Year B

Mark 14:1-15:47

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Good News of the Cross

Today we enter the final week of preparation with the rest of the Christian community around the world for our celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The readings today seek to bring together the weeks of our Lenten journey around Mark’s passion narrative and the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. In a few minutes, we will read the passion story according to Mark in the midst of this community on this, the beginning of Holy Week so that the story of Jesus’ suffering and death can be a place where we can find some meaning for our lives: lives that include our own stories of pain, suffering, loss and death. Mark today does not ask us to choose suffering, but it does bid us to enter into Jesus’ tale of sorrow which is great enough to disrupt our lives, help us accept in faith the reality of the suffering in our lives, and transform our hearts.

Jesus’ agony in the garden and his sense of abandonment by God on the cross reflects the truth of what we all have experienced at times. And we are confronted every day with the tragedies of human suffering that seem to challenge the truth of God’s love and care for us. Most suffering and tragedy make no sense to us, and we may wonder, where is the loving God when we are surrounded by pain and death. Jesus’ passion teaches us what God’s love looks like. His obedient acceptance of what is to take place this last week of his life is not a passive surrender in the face of suffering but an active surrender to what God had called him to do and his role in God’s plan of salvation.  And we are also called by God to surrender our lives to God’s plan as Jesus did.

Paul says in Philippians that our attitude must reflect that of Christ who emptied himself by accepting death on a cross. Such acceptance does not remove suffering or feelings of abandonment that we all experience and he experienced but because of his obedience unto death we are able to participate in the mystery of God’s strange way of loving us and receive strength for our crosses. We will see this week as we walk with Jesus to the cross that God never abandoned him and was present in every horrible thing that took place so that you and I can know this God that loves us so much, and one day be with God forever.

The point of the cross is not finally suffering and death; the cross shows a love stronger than death that can withstand whatever the forces of evil do against it. Jesus took on the suffering of all humanity to save it. Today, we join with others around the world to hear the good news of the promise of God to overcome suffering and death, to enfold us with life and dwell with us forever. The moment to which the whole gospel has been leading us has arrived.