luke’s passion narrative (Year C)

Luke 19: 28-40 NRSV text
Luke 22: 14-23: 56 NRSV text

Today’s readings combine the Liturgy of the Palms and the Liturgy of the Passion. They’re chosen for people who will move from Palm Sunday to Easter Day without going through Holy Week. That’s a problem in itself – without following the Passion narrative through, we miss the climax of the gospel (whichever year we’re in) – the Way of the Cross. We’ve seen the way in which Luke has been building that tension ever since the halfway point of his gospel. And now we see what Jesus has been pointing to all along “the way to Jerusalem”.

But there’s another problem. When we read the texts in isolation from each other, we run the risk of missing the very distinctive “take” on the cross that Luke has. Our problem is that we read other gospel stories into it – classically, of course, in the “meditations on the Seven Words on the Cross”. It’s as though we get the fullest account of the cross by combining all four evangelists – with a bit of Isaiah and maybe even Paul thrown in for good measure. That may be logical – but it’s a terrible reading strategy!

Luke doesn’t have Seven Words from the cross. He alone has the words of forgiveness. It matters that Luke tells the story differently from the other evangelists. It mattered to him enough to tell it differently from Mark and Matthew - and we ought to do him the justice of listening and understanding why. It’s when we read the passion narrative as an integrated whole that we begin to understand what he is doing. Each evangelist tells us that the cross saves us. But they do so in different ways.

So, rather than comment directly on the Lectionary texts as they stand, I have tried to read Luke’s Passion Narrative as a whole, so that we understand clearly what he tells us so eloquently and movingly about the grace that saves us.

1. Missing the vital moment (Luke 19: 41-44)
Luke’s way of telling the Easter story is significantly different from all the other evangelists and it is worth paying close attention to how he combines the elements of the story to bring out his own particular “take” on how Jesus’ death saves. I want to start our exploration of Luke’s passion narrative at the point where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.

The key moment in his Holy Week is Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem (19:41ff). It is key because Jesus laments that Jerusalem did not recognise its kairos – its time of visitation from God. It is an important term. It is distinguished from the usual Greek word for time, chronos (time measured in hours, days, weeks and years). It means a special moment; a visitation from God; a time of once-for-all decision. Jerusalem is faced with her moment of crisis: salvation, or judgement. And Jerusalem has missed the offered gift of salvation! It’s tragic: the people have failed to recognise their moment of grace and salvation, even though they have waited and prayed for it for so long. They have failed because they did not realise that it came in Jesus. This was God’s visitation; God’s answer to their prayers for deliverance and for the Messiah. Jesus was the fulfilment of all God’s promises. God visited, bringing salvation (the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed) and the people were having none of it! That is why Jesus weeps. It is the end of everything he has worked for. Let’s be absolutely clear: Jesus is weeping because he knows that his mission – his life’s work – has failed, because Jerusalem has not accepted him.

2. Triumphal entry and trial: “Maybe it will all be okay!”
Luke places the lament over the city immediately after the triumphal entry, in which people are shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Which prompts the puzzled question from the reader, “How come he thinks they’ve missed it? I thought they’d just celebrated it!”

Luke is a master storyteller and he gives the reader two “false starts”. Twice in this Easter narrative, we readers are led to assume that everything might be all right and that Jesus will not actually have to die. The first is the triumphal entry with the welcoming crowd of disciples. The second happens when Jesus stands a second time before Pilate and Pilate declares him innocent and intends to release him, just before the moment of deepest darkness in Luke’s gospel.

There is a double edge to the welcome Jesus receives at his entry into Jerusalem. Positively, Jesus is welcomed as the king he is – the king he is announced by Gabriel to Mary to be at the outset of the gospel. He is the Davidic king, the Messiah, riding on the colt as Zechariah had prophesied. Importantly, his reign is the reign of peace – of shalom, or salvation. Yet it is not enough simply for Jesus to be king: he must be recognised and accepted as such by Jerusalem. Jerusalem has enormous symbolic significance in the gospel. How Jesus is received there will determine whether or not his mission is a success. Luke constructs his gospel around the “Travel Narrative”, which begins exactly at the mid-point of the gospel in 9:51: Jesus “sets his face towards Jerusalem”. The rest of the gospel is cast as a journey “on the way to Jerusalem”. There is a sharp contrast between the welcome Jesus and his message receive outside Jerusalem and the opposition and execution that awaits him there. Jesus has already made it clear to his disciples that he expects to have to suffer and be killed there. The disciples refuse to accept this possibility. They cannot and will not imagine it so. Therefore they do not understand Jesus.

