Palm Sunday Sunday, April 5, 2009 St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector “Finding Ourselves in the Story”
Once again, as on each Palm Sunday, we have turned to reading the Passion Story - from our Lord’s agony in Gethsemane to his death on the cross.
As Jesus’ story, it is the story of his agony, his bring betrayed, his being denied; the story of his trial, his persecution, his suffering, his crucifixion.
He is the one main character in the story – from its beginning to its end.
But others are in that story too – the many characters who meet him, hear him, watch him, try to follow him, or judge and condemn him.
In this sermon, we’ll first explore these other characters and their intersection with Jesus.
The Passion Story reading begins in Gethsemane – in a garden there. Here we meet the first set of characters who appear with Jesus. They are his disciples.
After Jesus’ resurrection these very disciples will become the leadership of the Jerusalem church.
Jesus asks them to stay near him. He needs their support.
He calls on three of them, Peter, James, and John, to stay nearest to him, and above all to stay awake and to pray.
Peter, James, and John – the three who after Jesus’ resurrection will become the the leaders among the leaders in that first church in Jerusalem.
The scene in the garden is painted vividly - Jesus in agony. Wrestling with dying. He is distressed, agitated, grieving - in horror and dismay. He asks his disciples to stay awake with him – stay awake. Three different times he asks them - but after each time, he finds them asleep. He is left to agonize alone.
We find in Mark’s story a strong admonition to church leadership of every congregation in every generation to be and stay awake to the suffering of Christ in the suffering of others – the suffering of the poor and the hungry, the sufferers of past traumas, broken relationships, and fears of dying; those suffering debilitating illness, terrible losses, or from a childhood starved for love.
Stay awake. Keep others awake. That’s a task of church leadership. Watch to serve Christ in the ways we watch for and respond to each other’s suffering and to the suffering of our world.
Enter another character - Judas. He was not with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was nowhere about him, but lurking and conniving in the darkness with others. Overcome by greed and who knows what else, he plots with the religious authorities to capture Jesus.
How could he do that, many ask - an interesting question for historians, but immaterial for the Church. The right question for us to ask is the question about ourselves individually and as church. Is our own life, like Judas, focused more on what we can acquire than on what we can be? How are we betraying what our Lord stands for? In what ways do we turn away from what matters by becoming absorbed in faithless and wasted pursuits.
Think of church meetings you’ve been at where the conversation throughout was only on business and mostly on money, where anxiety had such hold that people debated endlessly over $50 here and there, and other minutia, and lost all sense of why they were there in the first place – to serve their Lord and be passionate about doing the will of God and having a vision and plan to do it, Think of how we all have gotten side-tracked by lesser things from serving our Lord and following him.
Enter the next set of characters: religious leaders. Jesus is hauled before them – the high priest and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes. There’s a court proceeding. They listen to testimony about Jesus. Jesus, himself, is interrogated. Judgment comes swiftly. He deserves, they say, to die.
We are accustomed to lumping these leaders together with others and simply calling them The Jews.
For nearly 2,000 years Christians have said, Jews! Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death. Those Jews - all Jews. Jews generically killed Jesus.
Christians have said that, church leaders have said that, popes have said that. And while they were saying that, Christian governments drove Jews from their lands and seized their property and their businesses. After Good Friday services, Christians swarmed out of churches into Jewish neighborhoods, burning the homes of Jews and killing them. For 2000 years Jews have been vilified, and persecuted by Christians, all of which became the seedbed for the ultimate horror – the Holocaust.
Christian have read the Passion story as if they were Jesus, when in fact they should have been seeing themselves as the religious leaders who were plotting against an innocent Jew - Jesus.
I believe we have turned the corner on that. But we still have much work to do as Christians in exploring our past, finding common ground with Jews, and in respecting their faith. And we have much to in working together with Jews and people of all faiths to reduce the injustices and suffering in our world.
Lastly we come to Pilate. He is the leader who refuses to take a stand because he doesn’t want to take any blame. He washes his hands of responsibility. You decide, he says, whether Jesus dies. I’ll do what you want.
Here is a governor who tests which way the wind is blowing; whose guiding principal is harmony; who would rather make no decision than risk making a poor decision; who wants more to be liked than he likes to lead; who cares most about equilibrium. So he punts.
We and churches can and do act that way when we have no guiding vision, no principles to stand on, show no courage or will to act boldly and take risks. We are all like Pilate when we have no true conviction and take no real responsibility, when we leave it to others to do what God has called us to do. At such tines we are like icebergs at sea, drifting about aimlessly, being blown by the wind.
If we grasp the Passion Story rightly, we will find ourselves in the many characters in the story who in one way or another fall short of loving and serving Jesus. If we grasp it rightly, we will not find in it others’ failures, but only our own. That’s the humbling news.
But, however much we find ourselves represented in this story in its many characters, as we should, the story remains first and always Jesus’ good news story. The story of one who loved to the end, who gave his life for the sake of the world, and lived and died for us to live our life no longer for ourselves but God.
It is the story of Christ’s redeeming love - how God established a new covenant not based on our goodness or obedience or faithfulness but on God’s mercy and love alone. The story of love greater than our sin, of non-violence not giving in to violence, of compassion not being broken by injustices suffered.
It is the story of how God takes us as we are that, being transformed by love, we might become what God wants us to be. |