Today, May 9, is Ascension Day: the commemoration of Jesus ascending into heaven forty days after his resurrection (Acts 1:1-11). In some respects, it might seem strange to celebrate the departure of the risen Christ from this earth. Why is this a day of celebration for the church rather than a day of loss?

After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples had forty days of joy, during which their incredulity and fear and doubt must have slowly transformed into the courage and confidence that enabled their costly witness and even martyrdom in the years to come.

The disciples had forty days of instruction, during which Jesus spoke to them about the kingdom of God. Imagine their chagrin when the One who opened these mysteries to them was taken away into heaven before their eyes.

In Acts, two angels chide the disciples for standing around and staring into the sky after Jesus’ ascension. Time to get their eyes back to earth – they have a mission to complete. And then they learn two important things about Jesus’ departure: he will come again (Acts 1:11; Rev 22:12, 20), and he has not left them alone.

Ten days after the risen Christ ascends to the right hand of God, as witnessed by the first martyr, Stephen (Acts 7:55), the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles in wind and flame and miraculous empowerment on the day of Pentecost. In the Gospel of John, Jesus promises that when he leaves the disciples he will not leave them alone, but will give them the gift of the Comforter, the Encourager, the Advocate, the Exhorter – the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit continues to make the risen Christ present to the disciples, reminding them of his teaching and empowering them to fulfill the mission given to them by their Lord (Acts 1:8). Jesus had already assured his followers that they were one with him and with the Father, bound together by divine love (John 17:22-23); in his “absence,” the Spirit is the “bond of love” that not only binds the Trinity together (as Augustine wrote) but binds Christians to one another and assures them of the risen Christ’s ongoing presence with his church.

The reassurance that the risen Christ will return, ushering in the kingdom of God that his ministry, death, and resurrection inaugurated, does not mean the disciples sit around and wait until he comes back. When they ask Jesus if now (now, please!) is the time he’s going to restore the kingdom to Israel, Jesus gently reprimands them (“it is not for you to know”) and then promises them the empowering presence of the Spirit. And empower them the Spirit does; throughout the rest of Acts, the disciples heal, preach, gather in transformed communities, bring good news to the poor, and joyfully take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And although Christ himself, in his resurrected body, has departed the earth, they are never left alone. They live in the Spirit, and they trust that the risen Christ who ascended to the Father will return to earth – this time for good.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth

(1 Cor 5:6b-8).

Easter Sunday is the culmination of the Christian year. Although Jesus had been “put to death” by being “hung on a tree,” we celebrate the fact that God “raised him on the third day and made him manifest” (Acts 10:39-40) in a series of highly intimate acts. For here God has not only vindicated the poor and the oppressed by the resurrection of His beloved Son, He has brought them into His presence, even “eating and drinking with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:39-41). Indeed, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we see the embodiment of the praise found in the Psalm: “O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His steadfast love endures for ever!” (Ps 118:1).

In the Vigil of the Old Rite, the celebration of the Easter feast contains the reading of the twelve prophecies, which give us a complete digest of salvation history comprised of the creation narrative (Gen 1:1-2:2), the story of Noah (Gen 5:31-6:22; 7:6, 11-14, 18-21, 23, 24; 8:1-3, 6-12, 15-21), the binding of Isaac (Gen 22:1-19), the passage of Moses and the Israelites through the Red Sea (Ex 14:24-31, 15:1), God’s promise of an ‘everlasting covenant’ to the prophet Isaiah (Is 54:17, 5:1-11), God’s promise to the prophet Baruch of Israel’s return to the Holy Land (Bar 3:9-38); Ezekiel’s vision of the ‘dry bones’ and the resurrection of the armies of Israel (Ez 37:1-14), Isaiah’s vision of Zion (Is 4:1-6), the first Paschal lamb eaten by the Hebrews in captivity (Ex 12:1-11), the story of Jonah and the whale (Jon 3:1-10), the finishing and sealing of the Law by Moses (Deut 31:22-30) and, finally, the story of the three young men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to worship the idols of Nebuchadnezzar and who miraculously passed through the fire. The Paschal Candle is blessed along with the baptismal font, the litany of saints is sung, and catechumens are brought into the Church. The entire history of the world, everyone and everything, is brought together in the resurrection of Christ at Easter.

