Palm Sunday, 17 April 2011
Palm Sunday is sometimes called the “little Easter.” This week we shout “Hosanna!” as if rehearsing for next week’s “Halleluiah!” But between that triumphal entry on one Sunday, and the resurrection the next, was a week in Jerusalem, Jesus’ last week. It was a descent into hell on earth for those who loved him, because they witnessed the betrayal and arrest, the torture and the execution of their beloved Jesus. He was someone’s son, and someone’s brother, and somebody’s friend, and somebody’s mentor.
Most of us skip that part. We do, we skip the formal observances of Holy Week, because we are busy with other things and, frankly, because they are real downers. We are, culturally speaking, a people who prefer to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Palm Sunday and Easter feel good. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday feel bad. So, we skip it. Advance to Go, collect $200, avoid paying rent on Boardwalk. We can do that.
The liturgy of Holy Week may not fit our optimistic Hollywood USA version of life, but the liturgy of Holy Week is actually more like real life than perhaps we care to admit. And I believe that reenacting the whole week, in the liturgy of the church, year after year, can strengthen our spiritual muscles for the suffering that is a natural part of life.
There is so much pain and suffering. I know, because sharing the sorrow is part of my job. In addition to celebrating family weddings and baptisms, I have the privilege of sharing in the intimacies of disappointment, sickness, and grief. I’m not complaining—it is a big, full life. That’s why I call it a privilege, it is. By virtue of office, I get to be part of the family in all the big moments of life: joys and sorrows. And that is my point. Life is not just made up of a series of peak experiences. There are valleys. Sometimes they seem like bottomless chasms, but they inevitably level out and begin to rise again. That’s life. That’s what ages of experience has taught us. And every religious system in the world has some way of coming to terms with suffering-- in Christianity, it is the incarnation of God.
In our United Church of Christ statement of faith, one of the most meaningful lines for me is “In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, God has come to us, and shared our common lot.” That means there is nothing we experience that God has not experienced. God knows from experience our ecstasies and our agonies. God knows what it’s like to be a child and pick wildflowers for mom, because Jesus did that. God knows what it’s like to hit your thumb with a mallet, because Jesus probably did that too. God knows what it’s like when people tell you that you are their savior, because God experienced that through Jesus. And God knows what it’s like to be run out of town, because Jesus experienced that too.
God knows intimately what it is to be betrayed by someone you loved. God knows what’s it’s like to be in prison, because Jesus was there. God knows what it’s like to be beaten, because Jesus was there. And God knows death.
Why did Jesus die? Because he was fully human. Because that is the way life is. There is a beginning and an ending. That’s the way all our stories go.
Some stories seem to end way too soon. Like Jesus’ story.
But for me, the life of Jesus sanctifies my suffering. Through the Jesus story, God takes my suffering and makes it holy. Through the Jesus story, the endurance of suffering becomes a spiritual virtue, that shapes our future and redeems our past.
Through the life, suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus I know that suffering is not all there is, that there is always a resurrection, a rising up.
May the remembrance of Christ’s suffering strengthen us all in faith and hope, that our hearts may rise up in joy. Amen.
