Lent - Year A -- 2008
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Lent Year A
Genesis 2: 15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5: 12-19
Matthew 4: 1-11
I love the cartoon series “Family Circus”. The family have a bunch of kids whose antics provide ample material for reflection on the ways of real live children. In this cartoon household, in addition to the children that can be seen and heard, are the ghost children; who as far as I can recall are, “Not Me” and “Ida Know”. “Not Me” and “Ida Know” are blamed for everything for which the real children don’t want to any take responsibility.
I am invited out to eat and the host will often ask me if I want another serving (usually of desert) and I’ll say something like, “Well, (Pause) if you insist !”. When it comes to food, especially dessert, I am easily tempted. Indeed, almost everyone has a food-related weaknesses of some kind or another.
Temptation is a funny thing, in that we are rarely tempted to do something that we would find truly objectionable - rarely tempted to do something we feel is blatantly wrong. Those are the easiest temptations to resist! Most often we are tempted to misuse or overuse something that is good or we are tempted to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Sometimes we are like Eve and Adam; we don’t believe the warning.
In the world of Harry Potter, the “dark lord”, the evil Voldemort, says something like this: “there is no good or evil, only power and those too weak to use it.” Of course, in the world of Harry Potter, where almost everyone possesses “magical power”, Voldemort is presented as one who MISUSES the power he has been given , while Harry and his friends use their powers for good. (Unless, of course, he is playing a school-boy prank on cousin Dudley or some of his schoolmates trying to bully him!)
When we realize we have given into temptation we often try and justify our behaviour or, to lessen our guilt, or in an attempt to avoid the consequences, we blame someone else. Like the children in “Family Circus” we respond, “not me” or “ida know” when we are asked about our part in whatever has gone wrong.
When we think of the word “temptation” we often think of the “ten commandments” and the particular temptations we think of involve breaking one or more of these rules, originally designed to govern the lives of the people of Israel.
We begin the season of Lent by reflecting on the nature of temptation and its often insidious nature.
When we get right down to it, the majority of us consider some of the ten commandments to be more important than others. While most of us have never seriously entertained the idea of murder, if we are honest we will admit that coveting is what keeps our economy alive. Watch the fashion trends of teenagers; or even of adults; it’s all about image and having the right “look”. I may like my neighbour’s car, or flat screen plasma TV, or computer system, but instead of being tempted to steal it, which breaks one of the ten commandments, if I like it that much I just go out and buy my own. If I don’t have the money there is always the bank or MasterCard and that is how a lot of people get into trouble with massive credit card debt. Then because I have a nicer model than my neighbour, he or she decides to buy one just like mine or even better! Then another of our neighbours sees it and wants one of their own! And so people in retail keep their jobs and the shareholders are happy and so it goes.
Today’s stories deal with temptation and as we begin the journey of Lent we are called to reflect on how the temptations in our lives detract from our living as God would want us to.
Somewhere in the collection of Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax is a battered copy of the Geneva Bible; the translations which would have been used by William Shakespeare, John Knox and would have come to the Americas on the famous ship, the Mayflower. It is a translation which is commonly referred to as a “Breeches Bible”, which comes from the Genesis passage read today, in which Adam and Eve, instead of sewing fig leaves together to make loincloths or aprons, as in other translations; they made “breeches” instead. I suppose a pair of breeches would have covered more than the loincloth or the aprons of other translations. However, the ways in which we have tended to look at this passage tend to have more to do with the time of the translator than they do with the text itself.
We find temptation to be a fascinating subject, especially when it has anything to do with S-E-X. Yet this passage has very little to so with that subject and subsequent controls around sex, which usually stem from the time of the ten commandments or later.
As an attempt to explain the origins of the human condition, as the storyteller knew it, this is a superbly told story.
In this passage at least, the snake is just that, a snake, an animal; one of God’s creatures. The fact that he could talk only serves to create the necessary dialogue; it doesn’t have any real importance.
The snake serves as “the dissenting opinion” and sows the seed of doubt in the minds of the humans: will they or won’t they die. They decide to take the risk.
What seems to be at issue in this passage is the desire to have the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. Once the fruit was taken by the man and the woman and they did not die, as God had apparently warned, but they knew their own condition, they could not “go back”. From this point on they were forced to live outside of the garden and rely on this human knowledge for their survival.
