ࡱ > 4 6 3 @ bjbj.. "$ D D N N N N N N N b b m o o o o o o $ R N N N F N N m m N N Ӏ E : m 0 b b N N N N N X # b b b b Sermon Archive of The Most Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr.Metropolitan, Anglican Catholic Church Passion Sunday, April 9, 2000 The word "passion," as in 'Passion Sunday," means endurance, going through, putting up with, suffering. Today we begin a process that will take us through next Sunday and then on to the following Friday, Good Friday. Passiontide is when we think about Jesus' suffering how "for us men and for our salvation... (he) was crucified, ..under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried." Jesus' suffering was not an abstract matter. He suffered because he committed what was a capital crime under Jewish law. He suffered because the Jews were able to convince the Roman occupying government to do what they themselves were not allowed to do -- to execute capital punishment upon Jesus as retribution for his crime. This morning's gospel provides the evidence of the crime of blasphemy. Jesus uttered the personal name of God, which was against the law, and he applied God's name to himself, which compounded the offense. There is a sense in which this crime merely provided a convenient pretext for getting rid of Jesus, who had antagonized the Jewish leadership in a number of other ways. They believed he was guilty of many things. The blasphemy was one they thought they could pin on him for sure. To understand what is going on, we must take a trip back to the Garden of Eden, and then stop off at the Mount of Horeb. In the garden, we discover that God places a great emphasis on the names of things. He shows he has given Adam the power to rule over creation when he lets Adam give the animals their names. The power to name is the power to rule. To know a name is to exercise a measure of control. Mount Horeb is where Moses was tending sheep during his exile from Egypt. God spoke to him out of a bush which burned but did not burn up. God told Moses that he was the God of Israel's forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He wanted Moses to be the means of his rescuing Israel from their slavery to Pharaoh and leading them to the Promised Land. Moses was in no hurry to do all that, so he tried to stall God off by saying, "The people of Israel will ask me your name. What do you want me to say?" God replied, "I AM THAT I AM," "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel; 'I AM hath sent me unto you." God's personal name is "I am." "I am" in Hebrew is probably pronounced "Yahweh," or, more popularly but less likely, "Jehovah." The name tells us that God's basic nature is that he is he exists he was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. I am that I am. I shall have been what I shall have been. In today's gospel Jesus continues to argue with his Jewish opponents quite nastily in this passage. He says they are not of God. They say he is a Samaritan bastard and that he is possessed by a devil. He says if someone pays attention to what he tells him he will never die. They ask him who he thinks he is if he is pretending to be greater than Abraham or the prophets. He tells them they are liars. Jesus furthers the provocation by saying, "Your ancestor Abraham knows me, and he's glad about it." Abraham had lived about as long before Jesus as Jesus lived on earth before us. So the Jews say, "You aren't even fifty years old. How can you say you know Abraham?" Jesus replies, "Before Abraham was, I am." The Jews pick up stones to throw at him to punish him for this capital blasphemy, but Jesus gets away. The evidence that Jesus said God's name and then applied it to himself supports the charge of blasphemy. Some time later he goes even farther, saying publicly to the Jews, "I and my Father are one," and privately to his disciples, "He who has seen me has seen the Father." So now we know the specific grounds on which the Jews convicted Jesus. He broke the law against uttering the divine name, and he boasted of a characteristic which belongs only to God: living forever, having been alive long enough to know Abraham. As a crowd member yelled at him, "You are only a man, but you are trying to make yourself God." Christians know that the claims the Jews found blasphemous are, in fact, true, Jesus is God. He knows Abraham. He is one with the Father. He is the way the Father shows himself to us. The Christian religion hangs upon the idea that Jesus is God who has become a human being to reconcile God to man and man to God in his own body. Jesus accomplishes the reconciliation in his passion, by dying on the cross. He had to get onto the cross somehow, and the charge of blasphemy is what made it happen. Today's epistle calls Jesus a priest. He is a priest, because a priest offers sacrifices, and Jesus sacrificed himself. God the Father's name is Yahweh. God the Son's name is Jesus. The name Jesus means "Yahweh is salvation." The archangel Gabriel told St. Joseph, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins." He saves us from our sins because he dies to forgive them and promises to take us to heaven despite them. In his passion is our salvation. In his death is our life, "At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." The Collect: We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15 The Gospel: St. John 8:46-59. 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