Empty Abundance & Fulfilling Abandonment

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Jesus’ last words from the cross that we hear in the Passion this weekend should strike every single one of us as we hear them, because the story that unfolds for us this weekend is one that we all know all too well: a story of abandonment and abundance.

In the first Gospel, at the beginning of Mass during the blessing of Palms, we will hear the seemingly great abundance of Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem! A cheering crowd, shouting hosanna, and laying palm branches in the street to honor his royalty as king: accolades and admiration in abundance! But then as we heard the Passion, that abundance turns quickly to abandonment.

The betrayal of Judas serves as a prelude to the symphony of sadness that would follow.

Jesus is arrested and the disciples run.

We hear of a young man wearing nothing but a loin cloth, and even he runs – dropping even that loin cloth!

In the first Chapter of Mark’s Gospel Jesus’ disciples abandoned everything to follow him…now in the end, they abandon everything in order to get away from him.

There’s Peter, his closest friend, who initially says he would die for Jesus, now denies knowing him.

Jesus faces his accusers all alone, and is brought before that very same crowd who a few days earlier had hailed him as king! Now he stands before them beaten and broken – alone…and the crowd chooses a murderer over him…a terrorist.

He carries the cross alone.

He is crucified, and after the cross is in place, the passing crowd jeers and mocks him as he hangs there, half dead, beaten and abandoned.

In this version of the Passion Jesus speaks only once from the Cross. It is not a moment of comforting as in the other Gospels, or the consolation of his Mother at the foot of the Cross as we will hear on Friday in John’s version – rather it is a moment where this torture, suffering, and abandonment reaches its culmination in an anguished cry from our suffering Lord – “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?”

For Mark, Jesus’ entire purpose of coming to Jerusalem is to suffer, and to die: alone. What a horrifying end: and what an important lesson.

What an important lesson for you and I who live in this world that claims to have so much abundance! As Americans we boast of being the greatest nation on earth – but why? Because we have money? Because we have phones that talk to our cars? Because we have gadgets and gizmos that constantly call us to acquire more? This perceived abundance is no less empty then the crowd that greeted Jesus at Jerusalem’s gate – and would later betray him. Our abundance will likewise betray us if we put our stock in it. If we put all our eggs in the basket of this passing world, we are sure to end in abandonment. If our values and priorities are those things that don’t last – sex, addictions, material things, our ego or our money (or our obsession with not having enough of it) – our end will be as tragic and horrifying as Jesus – alone on the cross…a cross that we will have carried to our Calvary all on our own.

So where is the hope?

The hope is found in this same story. As Jesus cries his moan of abandonment, the curtain in the temple is torn in two, and who is the first to step through it? A Roman Centurion: a gentile…a pagan…who after taking in the scene around him declares, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” The first words spoken about Jesus on the day of his passion that was not either a lie, a perjury, or a curse – came from an outsider…from the last imaginable lips in Jerusalem.

These words of hope are only the beginning. They are the end of our story today, but the beginning of the story of our lives.

Mark’s Passion focuses on abandonment because it is written to a community that has undergone persecution! Those first Christians likewise had experienced abandonment: dragged from their homes and tortured and killed in the name of Christianity, expelled from synagogues, and criminalized for their faith in Jesus. For them this abandonment was in fact truly abundance. When they found themselves without anything else – without the comfort of friends, the defense of the law, or any worldly honor – they found themselves standing alone…with Jesus…and in standing with him they found a greater abundance then they had ever known.

The palm branch that we bring home this weekend is a reminder that what sometimes seems to be the end is really only be the beginning. We too have no need to despair in our abandonment, for in our abandonment can be found true abundance, if we are able to remember that this world has already been defeated…that the abundance this world offers is a lie. For Jesus, it seems that the forces of evil, sin, and death have had the last word – but Jesus is the word – the living word. He is the last word - and that word is not one of abandonment, but one of abundance – God’s last word of endless reconciliation, peace, joy, and grace.