Palm Sunday, 10th April, 2022
This touches on the death of all of us. We might wish to go quietly or suddenly or not at all – or we might wish to take the sting out of death by entrusting it to another: to a God who will take care of us whatever the manner of our death, indeed a God who is with us throughout, caring for us now and, in a sense, waiting for us on that other side of death which we actually know nothing about. What we learn from the death of Jesus is that just such a God exists, prepared to be with us in person before, during and after death – and it’s the after death we now await in Jesus, and the after death he succeeds to because as Luke especially portrays, this is a God who saves, who does not wish the eternal death of a sinner, who has already prayed for Simon Peter that his faith may not fail, who looks straight at Peter to remind him of this and give him another chance, whose words indeed to Judas ‘ are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? ‘may also be said for this purpose: who has the power indeed to forgive his enemies and bring them to Paradise. So total indeed is Jesus’ commitment of his spirit to God that we can know that he images God exactly and gives us hope too in Gods forgiveness, in that loving attention to the details of our life and our individual strengths and weaknesses that will last even after death which we otherwise know as resurrection.