My Palm Sunday Meditation--short and hopefully sweet: Palm Sunday meditation on Mark's Gospel 9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” 12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted[g] by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom The Gospel of Mark, considered by most scholars to be the frst of the four to be written is unique in several ways. It is short, narrative driven, conveys a sense of urgency that leaves the reader breathless when we read it start to fnish. When we get little passages week by week in the lectionary, we miss the sweep that the author is trying to convey. Each of the four gospels has a diferent symbol that represents it: Matthew's symbol is a man, because the Gospel starts with the geneology of Jesus and his incarnation is highlighted by the humanity of Jesus; John's symbol is the eagle which is to represent the high soaring theology of John; Luke's Gospel is represented by an ox or bull as a symbol of sacrifce that links the Old Testament practice to the sacrifce of Christ. Finally Mark is symbolized by a winged lion – a fgure of courage and monarchy. Mark has John the Baptist preaching "like a lion roaring" at the beginning of his Gospel. It also represents Jesus' Resurrection (because lions were believed to sleep with open eyes, a comparison with Christ in the tomb), and Christ as king. This signifes that Christians should be courageous on the path of salvation. There is also something wild about the way God is described in Mark's Gospel. He is like a ravening beast who literally tears open the heavens in the beginning, and tears the curtain of the temple in two, from top to bottom at the end. It is signifcant to note that none of the other three gospels use the Greek word for “torn” as Mark describes the tearing of heaven and the temple curtain. The Greek word used here is “schizo” as in schizophrenic—a person who is in a way, torn in two or three. The language that Mark uses suggests an urgency to get the story out that is not quite as evident in the other three gospels. Note in today's Passion gospel that Simon of Cyrene was COMPELLED to carry the cross of Jesus. Right after the baptism of Jesus, he went into the wilderness AT ONCE—no delay at all. The word Immediately is repeated again and again in Mark's Gospel. 8 times in frst chapter, 40 times repeated in entire book. The idea is that when you read or hear the book of Mark as a whole you get a sense that God has done an amazing and almost terrifying NEW thing. There is a phrase that we learned in seminary that our task as clergy is to comfort the aficted and afict the comfortable. That last part means our message should shake folks out of their complacency a bit and for them to welcome the newness of the Good News for here and now. The bit about the curtain of the temple being torn in two cannot be emphasized enough. What this represented to Mark's early readers—Jews who were fully aware of the signifcance of the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the people in the temple. For that to be torn in two, from top to bottom meant—not as the Hollywood movies would seem to imply that God was mad because Jesus had died on the cross—but that God was doing a wild thing—he was removing the barrier that kept His holy presence separated from his people. By Jesus' living and dying (and later resurrected), God was doing this in the words of John's prologue: “ And the Word became fesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth.” It was unthinkable to any religious people of Jesus' day that God would become human and dwell among human beings and die as one of them. But, that is exactly the wild thing that God did according to the Gospels. This is how I would like for us at St. Bartholomew to approach this Holy Week—to realize that the God we love and worship is way beyond our control and we cannot predict what He will do next. We are assured that this Holy Week journey will take us to the new life that is promised in the Resurrection of Jesus—for us right now and right here, and also in the life to come. AMEN