This past Palm Sunday, I got to worship with one of my favorite parishes, St. Joseph Anglican in New Braunfels, Texas. They knew I, a frequent visitor, was coming and wanted me to take part in the congregational reading of the Passion during Mass. I was told there were two parts left, Jesus and Judas Iscariot. What a choice! I either get to be crucified or I get to betray Jesus.
I picked Judas.
I think I read my part well on Sunday. I have mixed feelings about that.
Many Anglican parishes, including my home parish, do a simpler version of reading the Passion, in which the only part the congregation plays is to be the crowd that calls out for Christ to be crucified. But what a difficult and jarring part!
I still remember the first time I visited an Anglican church on a Palm Sunday. It was awkward, to say the least, to yell out “Crucify Him!” I had thought that Palm Sunday was all about welcoming King Jesus. Yay, Jesus! Hosanna to the King! No one told me that about 15 minutes after we did that and waved our palms around, we would be crucifying him. It shook me to the core. By the time the service was over, I was blubbering. So much so that two kind people asked me if I was okay afterward.
Not all churches have the congregation yell out “Crucify Him!” on Palm Sunday. Fr. Gregory Wilcox remarked to us Sunday that a priest once told him he did not have his parish do this as it was inappropriate. Fr. Wilcox’s response was that through sin, we betray Christ everyday. So we might as well freely own that on Palm Sunday.
So on Palm Sunday, I was Judas. But that is not the only day I’ve been Judas. Nor is it for you. As individuals and as mankind, we have betrayed Jesus and sent him off to be crucified. And we do need to own that whether we yelled out “Crucify Him!” on Palm Sunday or not.
It is too easy to blame the Jews — an ancient justification for anti-semitism, never mind that Jesus was a Jew and several Jews opposed the unjust sentence — or the Romans. Such blaming foolishly avoids the bigger picture we need to see. The problem and the blame is much broader. Rejecting Christ and betraying Him to an unjust, torturous execution is a crime of all mankind. And even those of us who have come to faith in him still betray him by our sins just about every day.
The crucifixion of Christ is mankind’s crime, mankind’s greatest crime. If you are human, you have a part in that. Even identifying as a cat or a horse will not let you off the hook. Sorry.
But before you give into despair as Judas did, there is an odd twist in Jesus’ crucifixion, something no one at the time foresaw, not even His disciples. That although three years earlier John the Baptist proclaimed him as “the Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world.”
Only Jesus knew what the crucifixion was really about. As man, as the perfect Son of Man, He took all that sin of mankind upon himself on the cross. As St. Paul later put it, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.” And Jesus took the punishment for that sin, our sin. Why? “So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2nd Corinth. 5:21 ESV)
Not so by the way, only a perfect Man who has no sin of his own can do that. And only God can do that. Thus it is necessary for us that Jesus be both completely Man and completely God. We can never understand this mystery perfectly in this life. But our life depends on this great mystery of the Incarnation.
Then having defeated sin, our sin, on Good Friday, Jesus defeated another ancient enemy of ours in the night hours of the first Easter morning. As the foolish man Adam brought in death by his disobedience, the perfect Man Jesus defeated death by his obedience. And as we all suffer from Adam’s failure; we who receive Christ as our Champion and Lord all greatly benefit from Christ’s victory. We participate in Adam’s Fall and death. But by the amazing grace of God, we participate in Christ’s victory and life.
So let us not despair like Judas. But also let’s not get ahead of ourselves either and rush too fast to Easter as I probably am already. This Holy Week let us own our sin against Jesus, and let us gratefully remember and receive Jesus’ perfect sacrifice for it.
Yes, in a sad way, we were Judas, even if you didn’t volunteer to be him as I did. We were also those clamoring and yelling to “Crucify him!” whether you did so on this Palm Sunday or not. But, knowing all that and more about us, Jesus died for us anyway. He took on death, even the death of the cross, to give us life.
