Nor Are Your Ways My Ways
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8)
Nowhere is this statement reflected more clearly in the life of the Church than in our Holy Week traditions. Each day has its own peculiarities, meant to encourage us to pray, reflect, contemplate, act, or simply stand in awe of what God has done for us. The tenor of the week shifts dramatically, often within the same liturgy. These holiest days of the year play out in strange ways. Ways that feel distinctly not like our ways. On Maundy Thursday, the joy of recalling the institution of our Eucharist is tinged with knowledge of the coming betrayal and ends with the stark scene of a stripped altar and empty tabernacle.
Today’s liturgy holds a similar hairpin turn. We begin with festivity and rejoicing at the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. He is received by the people in the same fashion as a lauded general, returning from a victorious military campaign. Almost immediately after he has arrived, our focus turns toward his Passion; we move in a moment from great joy and celebration to grief and loss. Somehow, we are meant to understand that this is, still, a showing forth of God’s victory.
Jesus does not ride a great warhorse such as a general would ride, but a donkey, the common beast of burden. The donkey’s back is not covered with the silk of Roman elites, but the wool and linen of common people. His path was not strewn with Not branches of laurel, the sign of victory, and sweet-smelling herbs, but palm branches, a tree that offers fruit and shade. The crowd shouts, not the songs of a conquering hero, but hosannas, calling for God’s assistance.
After his arrival, Jesus heads for the temple and chases out those who have turned it away from a place of faith and religion into a marketplace. The heart of God enters the heart of Jerusalem and cleanses it of corruption and sin. The worship of God is no longer an opportunity for exploitation and profit, but the right of those who know and love God. For a moment, God’s intended order is restored. And after that moment, when the powers that hold sway in Jerusalem learn what has happened, corruption and sin seep back into the picture.
We hear the story in Luke’s telling this year and we are left with the image of the body of Christ hanging upon the cross. Those who have followed Jesus for some time, especially his mother, Mary, who has been with him since the very beginning, are also left with this sight, wondering what has happened. The Crucifixion has all of the appearances of a failed project. The Romans remain oppressors. Jesus, breathing his last, appears to be the tower-builder who planned poorly from his own parable. (Luke 14:28-30)
But there is no miscalculation here. Some people mock Jesus, thinking him a fool, promising paradise to thieves in his last hours. But those who truly know him, Mary, John, the women of Jerusalem, the gathered disciples, understand that he knows the cost of this work and has chosen to pay it. They have seen Jesus do the inexplicable before and each time they have questioned it, he has assured them that this is what the kingdom of God looks like. God’s ways are not our ways and, as St Paul reminds us, “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
It is difficult for us who share in the Body of Christ to see our brother, our friend, our Lord, upon the Cross. We are reminded that just as God’s warhorse is a donkey and God’s crown of victory is a wreath of thorns, so is God’s glory found in humility, and God’s wealth found in pouring out ourselves for one another. We recall the words of Mary’s song in her conversation with her cousin Elizabeth, that the hungry will be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty, that the lowly will be raised up and tyrants cast down from their thrones. We recall these words, we see the Body of Christ upon the Cross, and we wonder how this can be the way to liberation. How can it be that the path from oppression to freedom includes this station at the Place of the Skull?
As we will see again and again this Holy Week, God’s ways are not our ways and this path through the dark valley of suffering and death does, indeed, lead to resurrection and eternal life. May we have courage and faith enough to hold fast to Christ, even when it takes us to the foot of the Cross.