Jesus’ temptation takes place between his baptism and his ministry. It seems that it is a necessary ordeal for him to be able to fulfil that call with faithfulness. In many ways these temptations are about how Jesus will conduct that ministry. The tempter says to him, “If you are the Son of God .......” If you are the Son of God you will be able to do this, or that. It is not so much the seed of doubt that the devil sows in Jesus as it is the temptation to “have it all”.
Jesus recognizes the trap and refuses to fall into it. In this passage we see the temptation being tailored to suit Jesus identity and situation. Note that Jesus is tempted when he is at his weakest and most vulnerable; after 40 days of fasting. .
The first temptation relates to Jesus identity and using his “special powers” to fill his own needs. Jesus quotes scripture to fend that one off.
In the second attempt at tempting Jesus, the tempter quotes scripture at Jesus and he recognizes that, despite what the scripture seemed to be saying, to fall for this would serve no other end than to make him a first century Evil Kenevil. It would certainly gain him no true following.
The third is simply an offer of complete and ultimate power. Jesus recognizes that the cost of attaining such power would, in effect, deny his very identity, purpose and ministry.
Too often, I think, we equate temptation and sin with doing “bad things” but I think that what makes real temptation so tricky is that it relates to the reasons or motivations behind our actions, not just the ways in which we try and justify the deeds we know we should have left undone.
A boy went for a walk one summer day. He asked his mother if he could go to the local swimming hole and she said, “No!”. When he returned it was obvious from his wet hair that he has been disobedient and she asked him why.
He replied. “I took my swim trunks with me, so why let them go to waste.”
Sometimes we have no intention of resisting temptation.
Sin is not so much the doing of bad things, but it is rather the failure of living in community and the failure of trusting in God. I think that one of the main issues for Adam and Eve was that they did not trust that God had their best interests at heart, so they had to know, for themselves, if death came from the prohibited tree. Like a child’s “prove it” response, when we say, “Don’t touch the hot stove”. Some children need to touch the red stove element to know that, in this regard at least, adults know best.
I keep thinking of the “great commandment” of love of God, neighbour and self, as much better than the list of ten we memorized in Sunday School. I saw “better” only because, whenever we make a list, there is a tendency to look for loopholes. On the other hand, when they are broad and all encompassing you really have to think about your life. You really have to take the time to think about how your life is being measured in relation to the great law of love.
Christianity does not have one law for Sunday and another for the rest of the week. We need to look at our entire lives with the lens of faith, whether it be decisions in our personal lives, our professional lives, or our lives in the community. If its wrong to steal your neighbour’s lawnmower, we need to wrestle with how it applies to running a business, lest we steal from our neighbour as well. Just because it isn’t illegal does not make it right! Just because everyone else does it, does not make it right.
How do we express our complete love of God? How do we show we love our neighbour? How do we show we love our own self as God loves us? There are no easy answers for all situations in the complex world in which we live. Sometimes we become so caught up in the day to day necessity of making a living, getting the kids to the places they need to go and getting clean clothes and nutritious food on the table that we simply allow our lives to happen and follow the way of least resistance. Sometimes we need to get off the treadmill of our own busyness so that we can look at our lives and be open to God’s leading.
Perhaps we need to embrace the wilderness time of Lent and its gift of “time apart” as an opportunity to reflect on how we live our lives in relation to our faith. Perhaps we need to spend some time with the questions: “Who are we?” and “Whose are we?”.
So let us stop thinking of temptation simply as an enticement to do bad things and think of our whole lives as a response to God’s gift and temptation as an enticement to live in ways which are inappropriate to both the giver and the gift.
And let us remember that God goes with us in this journey of self discovery, just as God goes with us at all the times of our lives.
Amen.
Genesis 12: 1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17
John 3: 1-17
I was watching one of those crime shows at noon on Saturday. The police found a wrecked car that had gone off the road and pushed a few buttons on the car’s GPS system and “presto” they were able to determine where the driver had been going before the accident.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine bought a computer system. It came with a poster size set up sheet with very few words and what words there were, were in about 5 languages. There were pictures though, and big arrows and each step was numbered. If you followed the arrows your system was supposed to be set up properly and would work.
