A message from Bishop Lane / Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday - The Passion according to Mark
"The course of life on earth is difficult to alter. Yet, God has not abandoned us and is at work in ways we don’t now see.
Sometimes all we can do is wait."
I like to think that I am not so committed to the world as it is that I would betray Jesus, that I would set a criminal free to satisfy the tradition of mercy. But, I think I am so captured by the world as it is that I can’t actually see differently. What I see are the structures and systems that support my life, and I am committed to keep them in place. The truth of these things, like the structural racism that benefits my life, is largely invisible to me. So betrayal means simply to act according to the norms I value. I don’t have to be mean-spirited or cunning. I just have to be watching my own bottom line.
The betrayal of Jesus is pretty much the focus of the Passion texts, particularly Mark. All the leaders, all the responsible parties, negotiate with one another to keep the system as it is in place. It is Jesus who takes the fall. It is Jesus, seeing the system for what it is, who is killed.
The only people who seem to have a grasp on the truth are others on the outs, some women who have followed Jesus from the beginning and who have no questions about their place in a patriarchal society. They are powerless to do anything about what is happening, but they do not run and hide. They sit patiently at a distance and wait.
I don’t know if the women had any inkling that God would act. Certainly Jesus himself felt abandoned by God as he died. In Mark, there are no brave words about having finished his work.
There is an element of our faith that has to do with waiting on God. There are things we can’t fix. There are things we can’t change. Things go bad; things go wrong. Loved ones die. The course of life on earth is difficult to alter. Yet… yet… God has not abandoned us and is at work in ways we don’t now see. Sometimes all we can do is wait.
For me, the image of the women sitting silently some distance from the cross – waiting – is an iconic image of what it means to be faithful. It is a practice and discipline of faith much neglected in our daily lives. But it is key to being faithful. It is not, after all, all about me or all up to me. It’s all about God, and life is in God’s hands – I need to learn to wait on God.
+Steve