Year B

Jan 30 2025

The Purpose of the Palm

Someone once told me that people come to church on Palm Sunday because they get something. But I like to think that palm says something they recognize as true.

“He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness,” writes Paul, quoting the words of an early Christian hymn. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” follow soon after (Philippians 2:7, 8). Emptying and humbling are the two key words embracing the trajectory of the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God: from incarnation to passion and death.

He poured himself out for us and for our salvation, certainly suffering physically—from the beating, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, being struck with a reed, spat upon, prodded, pushed, and stumbling up the hill to Golgotha. Then he was stretched out on a crossbeam, nailed to it, and lifted up, his body suspended between heaven and earth. Finally, he suffocated, unable to raise himself to take in more air.

There was also the inner suffering of abandonment, of seeing his disciples run off, of realizing that all those who had cried “Hosanna” a few days ago had either been silent or had cried out, “Crucify him.” Only the women had remained with him.

Today, when we take home a piece of palm, it invites us to prepare to renew our baptismal promises on Easter. Then we can add our voices to that solitary voice almost two millennia ago, saying, “Truly, this is the Son of God!”

Consider/Discuss

Do you have a special place for the blessed palm so it can call you to remember?
What does Mark’s Passion say to you?

Responding to the Word

Loving God, lift up our hearts to give you thanks and praise for all you have done for us through the saving death of your Son. We sing out in our day, “Blessed is he who continues to come in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”

Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

The prophet’s ability to speak and the words that are spoken all come from God, but they are given for the sake of the weary. The speaker suffers both physical attack and personal insult. Despite this, he does not recoil from his call. He willingly accepts what appears to be the consequence of his prophetic ministry to the weary. In the face of his affliction, he maintains that God is his strength. For this reason, he declares that he is not disgraced and he will not be put to shame. There are no grounds to make these claims other than utter confidence in God.

The Philippians hymn states that though in the form of God, Christ chose the form of a slave. Without losing his Godlike being, he took on the likeness of human beings. He did not merely resemble a human being, he really was one. In a sense, Christ’s crucifixion, a common punishment for slaves, was inevitable given his controversial teaching. However, his subsequent exaltation is as glorious as his humiliation was debasing. It is important to note that while Christ was the subject of his self-emptying, his superexaltation is attributed directly to God. Now every knee shall do him homage and every tongue shall proclaim his sovereignty.

The entire Passion narrative lays bare the contradiction of Jesus’ life and the paradox of God’s reign. The initial fear of the religious leaders shows that Jesus had a following among the people, but it was the people who cried for the release of Barabbas and Jesus’ own death. Among his intimate followers, only the women remained faithful; one anointed him, others kept watch at his crucifixion and took note of where he was buried. Of the men who knew him well, one betrayed him, another denied him, and the rest fled for safety. It was a foreigner, a centurion, who publicly acclaimed his divinity. At the moment of his greatest agony, he was recognized as the Son of God.

Jan 30 2025

A Heart Renewed

One of the earliest pictures of Jesus I can remember portrayed him at prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. I still see his hands, clasped tight. They spoke to me of an inner struggle long before I knew about his words, “Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will” (Mark 14:36). More than any other scene in the Gospels, this one brought home what it meant to say Jesus was truly man.

Today’s Gospel has been called John’s version of the agony in the garden. The word agony (agonia in Greek) means struggle, and we can hear the struggle in Jesus’ awareness that “the hour” he has spoken of before in John’s Gospel, beginning at Cana, has finally arrived. It is the hour of his being lifted up—the hour of both his glory and his crucifixion. It is why he came into the world, and yet we hear him say, “I am troubled.” We hear him wrestling with himself, asking for release from the hour, but then recognizing that it holds “the purpose for which I came.”

Hebrews affirms this when it says “he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (5:7). He was able to bear the suffering and become the source of eternal salvation for all who listen to him and follow in his steps.

Consider/Discuss

Do you desire a new heart? What would be different about it?
How do Jesus’ words about the seed falling into the ground, dying, and only then producing fruit challenge you? What needs to die in you?

Responding to the Word

Loving God, give us a new heart in these final days of Lent, a heart that carries within it your loving imprint, that we may always know your will and yield to it, even when it calls for a dying of some kind. In such dying, may we trust that you will bring forth new life.

Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

Although Jeremiah was a southern prophet who prophesied long after the collapse of the northern kingdom, his message was full of promise for both northern and southern kingdoms. He announced that in the future time of eschatological fulfillment, both kingdoms would be united once again in a new covenant. The old covenant included laws inscribed on stone tablets; the law of the new covenant will be written on their hearts. Each individual will be directed from within. This will require total openness to God and the ability to discern God’s will from a myriad of possibilities.

The passage from Hebrews states that Jesus endured torment of body and anguish of soul. He can fully understand human distress and the desire to escape it. He can speak to those in affliction as one who himself was ravaged by sorrow, but who nonetheless clung fast to God’s will. From a human point of view, he is one with the human condition. From God’s point of view, he is the one who can show others how to accept with docility circumstances over which they have no control. Just as he learned to accept God’s designs in his life, so now he teaches others to do the same.

The Gospel reading reports the approach of “some Greeks.” This mention of Greeks suggests the inclusion of the Gentile world in the salvation brought by Jesus. Jesus replies to their approach with an announcement: His hour has come! This is both the hour of his glorification and the hour that he dreads. The relationship between his anguish and his exaltation is demonstrated through the image of the grain of wheat that must die if it is to rise. The interior struggle that Jesus endured is revealed in his prayer. Should he ask to be preserved from this hour of anguish/exaltation? But it was for this hour that he came into the world in the first place. Therefore, he accepts it.

Jan 29 2025

Going in the Right Direction

You rarely hear anyone use the word “hellbent” these days, but it could easily be used to describe the Jewish people before the Babylonian empire destroyed their capital city of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., along with the temple, and then sent its people into exile. Second Chronicles tells a sad story: Judah’s princes, priests, and people had all turned away from the Lord. They had become a people hell bent on self-destruction. So finally, the Lord cut them loose.

Of course, the story does not end there. A new dawn comes with the ascendan cy of the Persian empire under its leader Cyrus, who looked more kindly on the Jewish people, allowing them to return home to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. And we are reminded that the hand of a merciful God is behind this.

Ephesians also speaks of a God rich in mercy, who loved us “even when were dead in our transgressions,” and who “brought us to life with Christ . . . raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5–6, 10). For the author of Ephesians this has already happened. It might not feel that way to us much of the time, but faith calls us to see ourselves as “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus.”

Imagine if we tried living out of that vision for the coming week! Imagine if we really took seriously that God truly loved the world so much that “he gave his only Son” to bring us all eternal life (see John 3:16)

Consider/Discuss

Do you recognize God as a God of unending mercy who loves us—all of us?
How can this Lent be a season of conversion for the whole community?

Responding to the Word

Merciful God, you sent your Son to bring us to the fullness of life, now and hereafter. May this season of Lent be a time when we recognize increasingly what it means to choose to live in the light of Christ. Give us the courage to do so each day.