The festival of Easter is, in all things, the celebration of the resurrection in which we hope to share. It is, according to a long tradition in the Church, the very reality for which God created us and, indeed, the very world. It is the still point towards which all things tend. In this respect, I have always been struck by the evident excitement, the joy, of the disciples in our Gospel reading. Mary Magdalene, seeing that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, ran to tell Peter (Jn 20:1), who, with the “disciple whom Jesus loved” likewise ran to the tomb (Jn 20:4). The excitement of Mary, Peter, and John provides the model by which one might know how to follow St. Paul’s injunction: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col 3:1). But, at the heart of the reading, inside the empty tomb, all is still—eternally still. The linens lie folded and the cloth that covered Christ’s head is calmly rolled up. There is no sign of struggle, nor even any sign of haste. Christ has gone where He was always meant to go, to His Father, to prepare a way for those that love Him.

The book of the prophet Isaiah has sometimes been called the “Fifth Gospel,” because Christians have mined it so thoroughly for prophecies of the Messiah. In it they have found passages that are illuminated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; in turn, these passages themselves have cast a light that has helped Christians interpret the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the “Servant Songs” of Isaiah (Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12). It is hard to imagine that these were not among “what referred to him in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27) that Jesus interpreted to the disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter evening. It is hard to imagine that the first Christians did not look to such passages as they began to tell the story of the passion and death of Jesus, finding in them a way to understand Jesus as the one who “was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed” (53:5). It is hard to imagine that Jesus’ resurrection was not understood in light of Isaiah’s prophecy that God’s servant, “shall see the light in fullness of days” (53:11). So it is appropriate that the Church offers us on Good Friday a reading from this first “passion narrative,” which has been so significant for the Church’s understanding of Christ’s death.

If Isaiah offers us Scripture’s first passion narrative, John might be thought of as offering us Scripture’s last passion narrative, since John is widely thought to be the last of the canonical Gospels to be written, and shows the fruit of several decades of reflection on the significance of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. In particular, John’s passion account emphasizes the divine glory that is revealed on the Cross. John’s account of Jesus’ trial is punctuated repeatedly by the use of the divine appellation “I am” (18:5, 6, 8); in his dialogue with Pilate, Jesus stresses his heavenly Kingship (18:37) and Pilate’s ultimate powerlessness (19:11); even on the cross, Jesus displays great equanimity, dying with the cry “it is finished,” indicating the fulfillment of God’s saving plan in him (19:30). Whereas Isaiah underscores for us the saving significance of Christ’s sacrificial suffering and death, John seems to focus more on the events of the passion as the paradoxical revelation of God’s glory.

One of the great gains of historical critical biblical interpretation is found in the importance it places on listening to the distinctive voice of each biblical text, reminding us of the polyphony of the biblical witness. Isaiah and John speak with different voices. At the same time, more traditional forms of interpretation, in which Scripture is read as a whole, unified by a pattern of promise and fulfillment, can serve to remind us that while the different books of Scripture speak with different voices, it is still the one Gospel of Jesus Christ that Scripture proclaims. Both the first passion account and the last, while retaining their individual distinctiveness, cast light on the saving significance of the passion of Christ: the atoning sacrifice in which the glory of divine love is revealed.

One way to think about these readings is to assume that we hear them at a Holy Thursday Eucharist, the first of the three central days of the church year, the first of the two central Eucharists of that year.   In this, as with all Eucharistic celebrations, we are gathered to listen to and proclaim God’s word as well as to thankfully call upon the Spirit to transform us and our gifts into Jesus Christ’s body and blood as unsurpassable nourishment for our journey toward God’s new heaven and earth.   In this light, how do the readings shape what we do here?