We like clear directions. We like certainty. Starting out on a journey before we know our destination may seem a little like being trapped in an episode of “Mission Impossible”, complete with the exploding tape recorder.
At the end of the last episode of the TV show, 7th Heaven , the Camden family emptied their coffee cans and piggy banks and piled into the family RV and set out for an adventure with no set destination and no set time limit. It was a surprising and even crazy end to a show that had up until that point portrayed a very focussed and grounded family who carefully planned their lives.
In today’s story from the book of Genesis, Abram is called to pull up the stakes of his tent, (quite literally), and go on a journey with no destination. He and his wife would already have been semi nomads, living in tents and herding animals for a living, but to leave the family grouping and strike out on their own would have been almost completely unheard of.
Since the days of European immigration, the colonies which are now part of Canada have seen great change. They were times when people had to survive without precise directions or plans for their lives. Most of our ancestors came from Ireland, Scotland, Wales or England and what they found was often quite different, and much harder, than what they expected.
Then came the great move west! My grandfather’s family moved to Saskatchewan from the Ottawa area at the turn of the century for expanded farming opportunities which did not involve milking cows. My grandmother moved there during the war for a teaching job. After the war ended and my grandfather returned from serving overseas, they met, married, and began to raise a family. 12 years later they had to pull up stakes and move, victims of the “dust bowl’ that the once rich prairie had become. They came to PEI, the province of my grandmother’s birth because here, if you had land, you could at least eat. 75 years later the Johnston farm, which has seen many changes in the last 20 years is in the midst of other, more unwelcome, transitions because of the global changes in agriculture. No one knows yet where the present cycle will stop.
The word on the street these days is that there are plenty of good jobs in places like Fort McMurray. Yet we wonder how long it will be before the environmental crisis will force Canadians and others to find cleaner alternatives to the oil now being extracted from the tar sands. It seems that nothing is, or will remain, a sure thing for long, except perhaps the need to journey through times of change. Islanders pride themselves on being people of history and people of place. We are proud of our Island and our way of life and we have long been resistant to change. In a bygone era there were actual debates on the banning of “motor cars”. In 1987 the big debate was whether or not the “fixed link” should be built. “Would it destroy the so called ‘Island way of life’?” “ Would it bankrupt the province?” “Would it survive the first winter?”
I was reading the article in Thursday’s The Guardian about the principal of KISH Kensington Intermediate Senior High School who has received an award as an “outstanding principal”. In his interview with the Guardian he talked about the tremendous changes he has seen in his career as a teacher and school administrator. When someone my age tells today’s students that when we started to school there were no computers or photocopiers in the schools. Ourt teachrs all had to know how to use "spirit duplicators" and the lucky students got to 'turn the handle to make the machine work"! And I dont remember having pocket calculators till high school -- Today's students seem to think we must have stepped off of Noah’s Ark when we tell them that. I am old enough to remember using the workbooks for the “MacLean Method of Writing”. W.J. Gage Limited I don’t think they teach penmanship these days and I am told that spelling is not emphasized either. Those of you who are older will remember even more changes. Whether they are good changes or not is a moot point, the changes have occurred and are occurring.
Back to Abram. As the book of Genesis unfolds we find out more and more about this Abram. We find our later that he and his wife are childless and getting on in years. But notice also that God promises that they will become a great nation. We are told that he went forth in faith, despite the obstacles, despite what must have been the objections of his kin-folk and his own reservations.
Some people find the idea of Abraham as a model for our faith to be a more than a little idealistic, saying something like, “Oh that was Abraham, he was special. I could never do anything like that!” We must remember that in the biblical record, Abraham is never portrayed as perfect; his actions sometimes indicated that he could be of “questionable moral character”.
A colleague of mine, the Rev Stew Clarke, reminds us that Abram was not chosen because he was wonderful, but that he becomes wonderful because he was chosen. From an email list - “Possible Scripture Introductions” managed by Stew.
In today’s gospel lesson we meet the Pharisee named Nicodemus and we overhear his conversation with Jesus about the necessity of being born “from above”. As a Pharisee Nicodemus would have been a religious person with a strong faith. He was, after all, a descendant of Abraham. In this passage Jesus is asking Nicodemus and all of his contemporaries to put their hand in the hand of God and be open to a journey of change.