That is the negative side to the entry. On the one hand, the welcome Jesus receives from the disciples is futile, because Jerusalem will reject him as king. In fact, his kingship is the means by which the authorities will find reason to bring him to Pilate, who will hand him over for crucifixion. On the other hand, the acclamation of Jesus as king is also part of the disciples’ refusal to accept Jesus’ radical redefinition of kingship and messiahship in terms of suffering! It is both the proper response of welcome to Jesus the king, and at the same time a protest against a suffering messiah! Ultimately, though, it will prove futile. Things will not be okay.

The second incident of raised hopes which are dashed is Jesus before Pilate. Luke’s gospel alone has all the political horse-trading that goes on between Pilate, Herod, the chief priests, the crowds and Jesus. Luke portrays Pilate as a man who wants to be just and free Jesus, but is manoeuvred into a corner where it becomes too politically expensive to do so. Pilate is aware of the unscrupulous way in which the religious leaders are trying to manipulate him. They make no mention of the way in which Jesus has offended their beliefs, but instead play the insurrection card, guaranteed to get Pilate worried: this man claims to be a king and is fomenting rebellion. He is even forbidding us to pay taxes! Pilate goes for the key question straight away: are you a king? When he is clear that Jesus is no direct threat to his authority, the leaders press him on the matter of internal security: he is stirring up trouble all through the province, starting with Galilee, where he came from. Pilate jumps at this let-out: not my jurisdiction. He’s Herod’s problem. Send him there.

Herod returns Jesus to Pilate, declaring him innocent of the charges. But the religious leaders are still out for blood. So Pilate moves to expose their machinations to “the people” – Jesus’ instinctive supporters. He gathers them all together, and makes a last-ditch attempt to out-manoeuvre the plotters (23:13ff). He announces that Jesus has been accused, tried and found innocent. Nevertheless, he proposes to have Jesus flogged, and then released. This is the second “false start”, where the reader thinks for a moment that Jesus is going to be spared death – albeit with a totally undeserved flogging.

It is at this moment that the unthinkable happens: the people join voices with the leaders and call for the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus! Here’s the point: Jesus was right when he wept over the city. They only seemed to recognise their visitation from God, but they have now proved otherwise. Luke the story-teller has Jesus standing, utterly alone. There is not a single voice that isn’t howling for his death! And so Luke effectively includes us all in this last, final, ultimate “No!” to God. We – all humanity – have missed the kairos.

Luke 23:24-25 is the darkest moment in Luke’s gospel. Jesus is utterly alone, abandoned by everyone. The people have chosen. And Pilate’s verdict is that they should be given what they want. “He handed Jesus over as they wished”. God has visited in grace and salvation, and we have wished instead to crucify Jesus. This is the free will of the people, freely expressed and granted.

3. Gethsemane and the new kairos (Luke 22: 39-46)

At the Last Supper, Jesus declares that a new covenant is in the making – a covenant made through his body and blood. This is the New Covenant – the covenant of grace and salvation. There has to be a new covenant, because the old has been rejected. Jesus foreshadows his forthcoming suffering and death – the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood. The new covenant is about to be made. And here’s the fascinating thing about Luke’s portrayal of the passion: in narrative terms, the covenant is sealed not on Golgotha, but in Gethsemane! Look carefully at how Luke portrays the making of the covenant between Jesus and his Father on behalf of the world in the garden.

Gethsemane is vital as a decisive event between Jesus and the Father. Contrast what happens with Mark’s account. In Mark, the moment when Jesus accepts the cross as the will of God is the moment when the Father/Son relationship is smashed. The last, despairing “Abba! Father! If it is possible, make this all go away …” is met with silence. Jesus accepts the Father’s will, but feels abandoned by God and never again calls God “Abba”. He dies with the cry of dereliction on his lips, broken and alone. In Mark’s gospel, this is the moment of utter abandonment. The disciples flee. Jesus is left to his captors.

In Luke’s gospel, the moment when Jesus embraces the will of the Father is the forging of a new unity between Jesus and God. They are united, not divided. This is followed by the only mention of blood (Jesus’ sweat) and anguish. It’s as though Luke transposes the suffering and bleeding of the cross to this moment, to show the cost of accepting God’s will but also to show that this is the new kairos – the moment when the new covenant is being made. We missed the first one: now there is a new opportunity, made possible by God’s love and Jesus’ love and acceptance. And so an angel strengthens Jesus. Jesus, strong in the power of what has been decided, rebukes the sleeping disciples. And significantly, Luke does not record the disciples abandoning Jesus. Gethsemane in Luke’s gospel narrative, therefore, is the start of something new, not the utter disintegration of the old.