It is understandable that traditions that so gather (whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical) might find these readings relatively self-evident.   They rehearse the origins of Passover, and Paul’s Jesus at the last supper before he died, and John’s Jesus washing of our feet, climaxing in the mandate to love one another (John 13.25).  Nonetheless, those accustomed to these readings also need to hear how different these readings seem from what we today gather at the Eucharist to do.

For starters, we do not seem dramatically poised with roasted lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread before a bloody liberation from tyranny, as Israel was at the first Passover.   We can and should interpret this figurally, spiritually – as I will later.  But isn’t doing merely this to admit that any similarity between Israel’s actual Passover drama and us is distant?

And even the reading from Corinthians sounds different.   Granted: at every Eucharist we regularly remember with Paul Jesus’ words and deeds at his last supper before his death.  But it is important to notice how different from Jesus’ last supper are the circumstances to which Paul applies Jesus’ words and deeds.   That is, Paul has learned that his Corinthian community has been gathering for the Lord’s supper in a way that leaves some hungry, while others get drunk.   As Steve Fowl has pointed out, they are reproducing the very social divisions this Supper was designed to obliterate.  It is not really, Paul concludes, the Lord’s supper they celebrate.  The Corinthians’ Lord’s supper was apparently a regular practice – very unlike the annual Passover, or Jesus’ once-in a lifetime supper before his death.   Even though this is the only place in Paul where we have this sort of discussion of the Lord’s supper, Paul can be characterized as the first liturgical reformer, using Jesus’ words and deeds to correct the “evolving” Corinthian practice.   Paul is a reminder that most of what we do at the Eucharist is not what Jesus did at his last supper; most of what we say and do is given to us by traditions of Eucharistic practice throughout the ages, constantly debated and reformed.[1] But there is an added point about the second reading: we today are not a community split into those hungry and those drunk, against whom Paul reminds the Corinthians of the tradition of Jesus’ words and deeds at his last supper before his death.  No one on this Thursday night will eat their fill while others go hungry, or get drunk while others are thirsty.  Whatever the gaps in our Eucharistic practice (and surely we have our social divisions to which I shall return), they are not these.

And, perhaps most startling, John’s last supper — unlike Paul and the Synoptics — does not include Jesus’ words “This is my body” and “This is my blood”.   Instead of these words, John famously narrates Jesus washing a few of the disciples’ feet in the midst of the supper, with Peter’s dissent.   Although this Holy Thursday night we will wash each other’s feet, at our more ordinary Eucharists we eat the bread and drink the cup without interrupting the meal with a foot washing.   Given John alone, why not wash each other’s feet every day, and celebrate Jesus’ last supper before his death once a year?

The readings seem very different from what we do here and now – and every Lord’s day.   Unless we hear the differences, we will not listen for the ways the readings speak to us.   Noticing the differences may enable us to think back over the readings in reverse order, from John through Paul to Exodus.

Historians debate the issue, but I see no way to make sense of John’s footwashing without assuming that John’s community celebrated a Lord’s supper, with or without the Synoptic words of institution.[2] It is “during supper” (13.2) that Jesus interrupts the supper to wash the participants’ feet.   John’s footwashing does not replace Jesus’ words and deeds.   Instead, John uses Jesus’ footwashing to enact and interpret Jesus very words.   That is, the Synoptics each include stories of the disciples bickering about who is the greater among them.   We have these arguments among ourselves today.  I do not want to suggest that our arguments over the ordination of women and gays are mere bickering.  The various sides regard each other as (like Judas) betraying or at least (like Peter) denying Christ.  But these arguments among us over how to be the greatest are perhaps closer to our problems that the Corinthian problem of drunkenness and hunger at the Eucharist.  And John’s response to such bickering is simple.  Determine who can best wash your feet.   Do you really want to do that ,or have that done to you? Or love one another?