As we have just heard, Nicodemus, who has come to see Jesus under the safety and anonymity of darkness, gets hung up on the words and images of rebirth. He is VERY skeptical: “How can a grownup be born a second time?” Of course, Jesus is using a metaphor for a spiritual change which will be something like a re-birth. We do find out later that Nicodemus was one of the followers of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion. He was obviously able to let go of his reservations and commit himself to the way of Jesus.
It seems that today’s passages talk about being called by God to a journey of both trust and change. As we continue our spiritual journey through Lent we are called to reflect on the call as it is presented to us in the biblical record.
We are presented with a call that asks us to step forward in faith - despite our fears and our doubts. The call to Abraham did not come with a promise of safety; and it did not come with a promise that no unhappiness would come their way.
The call was to enter into a covenant that they would be this God’s people and that this God would be their God. Despite the fact that they did not live up to their side of the bargain from time to time they discovered that their God had not abandoned them and DID NOT abandon them.
The call to be Christian is a call to a journey. A call to journey is, by definition, a call to be open to change, to roll with the punches, to adapt to changing circumstances, to open our eyes to new sights and new possibilities.
In the next months we, as a Pastoral Charge, will be gathering to look at our future and at how we can continue to be faithful witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the times in which we are living.
We know that many things have changed since our church buildings were constructed. Most of you have had significant life events happen within these walls. Distances between places seem shorter. It seems to take more and more money to do everything and there seem to be fewer and fewer people who are interested in committing themselves to faith communities. The work of the church is needed now, as much as ever, as people continue to need the pastoral care and outreach of ministers and congregations.
We need to take a serious and faithful look at how we will organize ourselves and our human, architectural and financial resources to accomplish our goals.
As always we are called to follow Jesus of Nazareth - to be open to the birth offered by the Spirit, to follow the Spirit’s leading into uncharted waters and down unfamiliar paths.
The decisions will be ours to make, but like all times of decision and change in the past, our children and theirs will be affected by the path we choose. We need to choose wisely and well, and in faith .
Our God is calling to us and promising to make our work great. Are we willing, like Abraham and Nicodemus to undertake the risky and necessary journey in faith and trust?
Amen.
NO SERMON
This is the week of my "Covenanting Service" and someone else preaches!
1 Samuel 16: 1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5: 8-14
John 9: 1-41
NOTE: I owe the title of the sermon to Daniel Clenendin and the website journeywithjesus.net
My first inclination when I looked at the Gospel passage, in focussing on the mechanics of the miracle, was to call the sermon, “Here’s Mud in Your Eye!” I thought that it would be a cute title, and of course, just about everyone has heard the expression. Then I began to wonder where the expression came from. Apparently, according to “Google” it comes from a barroom toast in which the rider or owner of a horse in a race, raises a glass to an upcoming win by predicting that the others will have “mud in their eyes”, from the pounding of his horses hooves crossing the finish line in front of them.” It is expression of arrogant confidence.
If you take a closer look at this passage the amount of time it spends talking about the details and mechanics of the miracle is minor when compared to the lesson Jesus seems to have in mind.
This “performance” of this miracle causes quite a stir and no small amount of “trouble” for the man born blind and for his parents. There is a lot of “buck passing” in relation to the healing and no one wants to say anything incriminating. Jesus turns the tables on the questioners and challenges the way they “see” things.
It seems that some of the religious leaders were more concerned with following the rules of their religious system than they were with meeting the people’s real needs.
Notice that we are not told until mid-way through the healing story that this was a Sabbath day. I have no doubt that the introduction of this fact at the same time as we are told that his family took him to the religious leaders after he was healed, is a deliberate device of a good story teller. We are about to really “get into it”. John’s gospel is first and foremost a story; a story about Jesus of Nazareth and what he means for the world. We know that THIS is the point at which this particular episode will become interesting and where there will be some “teaching” or “lesson” brought out. So the real point or teaching in this particular story is not the healing itself, but in the controversy that ensued.
You see, some of the Pharisees were always complaining that Jesus was hanging out with the wrong crowd. They were complaining that the wrong crowd were getting things they didn’t deserve from Jesus. Jesus was really a sinner masquerading as a holy man. And to seal their case they now have proof that he is breaking Sabbath laws by healing on the Sabbath, or in other words, by working on the day that is supposed to be the day of rest.