4. The cross – forgiveness, hope and the new temple

Because Jesus has already (in effect) bled and suffered in Gethsemane, Luke is able to make Golgotha a place of hope. Having abandoned Jesus and rejected the kairos, all we can do is follow, weeping, to the cross and stand there and listen. As we do, we hear three statements from Jesus – words of astounding hope.

Luke has his readers on the ropes. We’ve missed the kairos. What is left for us? How could we have decided what we did? Surely we wouldn’t if we’d known what we were doing? We hear Jesus’ first words (23:34a): “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!” We did not know, and Jesus recognises that and asks for forgiveness for us!

The second words are addressed to the thief. Here is a man who can claim no excuse of ignorance and does not. He is dying as someone justly sentenced. Here, on this engine of death, he looks at Jesus and recognises his own, personal kairos. He turns to the one whom he recognises as a king about to enter his kingdom and says, “Jesus, remember me …” And Jesus’ reply is, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise!”

The third set of words is Jesus’ final words. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” Contrast this with Mark. In both gospels, we stand at the cross, shrouded in thick, mysterious darkness. We are cut off from everything except the sounds of the dying men. In Mark’s gospel, we then hear the awful cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is as abandoned and in the dark as we feel. But Luke tells us something else: Jesus is communing with God! We might be alone and terrified, but Jesus is talking to his Father. In other words, Jesus has brought God into the most god-forsaken place on earth and moment in history.

This is the significance of the tearing of the temple curtain. It doesn’t function as a symbol of open access to God in Luke’s narrative. It’s function is to show us that the Holy of Holies is empty! God is not there! God is not in the place kept sterile and uncontaminated. God is in the very place where God has no place being: on Golgotha! And this is Luke’s point. Because of the new kairos in Gethsemane, Jesus on the cross is the priest of the new covenant, dispensing forgiveness and acceptance, and bringing God to where we are – lost and in darkness. Where is God when most needed? God, in grace, is with us, forgiving us, saving us.

5. The grace that does not abandon us to the darkness of our choices
God’s grace (in Luke’s gospel) means that we are not abandoned to our free will! That was expressed in ultimate rejection of God. It was the moment of utter self-destruction. As we saw in the Parable of the Lost Son, God’s grace will not let that stand, because God comes to liberate and forgive.

We talk about “free will”, but that is a misnomer. Our wills are not free. We are bound by all sorts of things: our upbringing, our culture, socio-economic forces, our psyche, our circumstances, our access to power, the limits of our imagination, our capacity for greed, cruelty and evil. We are bound creatures, in need of liberation; slaves in need of redemption and exodus. “Free” does not mean objective and dispassionate. To say that we have “free will” means only that we have choice, and that God gives us the freedom to exercise our choices.

We human beings have a tragic capacity to choose death over life. We do not choose the things that make for Life and peace. We reject the Light and love the darkness; we crucify Jesus and choose to be godforsaken.

These are the things that we choose. Yet in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God chooses differently. We will our own self-destruction, but God, in grace, wills Life, salvation and flourishing. We cling to our “free will” in self-importance, asserting our own pretensions to deity. Grace saves us from the choices we make! Ultimately, it is not our human will that has the final word, but the will of the human Christ that is important. That is what Gethsemane is all about, and there we see Father and Son united in the will to love, forgive, accept and save.

But why the cross? Why is the cross necessary for God to forgive us? Why can God not simply forgive – without forgiveness entailing the horror and anguish of the cross? I find Jürgen Moltmann helpful at this point. He cites the story of Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, who was summoned to the death bed of a death camp guard. The guard asked Wiesenthal to forgive him for what he had done during the war. Wiesenthal refused – on the grounds that he did not have the right to forgive him. Only the victims had the right to forgive, Wiesenthal explained. You can only forgive someone for what they’ve done to you; you can’t forgive on behalf of others.

This is a truth that goes to the heart of the cross. On the cross, Jesus, in some mysterious way, bears the effects and consequences of human sin. Sin is “done” to him through the cross. On the cross, Jesus becomes the Victim of human sin – and as Victim, pronounces forgiveness.

We are saved because we are forgiven from the cross for our ultimate rejection of God. God will not reject us. That is grace. It is amazing. And it saves! Hallelujah!

Amen.