Passion Sunday -- “The End of the Story” -- April 4, 2004

            How interesting that the Church would have us read the two different Gospel passages today on Palm Sunday!  The first one read this morning recounted Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem during the Jewish Feast of the Passover.  Imagine the scene.  A crowded, dusty city in which all the inns are full; the streets are crowded with the animals to be sacrificed, with merchants plying their trade, Roman guards posted about here and there to maintain order, tensions running high as rumors of rebellion against the Roman authorities swirl about the market place.  Then on the road from Bethany to Jerusalem comes a swelling crowd of people waving palm branches.  Some of them take off their cloaks to cover the dusty road as a small donkey trods along carrying a man, to whom and about whom the crowd is shouting, “Blessed be he who comes as king in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  The excitement of victory is in the air.  The crowd, growing ever larger as it approaches the holy Temple, feels it can sweep all before it. 

            And how immediately different is the long reading we have just heard.  The distance of time between the two happenings is only a few days, yet the contrast could hardly be sharper.  The scene of the second Gospel reading opens with Jesus instituting what would be known as the Memorial of His death, with a disciple plotting against Jesus; with Peter denying he ever even knew the Savior.  Even the setting of the time of day is starkly different:  the triumphal entry is in broad daylight; now in this, the Passion reading night descends.  You know the story.  Jesus and his followers share the Passover meal together.  They go to the garden of Gethsemane, where the disciples fall asleep leaving Jesus utterly alone to pray to the Father.  The guards come, Jesus is arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.  He is deserted by his closest disciples.  The crowds, who only a few days ago were singing Jesus’ praises, are now shouting “Crucify him!”  “Crucify him!” 

            What happened?  What went wrong?  Everything seemed to be going so well.  Jesus’ popularity had been growing, more and more people were calling themselves his followers.  This time of the Passover seemed the prime time to converge on Jerusalem and present Jesus to the city and its leaders.  Or so the disciples thought.

            They should have known better.  For all along the way Jesus was repeatedly telling them that he must go to Jerusalem, where he would be rejected by the religious leaders, would be handed over to be beaten and killed. 

            So why the triumphal procession?  Why the shouts of victory, the waving of palms?  Why this tumult if it was supposed to end like this?  It is strange that we too should begin this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with our own triumphal procession with palms in our hands and yet come to the end of today’s Gospel where we hear the words, “...Joseph approached Pilate with a request for Jesus’ body.  He took it down, wrapped it in fine linen, and laid it in a tomb hewn out of the rock, in which no one had yet been buried.”        

            Is it then a mockery for us to yet again march in triumph today on Palm Sunday?  No, it’s not.  But we don’t join the march on Jerusalem simply because we like to be on the winning side, a part of the big show, on the cutting edge of the latest movement.  No, we process into Jerusalem, into this Holy Mass, so that we too might suffer with him, like him perhaps be rejected by the important people of the world, that we might die with him.  Oh sure, like the people of that time, we too are sometimes fickle, we too sometimes only follow the Lord until the road gets really rough.  Like the disciples we also sometimes betray him by our sin, we sleep in comfort as he suffers alone in prayer, we desert him to his enemies.  It is only natural that we should enjoy the parade and shy away from the cross. 

            Why then the signs of victory?  The palms, the singing, the joy that we have here this morning?  Because we know the end of the story.  We know that beyond his death is victory.  We are here to celebrate his victory, which can raise us up from our deepest failings and give us hope.  In Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, there is a new beginning offered us continually, if we only take it.

            Unlike the crowds and the disciples in today’s Gospel, we do know the end of the story.  That’s why we rejoice together in triumph today as we enter into the remembrance this week of our Lord’s terrible suffering and death.  Because we know the end of the story.   The end is Easter.