PalmB24.   Isaiah 50:4-7.  The Servant of the Lord delivered the message the Lord had given to him for the people but they rejected God’s message and reviled the prophet who delivered the message. The reality was that the shame of what he suffered belonged to the people who mistreated him.

Mark 14:1-15:47.  This is the Palm Sunday reading of the Passion or suffering of the Lord.  One drama in this reading is the contrast of the betrayal of Jesus by the apostle Judas Iscariot for earthly riches to the denial of Jesus by the apostle Peter out of fear of the Jewish authorities.  This was all done to Jesus by his own, suffering upon suffering.  John 2:24-25 says, “But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.  He himself understood it well.”  Yet another drama is how cruelly, contemptuously and evilly Jesus was treated by the Jewish and Roman authorities.  And again another drama is how terribly and excruciatingly the torture affected Jesus in his humanity.  He felt it as anyone of us would have felt it, if we had undergone the same thing.  The central drama is Jesus’ offering up himself: “This is my body;” This is my blood of the covenant which will be shed for many.” Jesus’ sacrifice of himself at the hands of evil people was solely for our benefit and not for himself.  “He indeed died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (Philippians 2:6-11)  God, out of love for us, became human so that, out of love for us, he could suffer and die for us to redeem us from our sins so that we could live eternally with him in his love for us.  See what humility God had out of love for us so that he could raise us up.  “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend,” “and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”