Today the purple of Lenten penitence gives way to the red of martyrdom in Holy Week, as we walk the final days of Jesus' journey to the Cross and Resurrection. We begin with the story of triumphal entry, continuing with the final days ending in arrest and execution by Rome for treason. On Good Friday we hear John's very late and stylized gospel. On Palm Sundays, we rotate amongst the three synoptic gospels, this year's being Matthew's text.
As we listen to Holy Week readings, it is important to remember that the four gospels are recruiting manuals, not history books, and that their tales must be read in context, for they reflect not only the good things in the communities that spawned them -- love, compassion, sacrifice and hope -- but also bitterness, disappointment and anger among those in the early Jesus Movement.. We must discern the Scriptures, looking to appropriate the right messages for our lives as Christians today.
The biblical stories must be relevant to us today if they are to have true meaning for us. Let me set forth two Saints in the Episcopal Calendar, neither of whom was Anglican, using them as examples, relating them to today's readings. First. Saint Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor who chose to leave personal safety in New York to return to his native Germany to fight the Nazi menace. There he fought to raise the consciousness of pastors not to go along to get along with manifest evil. Jesus, too, could have remained in safety, remaining in the Galilee, but instead heeded his Father's call to Jerusalem to confront the powers there and to be crushed by them. Sometimes God sends us in a direction we don't want to go. That is part of the risk of taking up one's cross: your life is not your own.
The other figure is Saint Martin Luther King. King could have gained a lot of wealth and fame as a premier preacher, perhaps a televangelist. He could have touted inexpensive Christianity. Instead, after a vision, he chose to fight for justice and an end to racial segregation. He was in Memphis, Tennessee fighting for underpaid sanitation workers when he caught the fatal bullet. In an interview not long ago, a biographer of King was asked why King didn't start a vanguard party to overthrow the government. The scholar answered "the influence of Jesus." King chose the career God had in mind over being simply another big player in the big business of protestant religion. We too are called to put the interests of the Gospel ahead of our own, following Jesus' peaceful model, as we work for the Kingdom in our world. We must be ready to risk all for Christ, as he gave his all for us.
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