Palm Sunday C (Luke 23:1-49)

The gospel lesson presents a scene of immense turbulence, where the world around Jesus is stirred up—by fear, by anger, by confusion. He is captured, put on trial, and executed, yet in the midst of this upheaval, he remains unwaveringly serene. This contrast between the chaos surrounding him and his internal stillness invites us to reflect on the source of his equanimity and the profound message embedded in his final words: "Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit." Or it can be translated as: “Father, into your hands, I commit my breath.”​

From the beginning of this passage, we see Jesus accused by the religious authorities. Their charge against him is not merely legal but existential—he is stirring up the people, unsettling the status quo. His message has always centered on the inner presence of God, the kingdom not confined to a temple or an institution, but living and breathing within everyone. This radical inclusivity threatens the authorities, who see their divine privilege slipping away. The very breath of God, the very spirit they claim to control, is already present in the hearts of the people. Jesus does not need to stir up rebellion; his mere presence, his truth, is enough to upend the order of things.

Pilate, too, is stirred up. He hesitates, reluctant to condemn Jesus. But the religious leaders push harder, their anger boiling over into an unrelenting demand for crucifixion. Herod, who had been at odds with Pilate, is drawn into the drama, and hostility between the two is stirred up so much that they become friends. The crowd, once jubilant in their praise of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, is stirred up to the point that they turn against him. "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord" shifts into "Crucify him!"—a chilling reality that reveals how easily the masses can be swayed.

Even individuals caught on the margins of this event are shaken. Simon of Cyrene, suddenly pressed into service, carries the cross of Jesus—a moment that irrevocably stirs up his life. The two criminals crucified alongside Jesus experience their own reckoning. One remains defiant, unrepentant, refusing to acknowledge his guilt. The other, stirred to honesty, sees the truth of his condition and the innocence of Jesus. The fabric of the temple itself is shaken, the curtain torn in two, symbolizing a rupture in the religious order. And in the final moment, a Roman centurion, a representative of the empire that put Jesus to death, is moved to recognize something profound: "Truly, this man was innocent."

Through all this, Jesus remains composed, his spirit unshaken. He does not lash out, does not defend himself, does not resist. What allows him to sustain such serenity? The answer is found in his final words: "Father, into your hands, I commit my breath." In the act of surrendering his breath, he unites himself completely with the breath of God. His last breath is not a loss but a return, a communion with the divine presence that has always been within him.

T. S. Eliot captures this mystery of surrender in Four Quartets:

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting."

Jesus' stillness is not resignation but a trust deeper than circumstance. His surrender is not despair but a profound waiting in God—faith beyond hope, love beyond control. In his breath, given over to God, he reveals that peace is not found in avoiding suffering but in meeting it with a heart utterly open to the divine.

This paradox—the strength of surrender—is echoed in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours:

"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.”

Jesus does not resist the suffering that befalls him, yet in that seeming passivity, he demonstrates the deepest form of strength. His stillness is an openness, a refusal to turn away from the pain of the world, and in that act, he transforms suffering into redemption.

Our own lives are often stirred up—by personal trials, by the shifting tides of society, by the unpredictability of human relationships. Fear and anxiety can rise swiftly, threatening our sense of peace. In these moments, we are invited to follow the way of Jesus, to breathe deeply and surrender: "Into your hands, I commit my spirit." To entrust our breath, our very being, to the very Breath that sustains us. In doing so, we find not passivity, but the deepest kind of strength—the strength that allows us to remain still amid the storm, to become peace in a world desperate for it.

Remember the breath. Remember the breath of Jesus. It will lead us to the breath of the resurrected Christ: “…he breathed on them [disciples] and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Remember the Breath of God.