Morning After Preaching

We are about to enter a life-changing week. Life-changing for us, precisely because it was life-ending for Jesus. The first holy week was a tumultuous one for him whom we follow. Christ Jesus began where we did today, with a triumphal entry – a triumphal entry into Jerusalem when he was hailed by the people as King. They waved palms, and spread their cloaks upon the ground, and shouted “Hosanna, hosanna” at the top of their lungs.

But within a week their cries changed. Changed to “Crucify him, crucify him.” And so began his rejection by the people, rejection even by those like Peter he had called his friends. He was left alone to die upon a cross. This week we are invited to walk the way of the cross with Jesus, and unlike Peter to stay with him to the end.

Christ, the man, underwent great change in the first holy week. We call it the time of his Passion because of the emotional and physical torment he went through. Think of the emotions a human being experiences when he is hailed one day with cries of “Hosanna,” only to be spurned five days later and condemned to death. Think of the emotion that led him to cry out in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me” – let this anguish and pain pass from me. Think above all of the change that greeted Christ, as it will greet each one of us in our own time, as he passed from life into death.

In spite of the changes, there is something changeless in Christ too. For Christ is not just fully man. Through all the changes of holy week, Christ remained changelessly God. He remained God even in his very weakness, remained God in his human death. And this is precisely why this week can change us. It can change us because during this week we come face to face with the changeless God. During this week we recognize anew the wonder of God coming to us. God has entered into human flesh to work our salvation.

“Christ Jesus,” says St Paul, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-6).

“Though he was in the form of God,” says St Paul, “though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Instead of remaining in the form of God, Christ took on the form of a human. In so doing, his divine substance did not change – God cannot change – but took on human substance as well. Thus he was “found in human form… humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

As we accompany him through the time of his Passion, we will chart the changes in Christ’s human form. We will perhaps feel his emotions within ourselves: the joy, the sorrow, the anguish. Even if we cannot feel his emotions, we know that there are people who every day experience joy, sorrow and anguish. We can see what those emotions look like. We can see how horrific pain, or isolation from friends, or fear of death, shape and scar people. Jesus was shaped and scarred in just these ways during holy week, but he suffered these things that he might overcome them. But how?

God is powerfully at work in human pain and suffering because Christ has become like us in order to transform these things. Here is how one fourth-century saint put it: “When a great king has entered a large city and taken up residence in one of the houses of it, such a city becomes worthy of great honor and is no longer assaulted by any enemy or bandit, but is rather deemed worthy of every attention because of the king residing in one of its houses. Such is the case of the King of all. As soon as he came to our realm and took up residence in one body, like our own, the whole conspiracy against humanity by its enemies” – evil and sin and the pain they cause – “has been stopped and the corruption of death which had formerly ruled over them has been obliterated.” (Ath, de Inc. 9) Little did the people know how accurate they were when they welcomed the king into the city of Jerusalem. Through his death there even death’s victory would be obliterated.