In the ensuing confrontation with the religious leaders Jesus uses physical sight as a metaphor for spiritual insight. He finds it ironic that a man who was physically blind “saw” who he was, even before they had met, but the leaders who had 20/20 vision were unable to discern who he was and what his ministry was about. In short - they are spiritually blind. He also takes it a second step to talk about responsibility for seeing. When we do not see we cannot be held responsible for what we do not see, but if we claim to see, we have to take responsibility for what is there, whether we have interpreted it correctly or not.
We know how the metaphor of sight works in other parts of life. I well remember Grade 12 Trigonometry. I just couldn’t “see” what the teacher was talking about and was on the verge of failing the course. Just before the final exam at the end of January something must have clicked and I saw the sine and cosine curves, amplitude and phase shift, angles and radians - the way they were supposed to have been seen and to my surprise and the surprise of the teacher I got 96% on my final exam. (It is probably the only exam I saved from High School. ) Unfortunately the fog has moved in once more and when I looked at that same exam on Thursday I am sure I could not have made 9% were I to write it today!
In most of the so-called “optical illusions” I showed the children, it becomes almost impossible NOT to see both figures once the double meaning of the picture has become clear.
So as we continue our journey of Lent; our journey of looking inward at our own lives, we are also called to look at ourselves as communities of faith. We are led to ask ourselves some hard questions. What do we understand of the Christ who calls us to follow; how do we see him? And most importantly, are we living by the sight we have?
Physical sight often becomes an metaphor for insight into life and our part in it. Some time ago a poet named Robbie Burns went to church and saw a louse on a woman’s bonnet and wrote a poem “to” that creature. Toward the end of that poem are the famous lines:
“O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! “
The United Church has been involved in a campaign for the past few years to reach the generation that seems to have dropped out of church. In connection with this campaign I read that many people who don’t have any use for the church have a very negative opinion of so-called “church people”. They see “church people” as narrow minded, anti-intellectual and arrogant. They regard “church people” as folks who believe that they are better than other folks. Perhaps this some of us like to think of ourselves in this way; but Jesus’ words give sharp challenge to this view. When we are honest most of us know it isn’t true. We are not the people with the only correct answers in life; we are a people who proclaim what we have seen.
Part of the church’s campaign involves educating the people who aren’t in our pews about what is really going on in church. The campaign is trying to portray our church as a community which is not afraid of discussing the tough questions and is open and inclusive to people of varying views and backgrounds.
When we “see” that we live the life of faith by grace we can be more open to those whose lives and ways of seeing the world are different than our own. When we “see” with these eyes we realize that our gaze as church is to be out toward the world and not inward at ourselves.
From time to time an internet colleague from Ohio by the name of Thom Schuman sends around an email with a really powerful piece of poetry that he has written. In reflecting on today’s Gospel, Thom offers these words about how God challenges our assumptions and calls us to change how we look at things:
anointed one
when i would kneel
to be anointed
from the horn of hubris,
you throw mud
in my eyes,
so i can see
those trampled
by a world stampeding
toward success;
when i would
splash on
pomposity's perfume,
you sprinkle me
with the tears of children
who,
cradled in hunger's arms,
cry themselves to
sleep;
when i would
soak my feet
in the salts
of self-absorption,
you massage them
with the dust
from the souls
of the mothers walking
along weary's highway
to their third jobs.
anoint me,
Lord God,
that i might serve
my sisters and brothers.
(c) 2008 Thom M. Shuman Thom M. Shuman, Greenhills Community Church, (Presbyterian), Cincinnati, Ohio – And posted on the Midrash Preaching List
Even though we must live in a world of competition where we must strive to be the best, the gospel challenges us with a different way of looking at life. We have lived too long with the idea that following Jesus will bring us fringe benefits. The call of the gospel is that we are to take the good news to others. (When I am conducting a wedding I find that the easiest way to get the bride or groom to look at their partner when saying the vows is for me to look at that person and not the one speaking - otherwise the groom speaks his vows to me and not to the bride) When we look toward Jesus we realize that our gaze must follow his and we see time and time again that his gaze is toward the world.
