Palm Sunday

We have just read from Matthew’s account of the passion and death of Jesus. At the last supper, when Jesus took the cup that was filled with wine, he gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Drink all of you from this, for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’. On the eve of his bloody death, Jesus was telling his disciples that his death on the following day was in the service of his life’s work of making present God’s merciful love for all. When he said towards the beginning of his ministry, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy’, he was describing himself, as well as describing the kind of life he wanted to followers to live. Throughout his public ministry Jesus revealed the merciful love of God.

The religious leaders were often scandalized by the ways he gave expression to God’s mercy. On one occasion when Jesus sat at table with tax collectors and sinners, they objected, and in reply Jesus quoted God’s word from the prophet Hosea, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’. Jesus was the fullest expression of God’s merciful love. This was his life’s mission. Because he was full of God’s merciful love, the broken in body, mind and spirit came to him for healing, renewal, reconciliation with God. It was his commitment to this life-mission that brought him to Calvary. The God whom Jesus embodied was breaking through long held traditions and customs and, in the process, disturbing the religious leaders of the time. Rather than deviate from this mission in the face of great hostility, Jesus remained faithful to it, even unto death on a cross, in the words of Saint Paul. As a result, his death proclaimed even more powerfully than his life the good news of God’s merciful love. In the darkness of Calvary, the light of God’s merciful love was shining brightly. The death of Jesus revealed his faithfulness to God and to the mission that God had given him, and the resurrection revealed God’s faithfulness to his Son and God’s vindication of all that Jesus lived and died for.

At the hour of his passion and death, when Jesus was revealing God’s merciful love most powerfully, his disciples were failing him badly. Three of them fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus needed their presence most. Immediately after his troubled prayer in the garden, one of the Twelve, Judas, led a large number of men with swords and clubs, and, with a kiss, identified Jesus as the one to be seized. Immediately after Jesus’ arrest, ‘all the disciples deserted him and ran away’. A short time later, Peter, the leader of the Twelve, the rock on which Jesus was to build his church, denied publicly that he had ever been with Jesus. Yet, the human failings of his disciples did not come between Jesus and them. He remained faithful to them, continuing to reveal to them God’s merciful love. The tears of Peter were the tears of a man who knew he had denied someone who loved with a divine love. The suicide of Judas suggests that he never fully realized how much Jesus loved him or how all embracing God’s loving mercy was. He failed to see that, in the words of Saint Paul, ‘nothing is all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’.

This Holy Week, as we travel Jesus’ final journey with him, there is an opportunity for all of us to open ourselves more fully to God’s merciful love pouring from the heart of Christ crucified, so that we can be merciful towards others as God is merciful towards us, loving others as we have been loved by God through Jesus.