For this special episode we’re reading the Narrative Lectionary texts for both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday in John 19:23-42. The text opens with two starkly different scenes set at the foot of the cross where Jesus is dying. On the one side, Roman soldiers gamble to see who gets to keep Jesus’s nice garment, indifferent to the agony of the one they are executing. At the same time, on the other side of the cross, unfolds a tender scene in which Jesus stitches together a new relationship between his mother and the beloved disciple, creating a new family, formed at the foot of the cross. Which group will we join, we wonder. Those who fight over scraps while ignoring our own cruelty, or those who are knit together in unexpected ways by the God of love?

This week, for Palm Sunday, we are juxtaposing two texts, set less than a week apart, but with a veritable eternity between them: Jesus’s celebrated entry into Jerusalem in John 12:12-27, and his crucifixion later that same week, in John 19:16b-22. Both texts are powerful, but the juxtaposition of them holds them each in new light. We feel the jubilant joy and hope in John 12, but we notice now that this joyful text also pulls in the specific encouragement that we mustn’t be afraid. We notice how the idea of kingship floats atop both texts, once in the mouths of Jesus’s followers, once written by the hand of Pilate – but what do they mean? And we see how doing the hard thing – the right, hard thing – in any given moment, pays dividends of good into the world, into the future ... But it’s not always the easeful, Disney movie kind of good. Don't be afraid indeed.

This week we’re reading a painfully difficult text, the continuation of Jesus’s trial before Pilate as told in John 19:1-16a. Here we find the religious leaders coercing Pilate into executing Jesus by accusing him of disloyalty to the Empire. “We have no king but the emperor,” they say, betraying the very essence of their religious faith. This text serves as a caution for us about the ways proximity to power can corrupt religious faith, tempting Christians to hand over Jesus ourselves in pursuit of our own interests, whether motivated by ambition or fear. Amy also reminds of the particular dangers of this text for the Jewish community, cautioning us to tread lightly with its anti-Semitic tropes, which have caused such harm through the centuries. It is a difficult but urgent task we have before us today.