Passion Sunday
March 16, 2008
Matthew 26:17-27:61
Trial and Crucifixion

Frankly, I would avoid preaching at all this Sunday. I would simply tell the story – or let the Bible itself tell the story.

Simply reading all 120 verses of these two chapters will take about 15 minutes. I strongly recommend choosing your very best readers from the congregation to help you with this. And rehearse it with them – rehearse and rehearse – until they're telling a story, not sonorously delivering Holy Writ.

You might have them take turns reading paragraphs, segments of the larger story. Or you might have some of them assume specific roles, speaking the words of individuals in the story. Whatever you choose, make the presentation as compelling as possible.

Your solo voice can also have impact – but only if you tell the story, rather than read it. Walk out in front, and tell the story, in all its detail, even putting in your own words and phrasings and amplifications, with the same intensity that you would tell a children's story. Merely reading off the page erects an artificial barrier between you and your audience, and the story itself.

If you feel that additional words need to be said, as explanation, to put some context around the story of Jesus' last supper with his friends, his betrayal, his arrest and trial, provide the explanations before telling the story. Then let the story convey its own message.

I have attended the famous Passion Play in Oberammergau, in Bavaria, three times. Each time, I have found myself caught up in the story. The fact that I have heard it – or parts of it – every year for over 60 years does not detract from my getting involved in the intrigue, the conflict, the humiliation... Each time, I have to restrain myself from leaping up and shouting, “Stop! This man did nothing wrong! He doesn't deserve to die!”

Unfortunately, our fear of boring listeners results in delivering Sesame-Street-sized fragments of the story. Some of your congregation may never have felt the impact of this story as a whole.

The story was enough to captivate listeners all around the Mediterranean Sea, as they heard in it their own experience of undeserved suffering. (See also excerpt from Last Chance below.)

Excerpt from Last Chance: The Final Week of Jesus' Life, (Wood Lake, 1989, pages 129-133)
Before his arrest, Jesus could choose how he would teach. He could use words. He could use actions. But one in the hands of the authorities, he could teach only by example.

That example, whether he planned it or not – proved to be the most powerful teaching of his life. For instead of merely taking the side of the poor and the oppressed, he became one of them.

It's not money, or the lack of money, that marks poverty. The single most dominant factor that identifies the poor, anywhere in the world, is lack of choice. They are not in control of their own fate.

Most Canadians can choose to live simpler lifestyles. We can give up fine clothes and fancy cars; we can recycle garbage; we can flee the urban treadmill and try to live off the land. But we do so by choice. As long as we have that freedom, we do not belong to the poor.

The real poor can't flee the squalid slums of Calcutta or Capetown; they can't escape the violence of Beirut or Baghdad; they can't change the government that grinds them under the millstones of economic policy...

The cross of Jesus offers them hope. In his loss of freedom, they recognize their own situation. In his behavior when he could no longer control his destiny, the see what they could be. That is why the poor and oppressed all over the world have recognized Jesus as their savior...

Guido Rocha, a Brazilian sculptor, portrayed a tortured body of skin and bones, emaciated by ill-treatment, hanging on the cross, screaming in agony. Most North Americans turn their heads away from Rocha's version of the crucifixion. They don't want to think about anyone dying that way. But that's how it happened – and how it still happens.

Rocha recognized the parallel between the torture of Jesus and the torture of countless victims of repressive regimes around the world... That's why the victims of the world still identify with Jesus in their misery. They can believe that, like him, they are better, they are worth more, than the fate that life has dealt them. They recognize that his fate, like theirs, was undeserved.

JIm's full List of suggestions for preaching these stories