March 26, 2015
The following is a homily based on the Scripture readings for Palm Sunday, March 29.
Every once in a while I end up in a hotel room with one of those mirrors used for make-up, the ones that magnify the face, exposing every contour of the facial skin. I am aghast at all the imperfections of the face, the unshaved stubble, the little crevices leftover from teenage acne, the growing wrinkles, those nasty blackheads. It’s hard to look at yourself closely; the blemishes show up all too well.
In the Passion reading we have from St. Mark, we get not only a close-up of Jesus, but a close-up of all those involved in these final days of Jesus’ life. It’s not pretty. Mark has emphasized Jesus as the servant of God, rejecting glory to give his life. But Mark also gets to emphasize what is going on in the lives of those around Jesus, both of his companions and of his enemies.
It’s all too easy to see ourselves in the self-serving actions of the friends of Jesus. I suppose they were in it for what they thought was the glory of the kingdom. Deny, betray, evade, hide, run: Haven’t I seen this in my own life as well?
It’s harder to see ourselves in the cruel actions of those who opposed Jesus, but we need to look closer. Surely we would never use anger, envy, resentment, humiliation and violence against Jesus as Mark portrays in his sparse and soul-chilling language. But haven’t we used anger, envy, resentment, humiliation and even violence against each other? Do we not on a regular basis diminish and dismiss each other? Do we not assert ourselves, even at the expense of others?
Jesus’ death on the Cross exposes so much: his suffering, the extent of God’s unbounded love for us, but also what is inside the human heart: the pimples and blackheads of our souls. Jesus’ final cry of abandonment – the beginning of Psalm 22 which is a psalm of hope and trust – echoes the abandonment that comes from our own distance from God and from each other, the fruit of the self-centeredness that leads us nowhere and turns us against each other.
Just as the Passion teaches us that death is not the end of the story, so it teaches us that the smallness of our hearts and the blemishes of our souls are also not the final story. As we spend this week beholding the Lord, we notice him looking into our faces as well, giving us the strength to both acknowledge of the truth of our lives and the grace to grow into the kind of love that God shows us in Jesus.