Palm Sunday B

The passage from Isaiah ( 50: 4-7 ), clearly reads as though it is from a prophet. He is one who knows what God wants to say to the people, and even though his words may be unwelcome to those he addresses, he nevertheless puts up with the opposition of the crowd and follows his calling to listen to the voice of God and deliver the message to the people; their reaction may well bring him opposition, verbal or even physical. This passage, like a considerable amount of the Bible (Old Testament) would be quite familiar to the Jews at the time of Christ and in the early church. It is noticeable, for example, that in the Gospel written by Mark (probably the earliest Gospel) there are echoes and sometimes references to and quotations from his Scriptures. This Old Testament reading may well have been in mind as he wrote about the difficulties encountered by Christ in the account of the passion which we hear in the Gospel today.

In the second reading ( Philippians 2: 6-11 ) Paul quotes from an early hymn about Christ. It forcefully and poetically attempts to express the ‘unbelievable condescension’ of God becoming human – one of us. It uses the Greek word for “to empty” (kenoein) which appears only five times in the New Testament and only here of God, of His act in Christ in person emptying Himself – from His divine nature – into our humanity becoming the man Jesus Christ This is a selflessness that we would emulate if we were utterly devoted to becoming saints. The adjective ‘kenotic’ and the noun ‘kenosis’ have now entered the English language and they are used to try and express this ‘emptying’ of Christ without denying His Divinity as well as being used about the implications of this for Christian living and spirituality. The poem we have in Philippians goes on to tell of the elevation that balances this, after Christ has undergone death – the details of which we hear in the passion account in the long Gospel reading that follows.

See Jeff's jottings about Jesus’ prayer and our prayer relationship