Palm Sunday – April 17, 2011 – Year A
Even though a sermon is listed in the bulletin, it isn’t going to be a very long sermon.
In the first place, when there is a sermon, the kids almost always have the option of walking out on it, and that just isn’t possible today.
In the second place, starting the service in the parish hall with the blessing of the palms, processing through the Memorial Garden, then reading aloud the entire account of the Passion, as is our custom every year on Palm Sunday, takes a good deal of time and makes for a service that is much longer than average already.
What I do propose, however, is that we take a brief look at what it is that we have just done because what we have just done is essentially a psychodrama, and when people participate in psychodramas—no matter what the subject—it makes sense to spend some time afterward doing some de-briefing, getting some distance from the roles we have just played.
After all, by being willing to play the roles of people we are not, you and I come face to face with the people that, but for the grace of God, we are perfectly capable of becoming.
What would drive me to betray my best friend or deny that I ever knew him?
Discovering that he wasn’t quite what I thought he was? Deciding that he had somehow let me down? Fear that I might end up sharing the same fate?
What would persuade some highly respected leaders that their best chance of getting rid of a truth-telling troublemaker was to trump up some charges against an innocent man?
Being jealous of his popularity, perhaps? Fear of disturbing the status quo (not to mention losing their own status in the process)?
For that matter, what turns a bunch of decent human beings into a mob howling for blood?
Having to play the parts of people we are not can put you and me in touch with the wrong any one of us would be capable of doing if the conditions were “right”.
Is the difference between a lynch mob and a crowd of frenzied sports fans simply a matter of degree?
When all is said and done, is violence and bloodshed finally the only way we will ever settle the differences between us, whether we are individuals or nations?
Fortunately, by taking part in a dramatization of the Passion according to Matthew you and I find ourselves face to face with a God who, despite the seeming hopelessness of the human condition, never gives up on us, a God who forgives us no matter what we may have done, a God who teaches us to forgive others, even as we are forgiven, a God whose love for us is finally stronger than death, even death on a cross.
What that means is that when the enthusiasm of that first Palm Sunday gave way to the desolation of that first Good Friday, it did not end there.
The worst that human beings could do was simply not enough.
What it means is that no matter how bleak things may sometimes seem, we are embraced, we are encompassed by the enduring reality of Easter, all of us—the Church, every human being, every fiber of creation.
We do well then to observe the gathering gloom that assails humanity in Holy Week—we dare not forget it!—but we need not dwell on it.
Christ’s living presence among us—God’s love continually offered, never withdrawn—that is what we need to dwell on.
The bread and wine of the Eucharist may be the sacramental signs, but there are other signs of that living presence, other signs of God’s love.
We see those signs in our own lives, when we surprise ourselves by doing something we know was right without counting the cost or when we are surprised by someone else who beats us to the punch, sharing the joy of seeking and serving the Christ in each other and in all persons, as we learn how immensely satisfying it is to love our neighbor as ourself, as we discover how many glimpses of God’s heavenly kingdom there are for each of us to catch right here, right now.
Because we are all precious parts of that Kingdom—every one of us; we always have been; we always will be.
Not that it isn’t easy for us to forget that we dwell in the safety of that Kingdom, especially when one way or another we often succeed in making the world we otherwise live in less than a paradise.
Then retracing yet again the Way of the Cross with Jesus can give us courage, showing us that the worst that humanity could ever devise was no match—is no match—for the saving power of a loving and faithful God and that the Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us dwells among us even now.
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