April 5th 2009Today is Palm Sunday …
Lord Jesus …over the broken glass of our world, over the rumours meant to hurt, over the prejudice meant to wound, over the weapons meant to kill … ride on trampling our attepts at disaster into dust … ride on, ride on in majesty.
Over the distance that separates us from you, and it is such a distance measurable in half truths, in unkept promises, in second-best obedience … ride on until you touch and heal us – we who feel for no one but ourselves … ride on, ride on in majesty …
… through the back streets and sin bins, and the sniggered-at-corners of our city where life festers and love runs cold … ride on bringing hope and dignity where most send scorn and silence. Ride on, ride on in majesty …
For you O Christ, do care, and you must show us how. On our own our ambitions rival your summons and thus threaten good faith and neglect God’s people … in your company and at your side we might yet help to bandage and heal the wounds of the world … ride on, ride on in majesty, and take us with your … (Page 76-77 – Stages on the Way.)
And so today we begin our journey into the events of Holy week … a journey that WILL carry us from the Hosannas of a triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem, through the horrors of Jesus’ arrest, his trial, his torture and abuse and his death, through the profound and utter darkness of the days that follow his death on the cross, and then after the darkness comes the glorious Hallelujahs of Easter morning …
Unfortunately, in the Church we have a propensity to jump from Hosannas to Hallelujah’s and not take time in the uncomfortable darkness that lies between.
Darkness makes us uncomfortable … it’s a scary place … we can’t see clearly … dangers might lurk just out there somewhere …
Think about horror films – from the early films with the likes of Boris Karloff and Bela Lagosi, through to the slasher films of the modern era – darkness is a simply frightening place to linger – in the case of movies, it could cost you your life …
Fortunately, at least for us, Easter doesn’t cost our lives – it cost Jesus his – but we are relatively safe …
Still, darkness is not an appealing place – it’s uncertain, confusing, disconcerting, and frightening … we walk more quickly at night … we tend to avoid certain places at night … and when we enter a darkened room we tend to flick on a light … we don’t like the darkness – so we avoid it – figuratively and literally.
So, it is somewhat natural that we tend to jump through Holy Week and skip over the dark bits … the talk of dying … the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the cup … the abandonment … the loneliness … the gut-wrenching prayers … the pain … the sorrow … the tears … the blood … the agony … and the death …
Easter Week is a hard place to travel … it’s not about a gentle Jesus, meek and mild … Holy week is not a pleasant spring like place filled with flowers and bunnys and pastel colours … Holy Week is a hard and dark place where the deepest emotions we are capable of feeling come to the fore and we are confronted with how cold and hard our world can be …
Ann Weems writes of Holy week:
Holy is the week ,,, Holy, Consecrated, belonging to God … we move from hosanna to horrow with the predictable ease of those who know not what they do …
Our hosannas sung, our palms waved,
Let us go with passion into the week.
It is a time to curse fig trees that do not yield fruit.
It is a time to cleanse our temples of any blasphemy.
It is a time to greet Jesus at the Lord’s Anointed One, to lavishly break our alabaster and pour perfume out for him without counting the cost …
It is a time for preparation …
The time to give thanks and break the bread is upon us.
The time to give thanks and drink of the cup is imminent …
Eat, drink, remember.
On the night of night each one of us must ask as we dip our bread in the wine – IS IT I???
And on that darkest of days, each of us must stand beneath the tree and watch the dying if we are to be there when the stone is rolled away …
The only road to Easter Morning is through the unrelenting shadows of that Friday. Only then will the alleluias be sung, only then will the dancing begin. (pg 67 – Kneeling in Jerusalem)
The problem – if it really is a problem – is that Easter, when we intentionally walk thru it, makes us uncomfortable and it makes us move past our comfortable assumptions … we have to face not just the harshness of life, but also the struggles that are part of it … Fortunately, Easter offers us the vivid and breath-taking reminder that in the face of the worst life can throw at us – at you and I – God has already been there, and is ready to carry us through …
Easter is the moment when the words of the Psalmist – “yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou are with me …” come true.
After the darkest night – a rich beautiful dawn will break upon us … after the harshest ugliest storm – a beautiful rainbow will beckon us … after the cold flood waters recede a warm and glorious spring will come … The Resurrection is THAT profound and that simple …
The challenge is – we’ve grown complacent and comfortable in our faith. Attending – or not attending Church is easy. We can show up on Sunday morning, or not … we can join in the prayers and hymns, or not … we can drop a few dollars on the collection plate, stick around for a cup of coffee, and feel good about ourselves, or not … it’s all terribly comfortable.
Even when we look around and wrestle with some of the issues we’re facing – it’s still pretty comfortable.
And I think that is one of the biggest challenges we face as a people of faith … the comfortableness of our society has rendered faith irrelevant, not only for those folks out in the community, but for us as well … our faith has become a habit … something we do and don’t really think much about …
I point no fingers in this … I always say that my grandfather – my Presbyterian Grandfather – always told us kids not to point fingers – “for when you point a finger in judgment at another, three fingers are pointing back at yourself!!”
Instead, I include myself in this comfort … I have in many areas of my life grown complacent and almost lazy when it comes to things of faith … the challenge to be faced and over come is an openness to the intimacy that the Easter Season offers. Not the warm fuzzy, bunny filled Easter – but the journey that finds friends abandoning Jesus – the journey that finds the crowds that had so eagerly welcomed him fleeing and turning on him – the journey that finds us standing in the darkness of the garden, the courtyard, the back alley, the hillside … the journey ahead is neither easy nor comfortable, but in a full life it is necessary …
Today the journey begins … we’ve walked in the streets of Jerusalem and felt the palm branches crunch underfoot as the Chosen One of God is welcomed in as the Messiah – the Saviour – the one to rescue us … soon we will hear the thunk of the door closing as we gather in the upper room and the talk will turn from the triumph of the procession to the trials of prayer and suffering … In the coming week is the story of humanity – our story … the challenge – the call – the vocation we are called to is to walk carefully and thoughtfully knowing that even in the silent alone-ness of the darkness that lies ahead God is present …
May it be so – thanks be to God – let us pray …
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