*IS* This "Passion Sunday"?

 

Sermon. 26 March 2023.

Lent 5 (Passiontide Begins)

Gospel: John 11:1-45

 

Today is the Sunday when Passiontide begins.

You might think that means it is Passion Sunday.

It is not. It is confusing.

 

Even to hear that today is the Sunday when Passiontide begins is confusing.

 

If you have no connection with the Church calendar at all, and have come here out of curiosity (or something else), you might think that Passiontide is about passion as we currently speak of passion.

We currently speak of passion in, I think, two ways:

1.                 It’s part of the game we feel we have to play in job applications: “I am absolutely passionate about the next generation of KitKat” and so on.

2.                 It’s all about romance and courtship and coupling and that kind of love.

So you might think that Passiontide is an extended Valentine’s Day.

It is not. It is confusing.

 

If in Passiontide you stumble into a certain kind of church, you will be struck by how images and statues are removed, or, more often, covered with cloths and drapes. If you think about the posture of the typical statue in church, and how it would look covered, your first thought may be of the archetypical ghost (I am picturing Scooby-Doo here). You may then think that Passiontide is the Church’s own Halloween. 

It is not. It is confusing.

 

If you know a bit about Church, you may well know that “Passion” in the Church does not mean intense longing, but rather is an English version of the Latin passio (passio, passionis, feminine – for the linguists among us). And that means “suffering”. At another level it means being in the passive role. It means being the one who has things done to you. It means being at the mercy of others. And so in the Church’s story “Passion” means the suffering of Jesus, when he was at the mercy of others.

 

All this being the case, you may well think that the Sunday when Passiontide begins is when we begin to hear of the suffering of Jesus leading up to the cross.

It does not. As we have just heard (at great length), it does not. It is confusing.

 

But! But we are now in the place where we can begin to make sense of Passiontide. Today is not Passion Sunday because today we do not hear of the suffering of Jesus. But today is the beginning of Passiontide because, were we to attend services in the week, we would now be hearing of the suffering of Jesus leading up to the cross. And – spoiler alert – next Sunday we will hear of Jesus’s death on the cross. So the Sunday when Passiontide begins is the hinge within Lent.  Lent begins with the account of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. Then we reflect for three weeks on how Jesus can lift us from our own wildernesses, our confusions and worse. Now we begin to attend to the story of the suffering of Jesus.

 

So why, here, at the beginning of Passiontide (you ask – I can tell), why do we hear – of all things – of the raising of Lazarus? Is not this Jesus at his most active, at his least passive? Is this not Easter, and not the Passion?

 

My answer is Yes. Yes, today is an anticipation of Easter. And that is not because those who drew up our cycle of readings were stupid, or lazy. It is because they knew that, for Christians, Easter bleeds into everything. For Christians, there is a sense in which every day is Easter Day. If I haven’t mentioned him before, I mention him now, my hero, St Seraphim (Seraphim of Sarov, Russian, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). He was (and is) famous for greeting every person he met with: “My joy! Christ is risen!”. (Radost moya! Christos voskrese! – for the linguists among us.) “Christ is risen!” he said, every day of the year, yes, including Good Friday.

It makes sense.

For Christians, there is no day when Christ is not risen.

My joys! Christ is risen!

 

So, in the Church in West and East actually, before Easter, we hear of the raising of Lazarus.[1] Of Lazarus raised from the dead. And, not incidentally, not accidentally, of the rolling away of the stone for poor dead Lazarus.

 

The rolling away of the stone for poor dead Lazarus.

 

We are likely to think of this as a thing of simple joy. Something beautiful and comforting and reassuring – just that. But let us pay attention to the details of the story. I suggest we are told very clearly that we are not simply comforted.

 

Think of Lazarus. For all there is a simple moment:

“Lazarus, come out!” and Lazarus comes out…

for all that, note that Lazarus comes out, still bound. He needs help. He needs others. Others have to do the work, the delicate work of unbinding him, removing what binds him. It is an effort. And… I put it this way, sisters and brothers… we are not told that this was painless.

 

Think also of Martha. Of Martha’s objection to the whole thing. Why does she object? Some pious reason? No. She says: “by this time there is a bad odour, for he has been there four days”. That is a rather delicate and moderating translation. Let me give you the Authorised Version: “he stinketh”! Already he stinks! (Ede ozei – for the linguists.) Already he stinks.

 

See how he loved him!

Even when bound, and in need of help to do anything.

Even when dead.

Even when stinking with the stench of rotting,

Jesus comes to him.

Jesus addresses him.

Jesus calls him by name.

Jesus gives him life.

 

See how he loved him.

See how he loves you.

Truly, this is “Passion Sunday”.

Amen.  

 

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[1] In the West, this strictly applies only in Year A. In the East, the Saturday before Palm Sunday is always Lazarus Saturday.