After all that we have heard, we must fall silent. We began the morning by singing ‘Hosanna,’ which means, ‘Save us, we pray!’ And we have now heard how our Lord has indeed saved us, at what a cost to Himself, and by whose doing it was brought about: by the will both of God and of man.
We heard our Lord in the Garden praying earnestly, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me!’ and yet He went on, ‘but let it be as you, not I, would have it.’ For in His heart our Lord knew that it was for this very hour that He had come into the world at His Father’s will, as we also heard in last Sunday’s Gospel according to St John.
So, then, we recognise the Father’s will in Christ’s death on the cross, but also our own human fickleness. For some of the same crowds that sang ‘Hosanna,’ may well have been among those who shouted, ‘Crucify him!,’ just as we ourselves constantly vacillate between sin and repentance and sinning again. So it is that both God and mankind are responsible for the death of Christ, yet that death is necessary to save us from the very sin that has nailed Christ to the cross and left Him there to die, surrounded by mockery and insults, the screams of rejection by those whom He loves, including ourselves.
Let us think about this Gospel according to St Mark. Although it is the shortest of the Gospels, it is not just an abbreviated version of the others. What does Mark in particular tell us? First of all, we need to know that Mark was St Peter’s assistant and wrote his Gospel at Peter’s bidding and under his guidance. So, it was written specifically for the people of Peter’s see, the city of Rome. It is for this reason that Mark tells us some details that no other Evangelist does. He tells us, for instance, that Simon of Cyrene, who helped to carry the cross behind Jesus, was the father of two brothers, Alexander and Rufus. Clearly these were Christians known to the Romans, and indeed St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, also mentions Rufus by name. The Romans Christians who heard this Gospel when it was newly written would hear those familiar names and would say, ‘yes, we know this is all true because our friends here, Alexander and Rufus heard it from their father.’ And incidentally, it is from this fact that we can be sure that Simon of Cyrene, the stranger forced to carry the cross, indeed must have become a convert to Christ, and all his family with him. May a share in carrying Christ’s cross also bring us to deeper faith in Christ.
Then, too, we remember Peter’s prominence in the Passion. All the Evangelists tell us about the denials. As his secretary Mark makes the denials such a major feature of the Passion, this must be part of Peter’s own preaching, a sign of his great humility.
He taught his flock how he had been the most vehement of the Apostles in denying all knowledge of Jesus, and yet hours before he had sworn faithfulness even to the point of death. Peter was not only determined to show the Church which acknowledged him as bishop that although he was the Prince of the Apostles, he was also the one who let his Lord down so badly. It is St Mark who relates the small, yet telling detail, that after he realises what he had done, Peter burst into tears, or as the Greek text says, ‘he fell to weeping.’
We can imagine this personal account recalling the sudden violence of Peter’s realisation, not so much that he had let himself down and broken his word, but rather that he had utterly failed to support our Lord, and had so openly and dramatically abandoned him in his moment of utter isolation – the Lord who had prayed to be released from this terrible cup of suffering, which was not only his bodily passion, but his anguish of soul at the abandonment by those who should have stood by him.
And so, too, the strange detail which only Mark records, that in the Garden of Gethsemane there was a young man who was following Jesus even after the Apostles had run away. This unnamed young man, who was he? Why did he follow when all the Apostles had fled? He seems to have been captured as a follower of Jesus, one who had not abandoned him, at least not at first. Yet in that moment when the captors laid hands on him, he, too, was so terrified that he left his only garment in their hands and ran away naked. There is no better explanation of this little scene that I know of than this: it was Mark himself. This is perhaps his signature in the pages of the Gospel he wrote for Peter’s flock.
This abandonment is total. Christ has no one to comfort Him. Alone He is taken to the Jewish authorities who have only one intention: to get Him killed by the Roman authorities. We may wonder at the High Priest rending his garments and crying ‘Blasphemy!’ Mark makes it clearer than any of the Evangelists why this is so. For it is the most dramatic moment of the trial, when the High Priest, aware that the evidence against Jesus was very weak, and seeing that Jesus stood silent under his questioning, asks Him outright, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?’ Jesus answers utterly unambiguously, ‘I AM.’ Make no mistake about this reply. It is the divine name! God’s own name for himself as revealed to Moses, and so sacred that it was never uttered aloud. Jesus not only says it but says it of Himself: I am God. It is for this that He is condemned for blasphemy. Yet we know that it is not blasphemy, it is the simple and stark truth. This man, as he stands in all his vulnerability, bound and captive in their presence, is the one true God who made all things, who is the ruler and judge of the entire human race, but who is also humanity’s Redeemer, and He is now on the road that will bring Him to fulfil that role as our Saviour.
This helps us to see clearly the significance of Mark’s Gospel. From the moment He was entering the city on that first Palm Sunday, our Lord was in control. He directed the apostles to collect the colt and tell the owners with His authority who required it. He freely rode on it in accordance with Zechariah’s prophecy of the humble entry of the king into his own city, accepting the enthusiastic acclamations of His people. He freely gave Himself to the Apostles in Holy Communion at the Last Supper as the sign of His forthcoming sacrifice of His Body and Blood on the cross, and freely surrendered Himself to the soldiers who came to arrest Him by force. He has undertaken all this as we have just witnessed. But whereas we, frail and fickle humanity as we are, so often vacillate between ‘Hosanna’ when we need His help, and ‘Crucify him!’ whenever we sin, He is in complete control of Himself and utterly consistent, for the simple reason that He is God, and that as God He loves us with an infinite and everlasting love. May He be praised for all eternity, and may we adore Him, our crucified and risen Lord for ever. Amen.
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