On Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, we ponder the nature of evil and our own complicity in it. Includes the Cardinal’s deeply chafruned dialogue from the film The Mission.
In the winter of 1981 New Zealand sustained one of the longest periods of civil discontent since the waterfront strike 30 years earlier. Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, contrary to the advice of the Commonwealth heads of Government, had invited a Springbok rugby team to play a two-month series in New Zealand. Throughout this time Kiwis were treated to daily news stories of demonstrations, police in riot gear, rolls of barbed wire around football grounds, blocked roadways, military support, and pitched battles with protesters.
In Wellington one day I was part of an unauthorised protest march from the Town Hall to the Headquarters of the Rugby Union. We gathered on a crisp but bright winter’s afternoon, lining up in a column in the middle of the road, and chatting pleasantly with colleagues as we waited for the march to start. While our opposition to apartheid in South Africa was the very serious reason that brought us together, there was nonetheless a relaxed and somewhat euphoric mood abroad. Then suddenly, and I do not even recall how it happened, we were surrounded on each side by a solid and very menacing line of police. The euphoria vanished, replaced by uncertainty and fear of what lay ahead of us, and I felt myself challenged within to weigh very carefully the consequences of what I was about to do.
That incident in 1981 provides an insight as to what it might have been like for Jesus’ disciples in the events we recall this Holy Week. Palm Sunday was a day of relaxed and joyful euphoria as they entered triumphantly into Jerusalem, and yet that mood quickly vanished. The hostility of the crowds, and the menace of the Jewish authorities and Roman soldiers, struck fear into their hearts. All Jesus’ followers deserted him and fled. The crisis that Jesus’ mission provoked had now come to a head: people had to choose where they stood.
Jesus had a clear purpose in coming to Jerusalem. He came first to establish his Messiahship. He had chosen the time and place carefully, in accordance with the prophecies that the Messiah would appear at Passover at Jerusalem. He entered the city, not inconspicuously like a pilgrim, but boldly on a donkey and in accordance with Zechariah’s words (9.9) : “Your king comes to you triumphant and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey”. Dashing the hopes of those who were looking for a Messiah to overthrow Rome, Jesus made it clear that His kingdom was one of peace, not military might (Zech 9.10 : “He shall command peace to the nations”).
Jesus also brought to a head the deepening conflict between himself and the Jews. A Jew himself, Jesus nonetheless was a threat to the religious establishment of his day, challenging laws that over-rode human need (for example, healing people on the Sabbath); challenging those whose commitment to wealth, security and status made them blind to the truth of God in Christ; and, by reaching out to those who knew they were poor, upsetting those who felt themselves superior to such lowly souls.
Now this long-standing conflict erupts. The Pharisees and chief priests take council (John 11.47), alarmed by the fact that “the whole world has gone after him” (12.19), and Caiaphas advises that “it is better that one man should die than have the whole nation destroyed” (11.50). The hour of decision has come, and everyone – the Jews, the crowds, the Romans, Jesus’ friends and disciples – must now choose where they stand. Luke records (19.41, 42) that Jesus wept over the city because it “knew not the things that made for peace”, and failed to perceive the ultimate significance of his coming.
Today’s Scripture readings spell out what scholars are tending to call the meta-narrative of Jesus’ suffering. A meta-narrative really means the big picture, the plot, the framework which gives understanding to life and events, and to God’s relationship with humankind. The part of the meta-narrative we focus on today is that which helps us understand that in life the powers of evil in the world are lined up against the love and truth of God, and that now in the crucifixion and death of Christ we see that fundamental conflict lifted up for all to see in every age and place. In Jesus’ death we see that not only the Son of God, but all who are sons and daughters of God, become bearers of the pain evil inflicts, suffering and even dying in consequence. But in Jesus’ death and Resurrection we also see how that suffering is redemptive, transforming the lives of men and women who put their trust in Him, and changing for good the face of communities and nations.
In Isaiah 50 we read of a Servant who is to come in whom this pattern of suffering and redemption will be clearly seen. In Philippians 2 St Paul declares that in the humility and suffering of Christ, that which Isaiah foretold has come to fulfilment. In Matthew 27 we read the narrative that locates Jesus’ suffering and death in a specific time and place.
Later in the week we will focus on other aspects of the Passion, but today let us consider the nature of evil as we see it in Jesus’ time, and in our own. It seems to me that evil is promoted by three categories of people : those who actively promote it, those who can be talked into it, and those who stand by and let it happen. In Jesus’ time it was the religious leaders of the day who constituted the “promoting evil” group; Pilate was one who was talked into it against his own better judgment, not to mention his wife’s advice; and the crowds fell either into the “talked into it” group or the “stood by and let it happen” one.
Who constitutes those groups in our own times? In 35 years of ministry I have not found any in the first group in the Church, but I guess many of us would feel there are times when we have been talked into things against our better judgment. Certainly I can think of times when competing loyalties and pressures have caused me to grudgingly go along with some course of action I have not been innerly persuaded of. And I have no doubt that all of us have at different times allowed evil to flourish by standing by and taking no action, be it amongst family, friends or colleagues, or in the face of more wide-ranging social issues such as reconciliation with indigenous peoples, the sufferings of ordinary Iraqis from international sanctions, or policies and practices in corporations and communities where we live and work.
Complicity with evil is depicted in that very powerful movie “The Mission”. Set in 1750 in Argentina and Paraguay, it traces the conflict that had arisen between the colonial powers of Portugal and Spain on the one hand, and indigenous local tribes on the other. As ever, a dispute had arisen as the colonial powers sought to dislodge the local peoples from their land. In this dispute the Catholic hierarchy had aligned itself with the colonial powers, while Jesuit missionaries were deeply engaged with the local people promoting education, health, agriculture, housing and Christian formation.
The Jesuits were not passive and, as the dispute deepened, a Cardinal was sent from Rome to investigate and report. He was deeply torn between loyalty to his European church masters, and his awareness of the inherent goodness and right of the work of the Jesuits. Indecisive in his ambivalence, he stood by as the military embarked on a campaign to burn indigenous villages and kill the priests and indigenous peoples. When the military rampage was over the Cardinal, torn by guilt, called the military commanders in and said :
Cardinal : And you have the effrontery to tell me this slaughter was necessary?
Commander 1 : I did what I had to do, given the legitimate purpose which you sanctioned; I
would have to say Yes.
Commander 2 : We had no alternative, your eminence; we must work in the world; the world
is thus.
Cardinal : No, Senor – thus we have made the world……thus have I made it.
Later in the day the Cardinal wrote a report to the Pope, ending in these words : “And so, your Holiness, your priests and your people are dead, and I am alive. And yet in truth it is I who am dead, and they who live”.
I believe that evil triumphs more through complicity than design. Let us this Holy Week reflect upon our own complicity with the evils of our day, whereby we swell the numbers of those who crucify Christ.
To Discuss
- Who would you see as a modern day Jesus (man or woman), and would be the forces that led to this person’s death?
- What situations are there in today’s world where people might be suffering or dying because of our own silence or inaction?
