Palm (Passion) Sunday Gospel of Mark March 24, 2024

 Palm (Passion) Sunday Gospel of Mark     March 24, 2024

Clothes.  You probably wear them every day.  Clothes are important, giving us protection, modesty in most cases, and comfort.   Clothes are important.  Indeed, an ancient saying, going back at least to Erasmus in the 1500’s, and probably much longer before that, in Latin, is “vestis virum facit”.   Or, “Clothes make the man.”

That is true.  Any stranger walking into this service can, pretty quickly, determine who is the priest and presider of this service.  The vestments I am wearing pretty clearly give it away.  Clothing is important in how we view ourselves, and others.

Clothing plays an interesting and recurring role in the Passion we just heard.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus is arrested, we hear the peculiar incident of a streaker.  St Mark, and he is the only evangelist to mention this, states: “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body.  They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”    I believe this young man will appear again on Easter.  But we will have to wait for that.

At Jesus’ interrogation before the Sanhedrin, where the chief priests tried to trump up charges against Jesus that would stick, Jesus, in response to the question if He was the Christ, answered, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”   At that the high priest tore his garments.   Tore his garments?  Did you ever tear your clothes out of frustration and anger?  He must have been mightily worked up.  Tearing the clothes you are wearing is a pretty extreme sign of frustration and anger. 

Later, in the praetorium, the headquarters of the Romans, the soldiers dressed Jesus in a purple cloak and put a crown of thorns on his head.  And they mocked Him in false homage, deriding Him as the King of the Jews. 

And still later, at the cross, Jesus was forcibly stripped of his clothes.   Jesus was truly naked and defenseless before everyone.  He was rendered completely vulnerable.  And the soldiers “divided his garments by casting lots for them to see what each should take.”

Finally, when Jesus is taken down from the cross, they wrapped Jesus in a linen cloth, His burial shroud.  His final outfit on earth.   ….

And now we believe that Jesus is clothed with GLORY.       //

How do we clothe ourselves?  St. Paul in the letter to the Romans tells us; (13:14) “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ…”  And in Galatians (3:27) tells us “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.”  And in Ephesians (4:24) tells us: “clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Do we adorn ourselves with faith and hope and love?  Have we put on repentance, and dressed in virtue?   Now is the time to adopt your Easter outfit.  Not the physical one you might wear to show off a bit next Sunday, but rather the outfit of faith and hope and love, that identifies you as a follower of Christ, as a Christian. 

Put on Christ, as St. Paul urges us, so that at the celebration of Easter, you will have no reason to be ashamed, and every reason to rejoice.   AMEN.