Palm Sunday: The Sunday of Passion
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Bethlehem, PA
Sunday April 1, 2012
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Our lives are lived in a fickle world. Our lives themselves may be seen as such sometimes, fickle. In one moment of time our enthusiasm, belief, trust, and confidence might find a perfect repository for its investment. In a person, a situation, a place. In the next moment of time our doubt, skepticism, mistrust, and insecurity might find itself in a darker place, even an uglier place. Weeds of darkness then choking off even to death, the fruit of a previous investment.
How fickle is this story of the human experience we tell on this day, this week. A triumphal entry it is described as, for Jesus of Nazareth into Jerusalem. This ancient city whose streets are lined with the diversity and complexity of humanity. So many there in that city on pilgrimage to bring their humanity to the holiness of Jerusalem. Some in that crowd depositing their enthusiasm, belief, trust, and confidence in the hope of what they believe this Jesus represents for their lives.
How quickly our story turns; how fickle is the human experience, as these songs of praise turn to shouts that call us to the darkness of death. How diminished and darkened are the hopes and dreams for some, how dark becomes the day when the poison of skepticism, threat, and mistrust shows its ugliest hand.
How quickly the story we tell this week turns from light to darkness and soon then again, from darkness to light: From Hosanna! To Crucify Him! From Crucify Him to He is Risen! As we ponder our own human experience, is this not a truth filled pattern for the human condition? Light and darkness, darkness and light?
We dare to call this week holy. We do so even as we enter it in the fickle contrast of the human experience of light to darkness; darkness to light.
Our story has us pondering the darkness of Jesus’ crucifixion and suffering; which of us has not suffered one way or another? We've all had our crucifixions, where God seems to be absent and light seems to disappear, and the world is dark and terrifying. Anybody with faith or without faith has had somehow to live through that kind of a time. The question is what comes out of that time?
We've all known our dark times; we've all felt abandoned by God or felt there was no such thing as God to abandon us -- just the emptiness, the craziness of the world. Yet, equally crazy, out of this, it seems faith can often come.
It seems to me that there is an intersection of this light and darkness; darkness and light. A place where our enthusiasm, belief, trust, and confidence intersect with our doubt, mistrust, skepticism, and insecurity. This day, this week, we follow Jesus to the cross, and there find this intersection, a cross if you will. We are invited with courage to raise our eyes and gaze upon it; for it seems to be that very intersection there may be a crucible where a mature faith is to be discovered.
When we follow Jesus to the cross we find the great trial of humanity, its fickle nature, the light and the darkness, and somehow if we gaze upon it we find there is an opportunity to discover an unrealized courage, an unimaginable hope for life. A fierceness to stand and look in the eye the ugliest of scenes so that we may conquer them; A stamina discovered to journey an extra mile down the roughest of roads; a resilience to fight back with voice and heart when life kicks us hard even as our eyes struggle in the haze of darkness to embrace the light of a new day dawning.
In a weeks time we will wake in the darkness of the morning, having travelled with Jesus through the darkest of times. It will be dark and our eyes will be fuzzy and worn from the journey of heart and soul. Yet we will raise our eyes to the horizon and await a dawning of a new day. Our question: What will we see? What will we see?
This sermon was inspired by an interview of The Rev. Fred Buechner which took place on PBS in 2008.