John shows rather than states these connections.  Several chapters earlier,  John gives the “Bread of Life” discourse in which Jesus, with reference to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes rather than Jesus’ last supper, teaches that “I am the bread of life” (6.35) and “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” (6.54-55).   This bread and cup turn us into the body of Christ.  For John this means that we wash each other’s feet as a response to the Lord who has become a servant to wash our feet.  To be this body is not to sculpt ourselves into the passing male or female or transgendered body-images of our culture but to be a body at the service of other bodies.   This footwashing is what Christians traditionally called “spiritual communion”.   It does not take the place of sacramental communion but is what we aspire to in order for the sacramental communion to bear fruit.   Jesus gives us his body so that we can become his body. And we eat this bread to become his body.

Just as John uses Jesus’ footwashing to interpret the last supper, Paul uses Jesus’ words on the night he was handed over and handed himself over to address the seemingly very different Corinthian circumstance of gathering for the Lord’s supper while letting some go hungry and permitting others to get drunk.   We could say that the Corinthians had figured out one way not to wash each others’ feet.   Some would go hungry, while others were drunk.   I mentioned earlier that this is not our problem today.   But there is little doubt that every Eucharistic community has social divisions – - and not only divisions about who is the greatest among us – that are blocking us becoming the body of Christ this bread is trying to turn us into.  Paul offers some liturgical instructions.  If satisfying ordinary hunger is at stake, eat at home.  Wait for each other – do not get too far in front of the whole body.  Examine yourselves.  But do not turn inward to do this: discern the whole body, your neighbors near at hand.  All good advice.  But remember that Paul began by admonishing the Corinthians for not keeping the very Jesus-traditions Paul had given them.  Paul’s liturgical instructions are entirely in the service of remembering Jesus’ mandate to do this in remembrance and expectation of Jesus.  This is the Lord’s supper, not ours.  Are we becoming Christ’s body?  If not, Paul says, we eat and drink unto our own self-condemnation.

But neither John nor Paul would have us end on a note of self-condemnation.  Only now are we in a position to interpret, or re-interpret, Israel’s Passover.  The Christian Passover must be read in the light of Paul’s tradition of Jesus’ last supper as well as John’s.  The bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ (Paul), and we are becoming just that as we love one another (John).  But we are doing so on an unfinished journey.   It is the Passover reading that assures that we keep Jesus’ body and ours in motion.  Passover remembers the Exodus; we remember the crucified Christ.  But Passover remembers only as it also looks forward.  We must not separate the Passover account we just heard from where it is headed – into the wilderness, then to Sinai, and only then to the promised land. Jesus’ wilderness, figuratively speaking, is our Good Friday (when we are nourished by the bread but not the Eucharist that makes the bread the body of Christ) — and Holy Saturday (when, except for Viaticum, we do not even eat the bread).   So we are nourished to endure life’s griefs as well as its joys, to survive in the wilderness as well as flourish in the promised land.  We are nourished on the crucified, risen, and coming Jesus Christ.

Luke 19:28-40; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Liturgy of the Word:

Isa 50:4-9a; Ps 31:9-1; Phil 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

I have a friend whose favorite Sunday is Palm Sunday, who experiences on this threshold of Easter the whole story of salvation rolled into one service. I must confess, on the other hand, that I often feel overwhelmed by Palm Sunday, liturgically and theologically. Perhaps I prefer Sundays with one main point, one obvious emotion: Pentecost, for example. Is Palm Sunday primarily a day of triumph and celebration, of children marching down the aisle waving palm branches, of shouts of praise lest the rocks cry out in our place? Or is it primarily a day of preparation, a somber recognition of the necessity of the coming passion, the gathering storm of the crucifixion, a rehearsal of the entire passion in nuce?

The appointed texts for the day neatly highlight the tension: the Liturgy of the Palms offers the triumphal entry texts, and the Liturgy of the Word pairs texts about suffering (Isaiah) and self-emptying (Philippians) with the full text of the passion narrative, from the Last Supper to the placing of Jesus’ body in the tomb, anticipating the holy days of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. So, which is it? Is it Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday?

After reading and reflecting on these texts for several days, and savoring their richness, I am not sure if Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday are two different things after all. In the Gospels, the responses to Jesus’ remarkable entry into Jerusalem foreshadow the events to come. In Matthew’s account, the whole city is thrown into turmoil. In Luke, the Pharisees tell Jesus to stop his disciples from shouting lines from Psalm 118 as Jesus enters the city. Also in Luke, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, still accompanied by crowds and waving palm branches, he weeps over the coming destruction of Jerusalem. The disciples who have shouted Hosannas will very soon betray, deny, and desert Jesus, fleeing in pain and fear.

