{"id":94,"date":"2010-03-28T07:11:17","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T12:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=94"},"modified":"2010-03-28T07:11:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-28T12:11:17","slug":"palm-sunday-sermon-where-are-you-standing-march-28-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2010\/03\/28\/palm-sunday-sermon-where-are-you-standing-march-28-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Palm Sunday Sermon: Where are you standing? March 28, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts:\u00a0 Luke 19:28-40;\u00a0 23:13-26, 32-33<\/span><\/p>\n

Neutrality evades us when we just read this story.\u00a0\u00a0 We are present in it and we know it deep down, if we have any notion that we can claim to be followers of this man, Jesus.<\/p>\n

So where are you standing in these scenes?\u00a0 Are you along the side of the street near the gate of the city when this strange little street theatre begins, with a itinerant preacher, some say prophet, riding into the city on a little horse, or was it a donkey, as Matthew and Mark suggest?\u00a0\u00a0 Were you so glad to see this healer, this charismatic man finally make his way to the capital, that you are throwing off your shawl, your cloak and throwing it on the road to make a carpet for him, becoming an actor yourself in this theatre of the absurd?\u00a0\u00a0 because it doesn\u2019t feel so absurd when it happens.\u00a0 Has your heart been so touched that you actually break out of your stiff modest behavior to shout praises, and to trust that somehow this parade, this event, this man comes in the name of all that is holy?<\/p>\n

Or maybe you are part of the priestly caste, of the tribe of Levi, and this Jesus seems to you like a radical revolutionary, one of those liberals who is going to bring down Rome\u2019s heavy boot on your people\u2019s neck, who is going to burden the next generation with yet more oppression, and you want him silenced.\u00a0 You want him dumped.<\/p>\n

Or maybe, like Pilate, this man standing before you in this story, just still confuses you and you don\u2019t know what to make of him, but you don\u2019t think he deserves what you know he is going to get.<\/p>\n

Then there is that fickle crowd that might have been the same bunch that earlier were shouting his praises, now yelling for him to be executed in the most awful way that humanity has ever devised, demonstrating to all of us the human capacity to\u00a0 say one thing one minute and its opposite the next and not even wince at the contradictions.\u00a0 Sometimes when the holy, when God comes too close, really close we fight it off, we rebel, we turn viciously against God.\u00a0 And what will happen to Jesus is surely vicious:\u00a0 not only is there the agony of having stakes pounded through your wrists, and ankles, but there is that suffocation that gravity inevitably causes, ribs pressing into lungs, slowly, slowly taking away the capacity to draw any breath at all.\u00a0\u00a0 Usually it would take hours, even a day or more for people to die this way, and then their bodies would be left on the cross to be picked clean by the buzzards and vultures that circled around the city dump where it all happened, eyes plucked out before the poor sucker was even dead.<\/p>\n

Maybe you are standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and like Simon of Cyrene, have gotten caught up in something you would never otherwise have given any attention.\u00a0 There are the grieving women, wailing for him, feeling trapped by our position in life to do anything more than grieve and cry. \u00a0 Sadly, too much of what passes for Christianity these days is passive by-standing, nodding our sad approval of this story, and allowing ourselves to continue to feel helpless. \u00a0After all, HE is the one who will do the work of saving us. \u00a0 We could see ourselves perhaps, God help us, \u00a0as one of the two thieves on crosses beside him, or worse yet, one of those guards, just doing their job, and we might as well try to get something out of a sorry days\u2019 work, if only through gambling for that cloak of his, not that we really want it, but the game of chance gives us a little excitement in otherwise dreary life.<\/p>\n

At the end there are two other groups of people:\u00a0 those who had come to watch a spectacle\u2014like those who used to gather to watch lynchings as happened in 1904 here in Lexington on the courthouse lawn or who say they would be glad to watch criminals who have received the death penalty being put to death; and there are those who had been close to him\u2014his disciples, the women, his friends.\u00a0 The spectators went home because the prophet, presumed Messiah, died too soon and there was no magnificent rescue from a deus ex machina<\/em>.\u00a0 The others stood grim, full of sorrow, stunned that it had happened at all, and maybe terrified that it might happen to them.<\/p>\n

