Passion Sunday, the whole story of the dastardly plots and betrayals that brought Jesus to the cross, lies before us. You know the story well. It is filled with a number of subplots, all of which provide insights about the kind of people that we are and how our sins nailed Jesus to the cross. We see how the disciples (especially Judas and Peter, as well as the sons of Zebedee), each in his own way, failed our Lord. In similar ways we have failed him.

We hear the story of our Lord's courage, his love of peace. We see him practice what he preaches when he renounces the use of violence to save himself from arrest (Matthew 26:51-56).

We see Jesus before the Sanhedrin (the highest court and council of ancient Judaism) and observe the schemes of the chief priests, the Pharisees and the Jewish …