One more detail from the triumphal entry links Jesus’ entrance into the city with his coming suffering. All four Gospels report that Jesus enters the city riding on a humble creature – a donkey. Matthew and John make sure that we know why Jesus chose this particular mode of transportation: in order to fulfill the words of Zechariah 9. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” In Zechariah 9, as in the Gospels, the king comes to Zion bringing peace. But this peace is bought at great cost, at an unimaginable price: the death of the king, the death of God’s beloved only Son. Jesus’ entry into the city is a triumphal entry, but not at all in the way anyone thought it would be – not the disciples, not the Pharisees, not the crowds of festival pilgrims. If the disciples could have seen what Jesus knew, they might have paused and wept at the gate of the city, too. It’s an ironically, proleptically triumphant entry, a kenotic entry, the moment at which Jesus puts his foot onto the inevitable path of the passion and never turns back.

On Palm Sunday, we can only wave the palms and shout our Hosannas if we remember that it’s also Passion Sunday, if we remember why Jesus has come to Jerusalem. Jesus does not enter the city to be hailed as a king. He enters the city to die.

Hosannas dying on our lips, the resounding thud of the stone rolling across the face of the tomb echoing in the silence, Palm Sunday – Passion Sunday – leaves us waiting, in trembling and hope, for Easter.

It might be easy to miss the newness of the thing even here.  For those of us who spend our lives falling and getting back up, even the process of sin and repentance seems to get old. Perhaps that is why the prophet uses the language of the desert, a dry and weary place.  “In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.  Wild beasts honor me, jackals and ostriches.”  The desert is a place of thirst.  And in such a context , one can never tire of flowing, fresh water.  It is what revives us and keeps us alive.  What is God’s new thing of which we might never grow wear, the living water that quenches our thirst?

According to this pairing of lectionary passages, the way of forgiveness is God’s new thing.  Without it, we could not, with Paul, speak of  “forgetting what lies behind” in order to” continue [our]  pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”  God’s forgiveness of us keeps a path ever before us.  And in human community, it is our forgiveness of others that opens up a new way in the desert of damaged and failed relationships.

As I write this, white smoke has emerged from the Sistine Chapel, and many are gathered in the departmental lounge awaiting the appearance of our new Pope.  There is anticipation in the air, but also caution.  Will the new Pope bring change in the church?  If  so, what sort?  A new thing is about to spring forth in the Roman Catholic church.  But the truly new thing—the ever new thing—is God’s forgiveness that makes a way in the wilderness, and our ability to forgive ourselves and others.

Our department chair, Fritz Bauerschmidt, was on the tele last night, discussing the conclave’s process of selecting Benedict XVI’s successor. Watch it here

“My ways,” the Lord says, “are not your ways.” Indeed, they are not. Jesus finds himself confronted with horrendous evils, “evils the experience of which,” as Marilyn Adams puts it, “threaten to make us doubt our lives are worth living.” The Romans have slaughtered some Jews, even as they were worshiping the One whose promises, amidst the occupation, are so hard to believe. A tower, without warning and apparently at random, has fallen in Jerusalem, ending suddenly the lives of eighteen women and men who never would have guessed as they went about their lives, work and play, that this day would be their last. Evil – moral and natural – cries out for explanation. And the temptation, then and now, in the face of such suffering is to diagnose, to try to read off tragedy’s inscrutable, relentless face just what exactly it is that God is doing in letting it come to pass.

There will always be those ready with an answer. But, at least here, such answers are words not of life, but death. They purchase the comfort of clarity at the price of truth. And they threaten to scar the souls of the mourners still more deeply, even as they insulate the rest of us from grappling with a suffering that would, if we let it, force us to consider our common fate. Elsewhere, Jesus will weep with sisters at the death of his beloved friend, even as he knows with certainty what will come, soon and at the end of all things.

