Hampden Park went ecstatic last Tuesday night when Scotland beat the mighty Spain 2:0. After the earlier win against Cyprus, the Men\u2019s Scottish National Football team sits at the top of the table in their group. Those who follow them know that such a statement is a rarity. So, Scottish football fans at Hampden Park and across the country have every right to feel euphoric. The feeling was not dissimilar to that of Jesus\u2019 followers in his triumphant procession into the city of Jerusalem, as we heard in the opening reading from the gospel.<\/p>\n
For years I have been pondering why on Palm Sunday we don\u2019t stop there but carry on to read the Passion of Christ as the main gospel reading of the day. Surely, Good Friday is a far more obvious time to do so than Palm Sunday. Even the name of the day draws our attention to Jesus\u2019 triumphant entrance and yet we have spent a lot longer reading about exactly the opposite: His humiliation, torture and execution. Having found no satisfactory explanation I concluded that this particular combination of gospel readings puts any triumphant moment in the right perspective as an experience of a very short life span, like a spark: hot, bright but dying out in seconds. The Church teaches its members that we are not called to triumphalism but to humility.<\/p>\n
When you think about it, there\u2019s a lot of triumphalism in the Passion of Christ. But this time around Jesus\u2019 opponents are the ones who feel triumphant, while His disciples feel humiliated, disgraced and ashamed. That\u2019s the danger of triumphalism; it gives a sense of one\u2019s own superiority while humiliating the defeated. We use the phrase \u201cbad losers\u201d to describe people unable to accept a defeat. But we should also have the phrase \u201cbad winners\u201d for people who lack magnanimity and show the losers disrespect.<\/p>\n
Superficially Christianity was an odd proposition in its beginnings. A religion focused on a defeated messiah, with no promise of any earthly, political influence. Its followers were at best tolerated, at worst persecuted and even martyred. And yet it grew in numbers against the odds. The reason for that was that no defeat was final because in each there was a seed of something new and greater. The events of the first Good Friday were appalling in their murderous nature. But from the harrowing death of Jesus on the cross the unconquerable life was born. We celebrate the mysteries of Holy Week to recall that our defeats and victories are temporary, to re-learn how to be neither \u201cbad losers\u201d nor \u201cbad winners\u201d. To remind ourselves that we should be magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hampden Park went ecstatic last Tuesday night when Scotland beat the mighty Spain 2:0. After the earlier win against Cyprus, the Men\u2019s Scottish National Football team sits at the top of the table in their group. Those who follow them know that such a statement is a rarity. So, Scottish football fans at Hampden Park and across the country have every right to feel euphoric. The feeling was not dissimilar to that of Jesus\u2019 followers in his triumphant procession into the city of Jerusalem, as we heard in the opening reading from the gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/post-header-red.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14077,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908\/revisions\/14077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}