Passion Sunday
Luke 22:14 – 23:41
Year C
I am not ready for Lent to be over.
Every year, Lent gives us an opportunity to connect our individual and collective griefs to a larger grief in the narrative of Scripture. This Lent in particular, we have watched as unprecedented events have unfolded in our nation and world. Even more than in years past, I have found great comfort in gathering each week with other people of faith to lament and cry to God. In 2025, prayers like, “How long, O Lord?” and “Lord, have mercy upon us,” transcend their liturgical significance.
It seems I’m not alone in this sentiment; our Ash Wednesday service this year set an attendance record. It’s natural to seek companionship as we walk through the darkness.
The problem is, I’m not ready for it to end. Easter’s hallelujahs feel hollow this year. This Sunday’s cries of Hosanna – “Save us!” – feel more honest and appropriate to the circumstances.
On this last Sunday of Lent, worship leaders must choose between the Liturgy of the Palms, the Liturgy of the Passion, or some combination of the two. Considering our state of national turmoil, my gut says this a year for the passion.
In a recent conversation about Holy Week and our collective despair, a friend reminded me of Miguel de la Torre’s “theology of hopelessness.” De la Torre takes issue with modern society’s relentless optimism, the belief that we are ever-improving as a species, or, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so famously put it, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He argues that from the underside of history, from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed, this sentiment is naïve at best, intentionally pacifying and subjugating at worst.
“The oppressed of the world,” de la Torre writes, “occupy the space of Holy Saturday … This is a space where some faint anticipation of Sunday’s Good News is easily drowned out by the reality and consequences of Friday’s violence and brutality. It is a space where hopelessness becomes the companion of used and abused people.”
Passion Sunday invites worshippers to look for God in hopeless places. I think we need it this year because, in the face of current political realities, many people in our pews have found themselves suddenly living in this space of Holy Saturday hopelessness.
Reading the entire passion narrative in worship is rarely a popular option. But perhaps this year we need to hear it in its entirety so that we can recognize the ways it echoes our own stories.
For example, when Jesus institutes the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, saying, “This is my body, broken for you,” we hear that any time human bodies are broken – by illness, violence, or inability to access healthcare – Jesus’ own body is broken, too.
Or when the crowd comes for Jesus under the cover of night, carries him off, and detains him, we hear that Jesus knows the suffering of our friends, family and neighbors who are living with the ever-present fear of being carried off and detained.
When the scribes, chief priests and rulers interrogate, mock and abuse Jesus – and then hand him over to be crucified for a crime that is not entirely clear – we hear how the powers-that-be have always sacrificed truth in the name of political expediency.
When Christ cries from the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” we hear that the One who teaches us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us knows from experience just how difficult that kind of love is.
De la Torre claims that hopelessness propels us to action. “To sit in the reality of Saturday,” he writes, “is to discover that the semblance of hope becomes an obstacle when it serves as a mechanism that maintains rather than challenges prevailing social structures … It may be Saturday, but that’s no justification to passively wait for Sunday. The presence of the divine invades the here and now so that we are not alone in the midst of suffering due to oppression. Messianic solidarity with the oppressed in the midst of hopelessness might indeed be the only hope hoped for.”
Perhaps that is the hope we have to offer during Holy Week. No matter the dark valley we walk, God has already been there. When we walk into the hopeless spaces of our lives, we will find Jesus there waiting for us, ready to accompany us through.
Questions for reflection on Passion Sunday:
- What does your congregation most need to hear this week? The subversive parade of Palm Sunday? The sorrow and hopelessness of Passion Sunday? Perhaps a little bit of both?
- Read the entirety of the passion narrative (Luke 22:14 – 23:41). Are there parts that sound familiar to you and your congregation’s experiences? Where do you see yourselves in the story this year?
View the corresponding Order of Worship for Passion Sunday
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