Philip 4:4-9 John 12:1-18 2025/04/13 Osaka Church
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Today is Palm Sunday. We are now standing at the entrance to the week of the Passion of the Lord Jesus.
The people of Jerusalem wave palm branches and joyfully welcome Jesus as he enters the Holy City riding on a colt. It is a glorious day.
But for Jesus, this week was a week of suffering and death.
However, we already know the ending, we know the resurrection on the third day. We also know that Jesus is God. But if we didn’t know this, then His final week would be nothing less than utterly tragic and unbearably miserable.
One of his disciples betrays Jesus. Jesus is arrested. Then the disciples abandon Jesus and flee. Jesus is left alone amidst hostility, murderous intent and ridicule. He receives an unjust judgment. The people turn their backs on him and cry out, “Crucify him!” Jesus is spat on, mocked, tormented, and whipped, and finally nailed to the cross with thick nails. No one comes to his rescue, not even the armies of angels… Finally, Jesus can only look up to heaven and cry out, “God, God, why have you forsaken me?” And he takes his last breath, saying, “It is finished.” Out of the corner of His eye, He may have seen the face of his mother Mary, drained of its color, fainting at the sight as she watches from the foot of the cross. All of us are deeply moved by Jesus’ suffering. “How pitiful.” But if that were all; if all we could see was a “pitiable” Jesus, we would not be able to understand even one percent of what Jesus did. This is not just someone else’s story…my suffering is here. We must realize that. “My pain” is here. “My sorrow” is here. “My loneliness” is here.
Forget about the ending, even if just for a moment. Try watching what happens to this man, without knowing the ending. Try to become one with Jesus’ pain and suffering. Then, remember Paul’s letter that was read today to the Philippians.
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I say again, Rejoice…” (Philip 4:4).
What are we supposed to rejoice about? What are we supposed to rejoice about if we don’t know the ending? What on earth could one rejoice in while watching the day-to-day progress of a man who, like oneself, struggled to live, and was finally broken down and left to die alone? … At best, is there anything else to rejoice in other than, “This man knows my suffering. Everyone else has left me alone, but this man shares my loneliness.”
But it is there that the most important meaning of Jesus’ suffering lies.
The Gospel read on this day tells us that Mary, the sister of Lazarus, out of love broke a bottle of expensive perfumed oil for Jesus, poured it over Jesus’ feet, untied her long hair and wiped them, and that at that moment, the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfumed oil. At the time, Mary did not know how the story would end. She offered the perfumed oil not as oil of joy, but as “funeral oil,” foreseeing the Lord’s death. But Mary could not help but fill the room, and the whole world, with the sweet-smelling aroma of perfumed oil, and with gratitude and joy for the Lord who understood and shared her suffering.
What’s more, we know the ending. We know that Christ’s death did not end in death, but passed over into resurrection. We know that Christ’s Passion and death was the victorious act that “destroyed death by death.” We know that if we share in the Lord’s suffering and death, we will also share in His resurrection.
A week from now, we will be united in the midst of the joy of Pasha, at midnight, “brighter than day.” To that end, let us first “forget the ending” and watch the Lord’s passion and death. Then let us ask the Lord once again, “In what do you tell me to rejoice?” The Lord will surely give us an answer.