The Clear Mark of Christ
On how to be certain of a messiah | The Word in the Wild, Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, Year B
I was recently in a conversation about finches. At most feeders in Arkansas, year around, we have House Finches. I can hear them chirping as I write. The males are a purple hued red and the females, a two-toned brown, with a light-colored body and darker streaks. During the winter there is another finch that descends from the boreal forests in varying numbers, year to year. This finch is called a Purple Finch, and it can seem, looking at a field guide, that it is quite similar in appearance to a House Finch.
In this conversation, a relatively new birder had posted a picture of a finch, asking if anyone with more experience could chime in. He had yet to see a Purple Finch and was hoping this might be one. Several folks replied, all saying no, it was House Finch, and the consensus advice settled on this: you’ll know a Purple Finch when you see it.
That advice applies to plenty of bird species with a close look-a-like. It’s easy, looking at a field guide, to imagine a particular bird is the more uncommon type. But doubt and wavering are often signs that an identification has missed its mark. When you see the actual species, the real thing, it becomes clear that this bird is something different.
We could think of our scriptures this Sunday, as a lesson on “how to identify the Messiah.” The triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, with crowds lining the streets, would certainly seem to make this an easy call. Jesus comes in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah, who told Jerusalem to rejoice when her king would come, “humble and riding on an donkey” (Zech. 9:9).
Palm Sunday is a whiplash of a service for many of us. In addition to Palm Sunday, it is also known in many traditions as the Sunday of the Passion. We start with hosannahs, and the triumph of Jesus’s messianic entry, and we end the liturgy of the word with Christ’s crucifixion and defeat. But it is precisely in this defeat that we hear the certain identification of who Jesus really is—that mark that no other could have.
While many hoped that this might be the Messiah, it is only when Jesus is dead on the cross that a Roman centurion names his true identity: “This man was certainly God’s son” (Mark 15:39). It is a strange recognition, to name Jesus as God’s son at the very moment of his defeat, his profound weakness on the cross. And yet, there was something about how Jesus underwent that humiliation that marked him out as different from any other.
This centurion had seen plenty of crucifixions of the more common type—runaway slaves, messianic zealots, rebels against the standing order. But whether raging against the Empire or acquiescing to their punishment, none of these would have so clearly taken up the cross in such freedom and with such purpose as did Jesus. It is clear in all the Gospel accounts that Jesus goes to the cross by choice. He could have stopped at any point, but he goes there to enter human pain and suffering, he goes there to put to death the reality of sin in which human life has been captive and entangled.
The “Kenosis Hymn” that Paul quotes in his letter to the Philippians could serve as an identification guide for the messiah. It names the truth that even though Jesus could have claimed an equality with God, he allows himself to take the form of a human, a creature enslaved to the power of sin and death. It is taking on that reality for himself, suffering the pain and humiliation of the cross, that proves that Jesus is in fact God’s son, that he is no pretend Messiah or great prophet, but is instead the one long looked for, the rare arrival of God’s final liberation.
As we move into Holy Week in the Western church, it will be easy to focus our attention on Easter, on the grand reality of the Resurrection. But it is not the Resurrection that is our first sign that God is with us; that God has come to liberate us from the powers of Death. Instead, when we see Jesus giving up his life on the cross, we can know without a doubt—truly, this man is God’s son.