Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66
What we have just heard is a sad tale; the saddest story ever told. It is the story of what happens when sheep turn on their shepherd.
They decide to ‘take him down’ and they do so in the usual way the innocent are taken down, they ‘set him up’.
One of them, the one of whom the shepherd once said it would have been better ‘if he had never been born’, seeks out the wolves in their den. He offers to betray the shepherd to them. They pay him a measly thirty pieces of silver – and the stage is set for the awful saga to begin.
The shepherd himself is a ‘pushover’; a ‘kiss’ and a few clubs will do the trick. He makes no fuss, no defence. He is like a lamb led to the slaughter – he doesn’t make a sound – he offers no resistance.
Though he knows exactly what is going to happen, how it is going to happen, when it is going to happen and who it is that will make it happen; though he could foil their plans with a single sigh; though he has legions of angels at his disposal who could annihilate his enemies with a single blow, he does nothing. He knows that his time has come, that the hour is at hand.
But why so passive? Why do nothing? Why let it all happen? The answer is simple – it is his Father’s will.
My Father ... let it be as you, not I, would have it ... your will be done!
Jesus knew that Judas would betray him because he knew Judas. He knew that Peter would deny him because he knew Peter. He knew that his disciples would all desert him because he knew his disciples. We who know Jesus, who have watched him and have grown to know him, understand that he would never, could never, disobey his Father. Even as a young boy of twelve he told his mother and father: Did you not know I must be busy with my Father’s affairs (Lk 2:49)?
Throughout the whole course of his life it was his Father he sought to please, to love, to obey. His relationship with the Father who had sent him among us was everything for Jesus: My food is to do the will of the one who sent me (Jn 4:34).
It was the Father’s will that Jesus should offer himself as a sacrifice of love in reparation for the sins of mankind and Jesus, the loving Son of the Father, had no intention of allowing anything to interfere with those plans. Remember his terse reply to Peter who thought he knew better than the Father: Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s (Mt 16:23).
And so Jesus did nothing. He let himself be taken and whipped and crowned and crucified while we stand by, helpless, dumbfounded, awed, bewildered. The disciples fall asleep during his agony, Judas betrays him with a kiss, Peter denies him three times, the council looks for false testimony, two come forward and give it, the crowd says, ‘He deserves death.’
Jesus is brought before Pilate, Judas hangs himself, Barabbas is released. The whole cohort make sport with Jesus, spitting on him, crowning him with thorns, stripping him naked, striking him with a reed. Jesus says nothing. He just lets it happen.
At the sixth hour the light hides itself and there is darkness. At the ninth hour Jesus dies. The veil of the Temple is split from top to bottom, the dead rise from their tombs, and even nature protests the crime with an earthquake which splits the rocks.
It is accomplished. The Father’s will has been done. Jesus has repaired the disobedience of Adam and brought salvation.
Let us pray the Collect of today’s Mass again:
Almighty ever-living God, who as an example of humility for the human race to follow caused our Saviour to take flesh and submit to the Cross, graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering and so merit a share in his Resurrection.