But here he rebukes. More, he threatens. “Turn from your sin – sin which is common to those who die today and those who die tomorrow – while you still can.” The fate he would have us avoid, it seems, is death in our impenitence – which death, in its utter finality and destructiveness, is, in the most shadowy (but still piercing) way, mirrored by the horrors that have just befallen Jerusalem. The axe has been at the root of the tree at least since the Gospel’s third chapter, with John’s proclamation. It will be there, we are told, just a little longer.

In the meantime, what really can we imagine will change? What will go differently if it hasn’t by now? No one, much less the promised nations, are coming running.

But here in our midst is one for whom God’s love really is better than life, who bears fruit worthy of repentance. Even so, it is on him that the axe will finally fall. And those who will drink and eat the body and blood he gives without money or cost – even as it costs him everything; those whose roots will drink the water that pours from him – as rod strikes and he cries out in thirst; will, by his gifts, like him bear fruit, like him bless nations.

Let us, then, even as we look to cross in this season, “eat what is good and delight ourselves in rich food.” For his ways, Jesus Christ be praised, are not our ways. But, Jesus Christ be thanked, our ways can become his ways.

This week’s Gospel reading presents the memorable scene of Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. In Mathew this scene takes place inside the city, between Jesus’ entry and his Passion. In Luke, however, it takes place outside the city, just before Jesus enters. What might Luke be trying to suggest?

Käthe Kollwitz, "Die Klage" (Lament), 1938-1940, Bronze © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2005

Gillian Rose reminds us that some of art’s most searing depictions of grief and mourning take place outside city walls: Antigone buries her brother outside the palace gates of Athens, Phocion’s wife gathers the ashes of her husband outside of Megara. In both of these cases, such acts of mourning were forbidden. Antigone’s brother fought on the wrong side of Thebes’ civil war and his body was left for prey, while Phocion was accused of treachery and executed, his remains burned and scattered. Mourning in such settings can be seen as many things: a sign of loyalty to family, fidelity to the gods, or resistance to unjust laws. Regardless, there is a sense that such acts of grief are more than acts of private affection; they restore rights, redeem honor, re-establish order.  In other words, they are public acts. They are acts of justice. They are offered as much for the city as they are for their loved ones.

Political tensions are high in Luke’s scene as well. “At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you” (13:31). Like Antigone and Phocion’s wife, Jesus does not back down: “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem” (13: 32-33). Jesus acknowledges his own impending death; however, the focus of his lament is not his death but the city itself. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” Jesus mourns the broken relationship between God and the people of Israel. But he goes further than this. He mourns for it from the perspective of the covenanting God Himself: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (13:34).

Our reading from Genesis recalls what should have been: a covenant between God and his people, where God gives everything His people need and His people find their freedom and joy in Him. But Jesus laments, “you were not willing” (13:34). Intended as a “land of the living” (Ps. 27:13), Jerusalem had become a place of violent dissension and death.

Like Antigone and Phocion’s wife, Jesus mourns for the city outside the walls, in the place of exile. Like them, his lament registers the meeting point of transcendent justice and human injustice. Jesus, however, goes on to enter Jerusalem, moving the place of lament from the fringes of the city into its very heart. Lament becomes a way of inhabiting the city, a manner of bearing human imperfection as if from the city’s fringes. To encounter Jesus in the city is to be taken with him to the place of lament outside it.

One might say lament becomes a form of citizenship. In this week’s epistle reading, Paul contrasts those who “live according to the example you have in us” (4:17) and those whose “minds are set on earthly things” (4:19). He does so “with tears” (4:18). He goes on to say, “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (4:20). Such a citizenship does not take us out of the world, but leaves us restless about the way the world is. It leaves us mourning for the world. As Bonhoeffer puts it, “By ‘mourning’ Jesus means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its fate and its fortune. While the world keeps holiday they stand aside, and while the world sings, ‘Gather ye rose-buds while ye way,’ they mourn… And in this way they show how close are the bonds which bind them to the rest of humanity.”

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