The reaction of the cast of characters remind me of how fickle we human beings are.\u00a0 One minute we are shouting our support of a proposal, an idea, or a person, and the next we are distancing ourselves as fast as we can.\u00a0 We want to be on the right side of an issue, a crowd, or a contest.\u00a0 Who wants to cheer for the home team after they have lost the game in the big dance?\u00a0 Who wants to be counted amongst the supporters of a proposal that another huge group of people oppose?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Who wants to stand with a whistle blower whose actions weren\u2019t appreciated and whom security escorts\u00a0 to the boundaries of the company\u2019s property?\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, we feel bad for those people caught on the wrong side of things, but we know better than to be found with them.<\/p>\n

Do you remember the last time you changed your stance in relationship to someone or on an issue in order to align yourself advantageously?\u00a0 We all do it, and though we can find plenty of reasons with a moral resonance to justify our shift of opinions, deep down inside we know we have acted in violation of our own values because we didn\u2019t want to be on the \u201cwrong\u201d side.<\/p>\n

Jesus had no qualms about pleasing anyone other than the One who sent him.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t care whether anyone liked him or the horse (or donkey) he rode in on.\u00a0 He would just as soon speak the damning truth to his most powerful critic as reach out in tender compassion to the most powerless people he met.\u00a0 Jesus stood for something\u2014something worth dying for\u2014the love of God and God\u2019s love for all of humanity, a way of peace not a way of power, a way of being, not so much a way of thinking.<\/p>\n

Episcopal priest and author Fleming Rutledge suggests that \u201cWhat we see and hear in Jesus\u2019 death is not just his solidarity with the victims of this world. It is that, but it is not only that. What we see and hear in the Cry of Dereliction is Jesus\u2019 identification in his Cross not only <\/em>with the innocent victims of this world but also <\/em>with their torturers . . .\u00a0What Jesus assumes on the Cross is not only <\/em>the suffering of innocents but also <\/em>the wickedness of those who inflict suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when Jesus says, \u201cFather, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing\u201d (Luke 23:34<\/a>), \u201che makes himself one, not only with my pain<\/em> but with my sin\u2013<\/em>because I myself, and you yourselves, and all of us ourselves, are sometimes victims <\/em>of others and sometimes torturers <\/em>of others and sometimes both<\/em>, and when we recognize this we are, as Jesus says to the scribe, \u2018not far from the kingdom.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Palm Sunday forces us to ask ourselves again, \u201cwhat do we stand for?\u201d\u00a0 Is there a time when our love for our neighbor, especially our voiceless, victimized neighbor, would lead us to take an unpopular stand?\u00a0 Where is God asking us to be uncomfortable, maybe even to be insecure and frightened\u2014to cheer the messiah, to follow the messiah, to join the messiah as he walks through Jerusalem, with a cross over his back, with his skin nearly flayed from his back, and a crown of thorns pressed into his scalp.<\/p>\n

Ours is\u00a0 faith that invites us to understand that life is not to be measured in what we acquire, the trophies we bring home, but by the measure of our hearts, the depth of our love, the constancy of our commitments.<\/p>\n

Christ invites people\u00a0 to stand with him:\u00a0 to see sisters and brothers in every face, and not deny the Messiah whose reflection we see in their eyes.\u00a0 We are the ones who cannot rest while there is injustice in our world because the injustice that is inflicted on others is inflicted on us\u2014we are one with each other as Jesus was and is one with us.\u00a0 This is the truth we proclaim with a palm procession for Christ right down the center of the streets of the new Jerusalem, where \u2018mourning and crying and pain are no more, where death is no more, because the first things have passed away,\u2019 and the Kingdom of God has been made manifest in our words, in our actions, in our lives.<\/p>\n

So Palm Sunday is an invitation to decide where we will stand, whether we will cheer something on Sundays and jeer at it on Friday, or whether we can, like the women and the disciples, have the courage to let his life-giving, life-sacrificing love live in us.<\/p>\n

John Bell of the Iona Community in Scotland has written a wonderful hymn text, “Will you come and follow me?”, that issues the invitation from the man who asks us not so much to believe in him, but most importantly to follow him, as a prayer of the Christ in song for your decision.<\/p>\n

May we have eyes to see and hearts to understand, and the courage to follow our hearts.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

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Texts:\u00a0 Luke 19:28-40;\u00a0 23:13-26, 32-33 Neutrality evades us when we just read this story.\u00a0\u00a0 We are present in it and we know it deep down, if we have any notion that we can claim to be followers of this man,<\/p>\n

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