The Victory of the Passion
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, Year A, April 2, 2023
Psalm 22:1-21; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew’s Passion Gospel
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Happy Palm Sunday, St. George’s. And happy Holy Week. Although wishing us happy anything after hearing Matthew’s vivid account of Our Lord’s suffering and death seems a little odd, doesn’t it? Why is it that on Palm Sunday, the final leg of our Lenten pilgrimage, that our celebration of Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem is so abruptly cut short with his Passion? It seems we’ve hardly had time to fully settle into the exuberant occasion of Christ’s kingly arrival before we are splashed with cold water in the untimely news of his heartbreaking death.
The liturgy of Palm Sunday is like a birth announcement and an obituary all wrapped in one.
Why is this? Why interrupt our joyful cries of hosanna with something so sobering and harsh? Couldn’t we at least enjoy the moment a little longer? These are the questions I ask myself every year on this day, even though I think I know the answer deep down, because we’ve heard it before. You see, the truth of this day is that Christ’s victory and Christ’s passion are wholly inextricable from one another. We cannot speak of one without speaking of the other. The name, or names, that we call this day gives that away. You’ll see on your bulletin that there are actually two names for today’s feast day. Its first name is the Sunday of the Passion, and its second is Palm Sunday. The Passion of course refers to Christ’s suffering and death on the cross and the palms refer to Christ’s victorious arrival.
The layering of these two theological images – passion and victory – on top of one another is no accident. We’re not just haphazardly trying to cram two unrelated ideas into one liturgy because we’re short on time. Rather, in today’s liturgy of passion and palms, we anticipate Christ’s victory on the cross, and give thanks for the cost he paid to win it. These two realities of Christ’s passion and Christ’s victory are always two sides of the same coin, and today is meant to help us see them as such.
Let’s first look at Christ’s victory. We begin this liturgy by processing into the Church with palm fronds and joyful shouts of hosanna! It’s an exclamation of joy which literally means “pray, save us!” It’s a centuries-old shout of jubilation reserved for God and it outwardly reflects our recognition of Christ Jesus as God incarnate who has come for our salvation. The palm fronds which we wave are ancient symbols of victory that would be handed to kings and military leaders returning from battle or champions of great athletic and artistic feats, much like the laurel wreath that would crown the heads of Olympians and poets in ancient Greece.
The biblical account of Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem is akin to a victory parade, but it’s a rather peculiar one isn’t it? It’s peculiar for a number of reasons. First, Jesus was not a victor in the traditional sense. He possessed no worldly power, he held no official titles or offices, and he had no command over any army, unless you count the ragtag bunch of working class fisherman and tax collectors who followed him around.
Moreover, it was customary at such victory parades to read a litany of the victor’s mighty accomplishments aloud as a testament to their legendary might. These lists typically included an itemization of the lands and peoples that the victor conquered, as well as the riches and spoils they brought back from their exploits.
In contrast, let’s take a look at some of the highlights of Jesus’ odd curriculum vitae. Up until this point Jesus had:
-Cleansed between one and ten lepers
-Multiplied thousands of fish
-Restored sight and speech to a handful
-Calmed a storm
-Cursed a fig tree
-Cast out countless demons
-And raised at least three people from the dead, all while insisting that people keep these things a secret. I’m still not sure whether Jesus was having fun with us with this last part.
Needless to say, this is quite an impressive C.V., but it’s certainly not the resume you’d expect to hear of the traditional victor, because you’ll notice that in Jesus’ astounding list of miracles, the things which glorify him are the ways he healed and restored the downtrodden to fullness of life, not how he elevated himself by turning those those with full lives into the downtrodden through conquest. Jesus’ victory comes from the way he freed and liberated bodies and souls.
Finally, there is the peculiar, and even comical pageantry of Jesus’ victory parade. Jesus famously arrives through the city gates riding a donkey! Not a majestic war horse, not a gilded chariot, but a draft animal – an animal used for labor with a reputation for being stubbornness. It borders on comedy and at the same time is incredibly profound. People anticipating the messiah surely must have been murmuring between their hosannas, what in the world kind of victor is Jesus? Well, I’m not joking when I say the donkey really tips his hand. It is both a fulfilment of an Old Testament prophecy (Zech. 9:9) that the messiah will come to Zion riding on the back of a donkey, and it is a deliberate inversion of worldly power and domination.
At every step of the way, Jesus is revealing himself and the people are hailing him as the messiah. But not a messiah whose victory is through the worldly power of kings, but as the King and Lord of all creation who emptied himself of his power to take on the kingly robe of humility. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians that “[Christ] being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross (2:7-8).
You see, in Christ’s victory, there is always his passion. The palm frond is a symbol of victory, and it’s also a symbol of martyrdom. Walk into the National Gallery of Art this afternoon and you’ll see rooms filled with images of the holy martyrs of the Church, like a yearbook that spans centuries. And they’re all holding this same leaf as a sign that they followed the one who came in humility, walked the path of his passionate suffering, and shared in his triumphant victory.
Yes in the victory of Christ there is always his passion, his suffering. This is what the very word passion, or passio in Latin, means after all. It means to suffer. And Christ’s passion on the cross which we just heard told is not about suffering for suffering’s sake. It was about com-passion, which literally means suffering with. God, suffering with us, and thereby freeing us from bondage to this suffering. The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann claimed that the unique and defining attribute of God as understood in the Christian tradition is that God suffered. And God’s suffering is the crux – the cross – of our understanding of who God is. And who God is, is a God so passionate that He could not turn his eyes away from our own suffering, and instead ran towards us with open arms.
In Passion Sunday we are reminded that Christ’s victory over the bondage of sin, which is the source of our suffering, came through Christ’s enduring of the same. The Passion and the victory He won for us are connected in such a way that to remove one would be to take the power away from the other.
Yes, in Christ’s victory there is always Christ’s suffering. But this also means the inverse must be true. In Christ’s suffering, there is always Christ’s victory.
I promise I am not spoiling Easter by proclaiming Christ’s victory over death too soon, because Holy Week is not a once a year historical reenactment of Jesus’ last week, it is a commemoration and celebration of our Lord’s victory on the cross alongside his passion. And what is this victory we celebrate? It’s Christ’s victory over the powers of sin and death. They no longer hold sway over us. It’s the same victory we proclaim every single time we celebrate the Eucharist and proclaim Christ’s death, resurrection, and coming in glory, all in one breath.
We do not remake or play-act the Passion in the Eucharist, but Christ’s Passion – Christ’s love for us unto death – is made present for us again in the breaking of the bread. When we receive the bread of heaven and drink his precious blood, his presence and his victorious resurrection is renewed within us, and we are made more whole. Because by his blood he reconciled us, and by his wounds we are healed. It gives me chills just thinking of it and it brings me joy to share it with you. And so I’ll say it again and again until all of us are crowned with these palms in His blessed company – Christ’s victory is his passion, and Christ’s passion is our victory.
So friends, happy Palm Sunday, and happy Sunday of the Passion.
Amen.