Passion Sunday (2017.04.09 Sermon)

John Chandler steered us toward Holy Week with a sermon on Matthew 27:27-56.

Quotes and links mentioned:

The early Christians, the original friends of Jesus, so sympathized with Jesus’s pain and had been so traumatized by it that they could not bring themselves to depict the stark reality of his suffering, except in words—that is, in the accounts of the four gospels, which are as clipped and precise as the four authors knew how to make them. Only in the fifth century, nearly a century after the Roman state had discontinued the practice of crucifixion and no one living had witnessed such a procedure, did Christians forget the shame and horror of the event sufficiently to begin to make pictures of it. — Thomas Cahill
What if his prolonged silence and painful cry from the cross is really intended to call us toward a life of vocation and embolden us to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, so that anguished cries might cease? Maybe Jesus’ cry is not his alone, but a timeless cry on the behalf of millions of suffering people who have felt and will feel forsaken by God and humanity, lest someone answer their call. Perhaps his anguished cry is intended to touch us at the core of our being so that we, his present-day disciples, may remember his teachings and endeavor to live therein.– Veronice Miles