Time for Grasping the Incarnation – 2 April 2023 – Palm/Passion Sunday

We are at the front end of Holy Week, the most despairing and then most euphoric events of the Christian year. On Thursday night and Friday, we commemorate the lowest moment of humanity's relationship with God. Then less than forty-eight hours later, as the first rays of sunlight break across the morning horizon, we experience the height of God's relationship with humanity. Emotionally at least, highs and lows are much easier to respond to than ordinariness.

But what happens the other fifty-one weeks of the Christian year? What happens before this week and after this week, in the middle of these extremes? We get a hint in the Servant Song from Isaiah. During the ordinariness of life, we also live by faith. Not the highs and lows of faith offered in the extremes, but the patient faithful instruction that God provides “morning by morning.” Here we unwittingly gather the resilience to withstand both euphoria and despair without breaking. Faith is more difficult to grasp if we only begin clutching in the midst of a crisis and it is more difficult to seize if we only reach for it on the pinnacle of gratification. –– Jennifer Copeland

Matthew 26:14–27:66

Matthew's passion narrative was developed from that of Mark. He adds details concerning Judas. He adds a specific idea that when Pilot consulted the crowd, they claimed that Jesus' blood should be “upon us and on our children” (27:25).This verse has been largely responsible for the idea that all Jews were culpable for the death of Jesus, an idea that marred Christian teachings for centuries.

It would be well had the compilers of these readings elided the verse for liturgical proclamation as they have many other verses considered to lead into areas that were more properly addressed in instructional settings apart from the worshipping assembly.

I would encourage any church not restricted by governance to consider using. . . alternative readings. –– Regina Boisclair

Philippians 2:5–11

On the continuum of divine versus human, the reading from Philippians this week gives us both. It has long been the hallmark of Christian teaching that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, not half and half, not reduced from divine to human for a few years, not transformed from human to divine because he lived so well; but fully divine and fully human. . .

The gospel of John offers further fodder for the mystery of incarnation by writing, “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Are you confused yet? . . . On this day preceding Holy Week, we need to acknowledge the mystery of the incarnation—God taking on the form of a human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth—in order to absorb the pathos of the passion. –– Jennifer Copeland

Isaiah 50:4–9a

Those who would follow God choose to heed God's directives in lieu of the world's temptations. The resultant suffering from choosing to follow the way of the cross, declares Isaiah, is not immaterial to God. It is, in fact, the very substance of the cross. In the cross, God does not sanction suffering, but God does promise to suffer through this world with us. –– Jennifer Copeland

Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, is Emerita Professor at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.

Jennifer Copeland, a United Methodist ordained minister, served for 16 years as chaplain at Duke University and as director of the Duke Wesley Fellowship. She is currently executive director at North Carolina Council of Churches in Raleigh-Durham.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2008): 76–85.