The Triumph of the Cross
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Palm Sunday, Year B, 3/24/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Today, Palm Sunday, we are thrust directly into the drama of Holy Week. There is no soft peddling or easing into things. We begin this liturgy in the exact manner we know this story will end – with triumph. Jesus’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem is a foreshadowing of what is to come on Easter Day with Jesus’s triumphal resurrection, and on the last day, with Jesus’s triumphal return.
But triumph is not where this service of Palm Sunday leaves us. Before the fanfare and excitement of Jesus’s kingly arrival has faded, we are launched directly into the account of Jesus’s trial and Passion, because our Lord’s triumph is a peculiar one. It is a triumph won through the way of the cross, which we walk with him during this Holy Week.
But why? Why would the Lord of all Creation, who sent his only son to be the savior of the world choose to submit himself to such a heartbreaking and brutal way of winning this work of salvation we so dearly need? Surely our Lord could have swooped down from on high and cast down the works of darkness forever, like God did to Pharaoh’s army by casting them in the Red Sea. Surely Christ could have installed himself on a throne like Caesar’s and ruled over all creation as a powerful emperor. Why wouldn’t our God of power and might choose one of those options to win the decisive victory over sin and death? An option which unambiguously demonstrated God’s ultimate dominion? An option we could understand?
Well, I think it’s precisely the ease with which we understand that way of victory through domination that Jesus chose instead victory by way of the cross. Humanity is so accustomed to leaders, saviors, and kings who promise to deliver us through demonstrations of strength, bravado, and power. Pick any chapter of any history book and you will find examples of leaders and kings who give assurances that salvation will come to us through conquest of our enemies with military, economic, and political might. These are promises we are well familiar with, promises that are enticing to us insofar as they appeal to our own personal desire for strength, security, and the upper hand ourselves. The promises of these kingly figures often speak to a human desire for personal kingship in our own right.
Christ is our king and we are subject to him, but Christ does not come as yet another human king. Pilate himself recognizes this. He asks Jesus, “are you the King of the Jews?” I think more than simple mockery, there is some earnestness to Pilate’s question. That morning Jesus arrived in Jerusalem with all the pageantry and fanfare expected of a king’s arrival, yet instead of a mighty warhorse and columns of soldiers and generals, he rode in on a draft animal with a ragtag following of tax collectors, women, and fisherman. Pilate, like us, is perplexed and curious as to what kind of king would make such an entrance and it catches him off guard.
Then, Pilate gives Jesus an opportunity to defend or explain himself in a way that is understandable to the logic of power that he and the religious leaders are used to dealing in. Yet Jesus offers no reply. He appears to submit defenselessly to the forces of domination that are about to crash down on him. And scripture says, Pilate is amazed.
The pageantry of Christ’s kingship continues and this time there is no question whether it is mockery. Soldiers clothe Jesus in a purple garment, the color of royalty. They hold a mock coronation by placing a crown of thorns on his head. They pretend to pay homage to him, then strike him and whip him, before leading him out for the finale of this awful travesty. Christ the king is enthroned. His throne is the cross.
Why must his throne be the cross. The awful, brutal, cross?
The cross is the throne of our king because Christ is a king who offers everything he has – even his own life – at our feet. Christ our king pays homage, with his life, to us.
While the powers of sin and darkness were making a mockery of God incarnate, God incarnate was making a mockery of this mockery through love. Christ’s enthronement on the cross for us is a compassionate reversal of every expectation we hold about what it means to be kingly and powerful.
Where the world’s kings send others out to kill and be slain, God is slain for us.
Where the world’s kings condemn and punish, God forgives the punishers.
Where the world’s kings demand tribute and offerings, God offers himself for us.
The Cross is the throne of our Lord Jesus Christ because the cross, the way of perfect humility, servanthood, and reconciliation, is the power of God almighty.
The cross is the throne of Christ because it is the thing we least expect the power of love to look like. And while the forces of sin and evil did everything in their power to dismantle the power of God’s love, Christ through his loving sacrifice was dismantling the power of sin and death. Christ on the cross neutralized it and transformed it so that the cross, the very thing which once represented the power of death and domination most vividly, becomes instead our most powerful symbol of life and God’s love for us.
As we prepare to walk the way of the cross with our peculiar King this Holy Week, let us not for one moment lose sight of that. The triumph of God is the triumph of Christ our king, with arms outstretched in love, upon the hard wood of the cross. Amen.