachers for praising them.
Because none of us would be who we are today if anybody besides Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews — INRI — had died on that cross. No one but the Word Made Flesh could have risen from the dead and shattered death’s hold on us.
None of us would have been redeemed; none of us would have had our sins forgiven, especially the ones we have yet to commit. None of us would possess our deep and abiding faith and hope in an eternal reward in the presence of our loving God. Our God who loves and is the source of all love.
None of us would have the Western civilization that Christianity brought to the world.
So, yeah, Jesus died for us, and only he — true God and true man — could succeed in everything that his mission brought about. Only Jesus, the Son of God and son of Mary, the descendant of King David the psalmist, could atone for the sin of Adam.
Today’s Mass started with a special Gospel that recalled the hosannas and wahoos and people waving palms and strewing them in front of the ass and the colt the way a 4-year-old scatters rose petals before a bride. But it wasn’t long before the worm turned, as the cliché goes.
Just like a blouse somebody bought last season at Old Navy or H&M, Jesus was tossed into the rag pile of yesterday’s fashions. His style — that kindness, forgiveness, respectfulness, lovey-dovey stuff — didn’t fit the pattern of a warrior Messiah who would tell the Romans to go to … Rome.
So as soon as a traitor from among his dozen closest followers turned Jesus over to the authorities for 30 pieces of silver, the mockeries of a religious trial and a civil trial set Jesus up for ridicule, torture that rent his flesh, a staggering walk uphill under the crushing weight of his cross, being stripped and nailed to that cross, and the slow suffocation that crucifixion causes.
Every splinter in that cross, every molecule of wood represented billions of sins. A googolplex of sins. Jesus carried them all.
I’d like to think I got it right, truck and all, when I thought it was a good idea that Jesus needed to get to Calvary somehow. Even with the “Sure, I could be a martyr” fervor the nuns all fired up in us Catholic school kids, I couldn’t have taken his place at The Skull. Not even the place of the Good Thief, who was promised a place in Heaven that day.
My place is here and now, grateful from head to toe that Jesus saved us all. My place is here and now, to ask forgiveness for my sins and to work on ridding myself of the habits that lead me away from God’s holy light.
My place is here and now, to be Christ to everyone I meet and to see Christ in all those sisters and brothers. And if any of them have crosses to bear — because all of us do, at one time or another — then I can and must share their load.
That I can do. No truck needed.
