The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
April 1, 2007
Isaiah 50:4-9a + Philippians 2:5-11 + Luke 23:14-23:56
What an astonishing intermingling of the ordinary, the sordid, and the holy. It is the story that is to occupy us in the week ahead. To have it read, all at once, even over the commotion of squirming kids and the impatient coughs of others reminds us that we are to fix our minds and hearts this week on this story, this Cross, and no other.
William Stringfellow has written, “The real witness of Palm Sunday is not the parade or what the disciples or the secular authorities saw; it is the encounter between Christ and the power of death.” (In Free in Obedience)
Jesus marches into Jerusalem to proclaim, and to bring in to being, the new reign of God – to engage and to “renounce the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God”.
There are some seductive forces at work to draw us away from this story. They tempt us, for instance, to look instead at the story of our own sufferings, to look away from the cross in order to concentrate on our own humiliations. But our story is not the story for this week. We are to “Behold the Man”, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ.
Another temptation is to reduce this story to melodrama. The figures become stock characters, shallow proto-types of certain human traits. They become one dimensional, predictable. To treat this story that way is to remain distant - outside of what is happening.
But just as we are to focus on the Cross, so we are to be drawn into this story, so that we become part of the action – its saving action. We live on this side of the Cross.
Everything we know of Jesus’ anguish is already washed for us in the glory of next Sunday's Easter. Jesus of Nazareth enters Jerusalem to die, and on this Sunday we proclaim him with “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.” Next Sunday we proclaim him the risen Christ singing and saying the "A-word" again and again and again.
In the beginning of the bible we are privileged to glimpse some of what God was doing in Creation. As God molded chaos into form and substance: waters, land, vegetation, humankind, beings that creep, fly, swarm, swim, and run – as God worked, we see that there is a plan and pattern in process; a plan of perfection, balance, order. There is peace.
There is a oneness of creation with Creator. There is a oneness among creation. Each creature unique; all of creation enfolded into the love of God. Life lives with life, spirit lives with flesh. The plan called for this to last unto eternity. It lasted a moment – and then it was broken.
In Jesus, God announces the return and restoration of creation, the renewal of God’s reign.
When Paul urged the Philippians and us to “have the same mind as Christ”, to imitate him in humility and obedience, he was saying, "Bow down and empty out." Jesus emptied himself of his divinity in order to come to us in humble human form. We, too, are to empty ourselves in order to be filled with the divine life Christ offers us.
All during Lent we have been asked to bow down before the Lord. Today and this week, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the violence in the world, in our streets and in our homes, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the poor and the hungry who are still found everywhere among us, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the hatred and prejudice that tears nations and neighborhoods apart, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the diseases we still cannot control or cure, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the ravages we have committed against our earth's waters, lands and skies, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of our own failings, weakness and hardness of heart, we bow down before the Cross.
In the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus are the birth pangs of God’s kingdom, the new creation.
We bow down and then we rise, a new creation - emptied of false hopes, selfish desires and insincere words. Christ on the Cross fills us with both the humility and the confidence we need to continue to build God’s new creation.
Then we can march on the Jerusalems of our day to make our witness that Jesus has died -- and is risen.
Amen
April 1, 2007
Isaiah 50:4-9a + Philippians 2:5-11 + Luke 23:14-23:56
What an astonishing intermingling of the ordinary, the sordid, and the holy. It is the story that is to occupy us in the week ahead. To have it read, all at once, even over the commotion of squirming kids and the impatient coughs of others reminds us that we are to fix our minds and hearts this week on this story, this Cross, and no other.
William Stringfellow has written, “The real witness of Palm Sunday is not the parade or what the disciples or the secular authorities saw; it is the encounter between Christ and the power of death.” (In Free in Obedience)
Jesus marches into Jerusalem to proclaim, and to bring in to being, the new reign of God – to engage and to “renounce the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God”.
There are some seductive forces at work to draw us away from this story. They tempt us, for instance, to look instead at the story of our own sufferings, to look away from the cross in order to concentrate on our own humiliations. But our story is not the story for this week. We are to “Behold the Man”, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ.
Another temptation is to reduce this story to melodrama. The figures become stock characters, shallow proto-types of certain human traits. They become one dimensional, predictable. To treat this story that way is to remain distant - outside of what is happening.
But just as we are to focus on the Cross, so we are to be drawn into this story, so that we become part of the action – its saving action. We live on this side of the Cross.
Everything we know of Jesus’ anguish is already washed for us in the glory of next Sunday's Easter. Jesus of Nazareth enters Jerusalem to die, and on this Sunday we proclaim him with “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.” Next Sunday we proclaim him the risen Christ singing and saying the "A-word" again and again and again.
In the beginning of the bible we are privileged to glimpse some of what God was doing in Creation. As God molded chaos into form and substance: waters, land, vegetation, humankind, beings that creep, fly, swarm, swim, and run – as God worked, we see that there is a plan and pattern in process; a plan of perfection, balance, order. There is peace.
There is a oneness of creation with Creator. There is a oneness among creation. Each creature unique; all of creation enfolded into the love of God. Life lives with life, spirit lives with flesh. The plan called for this to last unto eternity. It lasted a moment – and then it was broken.
In Jesus, God announces the return and restoration of creation, the renewal of God’s reign.
When Paul urged the Philippians and us to “have the same mind as Christ”, to imitate him in humility and obedience, he was saying, "Bow down and empty out." Jesus emptied himself of his divinity in order to come to us in humble human form. We, too, are to empty ourselves in order to be filled with the divine life Christ offers us.
All during Lent we have been asked to bow down before the Lord. Today and this week, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the violence in the world, in our streets and in our homes, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the poor and the hungry who are still found everywhere among us, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the hatred and prejudice that tears nations and neighborhoods apart, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the diseases we still cannot control or cure, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of the ravages we have committed against our earth's waters, lands and skies, we bow down before the Cross.
• In the face of our own failings, weakness and hardness of heart, we bow down before the Cross.
In the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus are the birth pangs of God’s kingdom, the new creation.
We bow down and then we rise, a new creation - emptied of false hopes, selfish desires and insincere words. Christ on the Cross fills us with both the humility and the confidence we need to continue to build God’s new creation.
Then we can march on the Jerusalems of our day to make our witness that Jesus has died -- and is risen.
Amen
posted by Nativity Cathedral | 4:17 PM
<< Home