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A Sermon for Passion Sunday

by Dr. Robert Crouse

St. James’ Church, Halifax

5 April, 1987

 

“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great, exercise authority upon them.  But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:  even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

 

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Today, we begin the final two weeks of Lent, the solemn season of Passiontide;  and the scripture lessons, setting the tone of this season, remind us of what the sacrificial death of Christ is; in some way, the model and pattern of our own Christian lives.

 

The Epistle lesson, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks of what Christ has done for us:  he is “the mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.”  That is to say, our Saviour, Christ, both God and man, by his pure and perfect sacrifice, freely offered, pays the price of our transgressions, destroys our enmity, and opens up for us the way of our return to God, and life eternal.  Thus, the sacrifice of Christ is something done for us, once for all, something which we could not do, something which we can only faithfully and thankfully accept.

 

But the sacrifice of Christ is not only something done for us, once for all;  it is also something which must be done in us, in our own minds and hearts, day by day.  Our thankful acceptance of Christ’s work for us must change us inwardly, must transform our minds and hearts; as the Epistle expresses it, must “purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

 

That is precisely the message of today’s Gospel lesson;  it speaks to us of the inner transformation of our own lives;  it speaks of a very fundamental change in attitude and aspiration which must be ours, if we would live in the humble obedience of faithful servants, “even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

 

That is to say, the way of Christ’s Passion demands in us an inner change of direction, a reversal of perspective, a change of attitude, a different aspiration.  In today’s Gospel story, the attitude of the natural man is perfectly represented by James and John, and by their mother, and by the rest of the disciples.  Zebedee’s wife was proud of her two sons, who had been among the earliest and closest followers of Jesus, and she thought that Jesus ought to do something special for them. “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom.”  Her ambition seems natural enough, and her straightforward honesty is really rather touching.  She just wanted the best for her boys.

 

James and John shared their mother’s attitude, and so did the rest of the disciples.  But Jesus gathered them all around him, and taught them a very fundamental lesson about what discipleship must mean.  “Ye know,” he says, “that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them”.  That is to say, there are certain worldly ways of doing things and looking at things:  for the Gentiles, greatness is a matter of worldly power and domination – having one’s own way.  But, in the kingdom of God, says Jesus, that is not the way things are:  “It shall not be so among you” – your greatness is the humble obedience of servants.

 

The points is that the Kingdom of God requires an inversion, an overturning, of our natural worldliness:  “whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;  whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”

 

There is the essential meaning of Passiontide for our own inner lives.  When we celebrate our Saviour’s Passion, we celebrate at once a kingship and a crucifixion.  To the world, that seems a contradiction:  foolishness to Greeks, a stumbling-block to Jews.  It’s a strange kingship, surely, and one which the world finds incomprehensible.  Pilate didn’t know what to make of it:  “Art thou a king, then”, he asked.  “The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion.”  But what kind of dominion is this?  Here is no dominion but humility and obedience;  here is no monarchy but the monarchy of sacrificial love;  but that is a dominion which endures when all worldly dominions are long gone in dust and ashes.

 

Lent leads into Passiontide, and it is in the Passion of Jesus that all the lessons of Lent are summed up.  The whole point of the teachings and disciplines of Lent is that the demons of worldliness, the demons of false and empty ambitions and aspirations, the demons of self-seeking, should be cast out of us:  “It shall not be so among you”;  and that our souls should be filled with the living bread from heaven, the Word of God himself, the word of obedient and sacrificial love, which is both death and resurrection:  death to our old and worldly nature, but the new birth in us of life which is eternal.

 

The sacrifice of Christ is something done for us – a sacrifice once offered, perfect and sufficient.  But that sacrifice is also something done in us, day by day.  It must have its way in the transformation of our minds and hearts, our attitude and aspirations.

 

Here today, we celebrate the sacrifice of Calvary, in bread and wine, in signs of body broken, and blood outpoured.  We celebrate the presence of the sacrifice of Calvary – the sacrifice of Christ’s obedience, to be our spirits’ food and drink.  That is the deepest meaning of our worship, and that is the principle of our obedient life in the midst of the chaos of a disobedient world.

 

“The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them…but it shall not be so among you”;   your life is to be the imitation of the Passion of your Saviour, Christ, “who came to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”