Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew’s Passion
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Palm Sunday to Passion Sunday—we take the single most impactful event of Jesus’ life and ministry and squash it into this one day. It starts out pretty good—Jesus comes riding in on a donkey. And since we are reading Matthew’s Gospel—we get to imagine not simply some stoic, classy entrance with Jesus sitting abreast the beast, draped in his white tunic, and waving his hand as a beauty queen on parade, no. We get X-Games Jesus. The Jesus who is mounted on a donkey and on her foal, a colt. Only Matthew includes this detail—he seems to want to get the prophecy just right. We get a great visual of Jesus with one foot on the back of the donkey and the other on the back of the colt riding into town with a bunch of half-crazed people spreading their cloaks on the ground, waving palm branches, and shouting “Hosana to the Son of David!” which is the ancient equivalent of teen age girls swooning at the sight of Elvis whenever he entered the building.
Matthew’s description offers a bit more insight into the frenzied nature of whatever this thing is that has grabbed the attention of so many. It is mob mentality and though Jesus is riding high in this moment, the mob will quickly turn fickle on him. His entrance into Jerusalem is full of excitement, but that energy will soon become negative and degrading. The Hosannas will become insults and curses. The palm branches will become whips and thorns. His donkey will be traded in for a cross.
We entered this morning as the church triumphant—waving our palms and singing “All glory laud and honor”, and now we’ve been brought to our knees, shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We have marked our own fickleness; pulled back the curtain of truth to see who we really are. I wonder what we might have discovered?
Maria Skobtsova was born an aristocrat in Russia in 1891. She was brought up in an Orthodox Christian household, but when she was fourteen her father died and she became a professed atheist. She persued intellectual studies and supported the ideas of revolution though she became disenchanted with what she saw as a lot of intellectual talk and no real action. Her pursuits would eventually lead her back to the church where she would be the first woman admitted to a Russian seminary and later would become the mayor of her village. Quite a feat for a woman in 1918. Instability in the political climate and potential threat due to her own beliefs, she soon fled Russia and eventually ended up in Paris painting dolls to try and earn a living. Her life begun in prestige and privilege devolved to a status of poverty and political refugee.
In Paris, Marie would soon open a house of hospitality helping other refugees mainly from Russia. She fed people and offered them a place to sleep as they sought a new life. She soon felt a call to take the orders of a nun but she did not want to live in a convent. She was given permission and, though she wore a full habit, lived out in the world—bridging the gap between spirituality and social concerns. She remained in Paris where she loved to sit at sidewalk cafes smoking her cigarettes in full habit garb and engaging with the world at large. She continued her work of concern and care for the other.
As World War II approached, Jews fleeing from the Nazis began to arrive at her door. Not only were they in need of food and shelter, they asked for baptismal certificates. Father Dimitri, an Orthodox priest and only 35 years old who worked with Maria, willingly obliged. Not
only would he falsify the baptismal certificates, he entered them into the parish registry to legitimize them if and when Nazis investigated; and they did. He felt certain that Jesus would have done the same. When a letter to Father Dimitri requesting a falsified baptismal document was found, the Gestapo immediately arrested him. In the course of his interrogation in which he was beaten and mocked and insulted by the SS, he was asked if he knew any Jews. Father Dimitri said, “Yes.” And pulled the crucifix out of his shirt, and said, “I know this Jew.” He would be sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany where he would die and his body was disposed of in the crematorium. It is not safe to be a Jew, nor is it safe to follow one when they
profess love and kindness to those who are different.
Mother Maria as she was now known would soon follow albeit to a different concentration camp by cattle car. In the camp, she would continue to mother those who were without parents taking many children under her wing and often sharing her food with them. She was ever cheerful even through the long hours standing from 3am on until roll call was completed, saying “Well, that’s that. Yet another day completed. And tomorrow it will be the same all over again.” She would die in Ravensbruck concentration camp taking the place of another woman who was afraid to die. It was Holy Saturday, 1945. One month later, the camp would be liberated by the Red Army.
Mother Maria had privilege and prestige as a young woman. Even after fleeing Russia, she maintained significant social contacts and through hard work and perseverance made a life for herself and countless others. She helped many who would face persecution—Jews and other refugees—to escape south, to Spain. And she had every opportunity to flee France when the Nazis were closing in. But instead, she faced the difficulties and challenges of occupied life by resisting the evils of this world and doing the life-giving, loving, liberating work of God.
Maria’s life and work was one of Hosanna. But it became that of insult and mockery. Her Jerusalem was a concentration camp. Her cross was a gas chamber. The path from Palm Sunday to the Passion is typically not so brief as the hour in which we receive it on Sunday. For Jesus it lasted a week. For Maria it lasted years. Maria believed that life is only begun by giving up possessiveness—even of one’s very life.
From aristocrat to concentration
camp. From king to cross.
It is finished. Yet, when
Jesus breathes his last,
we know that truly
it has just begun.