The church is not a private club which exists to provide benefits to members but an organization which proclaims the good news to the community. The church is not a club of those who have managed to score a passing grade on some kind of exam, but the church is those who seek to follow the Christ they have met and to proclaim in word and action the good news of this one who brings sight and new life to all.
Amen.
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8: 6-11
John 11: 1-45
“Life In the Midst of Death”
One of the most powerful films I have seen is Schindler’s List. It is the story of a brash industrialist who manages to save a number of Jewish people from the Nazi death machine by employing them in his factories and declaring them vital to his business. Even though it was made just a few years ago it is filmed almost entirely in black and white. The occasional shades of colour are meant to be noticed. One of involve a couple of scenes which show us a little girl in the red coat; a child who does not survive. When you sit and watch that movie is almost impossible to do so without crying, at least the first time around. We cry because that is the most apporpriate response.
In a way, the story of the raising of Lazarus is like a flash of colour in a black and white world. It is something to which we need to pay attention.
This is one of those Sundays when I am disappointed that I can’t write several sermons - but alas (I need to get to Dundas by 11) (we all would like to get home before dark). I have 2 services every morning! There is just so much preaching potential in these passages.
After much going back in forth in my head over these texts I decided that this year I would focus on the passage from John’s gospel concerning the raising of Lazarus. In this morning’s sermon I will not attempt to investigate every nook and cranny of the story - that would take far too long. What I would like to do with this passage is to look at this passage as a kind of parable for our own lives of faith.
Jesus told parables to make a point about God and God’s ways. As one way of looking at the meaning of this story I wondered, “Why can’t this event in Jesus’ life serve as the same type of teaching method? “ If we take it literally, and believe it literally, all it can really tell us is that Jesus could, and on at least once occasion, bring people back from the dead. What good would that message do us, two thousand years later?
But if we can also look at this event as a parable we realize that it has something very profound to say about the power of God to bring hope from despair and, at least metaphorically speaking, life from death.
We know from other stories in the biblical record that Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus were good friends of Jesus. We know that their home was a place where Jesus could go to “get away”.
We know that the level of conflict between Jesus and the authorities has been steadily escalating and it is clear from the disciples reaction that it was seen to be very dangerous for them to go back to Bethany. If they knew what was good for them they would stay away, far away!
We know that Thomas later earned a reputation as a “doubter” (unfairly so I might add) but in this story he is clearly a man of faith and courage. He is the one who says, “let us go anyway!”
Because we know the rest of the story we know that the other disciples had good reason to worry.
But because we know the rest of the rest of the story we know about Easter and the dramatic turn-around, en event far greater than the story of Lazarus.
The story is presented in a very dramatic fashion. The framers of the lectionary have decided that the entire story needs to be told, step by step. We can’t really “get into the story” if we don’t hear it all. We have to experience the suspense, the drama, the sadness and the joy for us to really “hear the story”.
We have to be able to stand by Jesus’s side and weep with him as he realizes that one of his best friends is gone. There has been a great deal of speculation over the years about the reason for Jesus’ tears; especially if he knew what was going to happen next, but I personally feel that a Jesus who cries as I might cry is far more c compelling a saviour than one who is without the emotions of sadness, fear and anxiety.
I may have a vivid imagination but I can just picture the events; everyone watching the previously dead man trying to hobble out of the tomb and Jesus having to tell them to unbind him. Back then, people were not buried in their “Sunday Best” but wrapped in bands of cloth. If a living person were so wrapped it would be difficult, if not impossible for them to walk very far or very fast.
So the power of God working through Jesus brings Lazarus to new life, but it is the community that has to “unbind” him. It is the community that must remove the graveclothes. It is the community that must welcome him back, give him his old job and them figure out what to do with him.
The movie was called Cast Away . In this movie, Chuck Noland, a FedEx supervisor, played by Tom Hanks is the sole survivor of a plane crash- and when he is finally rescued 1500 days later, his friends and colleagues have to figure out where he fits in their lives once more. You can give someone back his job but you can’t as easily give them back their life. The people who have not been “lost” have moved on; they had had to. Its not easy, legally, or emotionally, to bring back the dead.
When someone has found “new life” metaphorically or literally, its not easy to bring back hope where there has been only despair. It’s not easy to undo wrongs and unsay things that have been said. For example, I have talked to a number of people who have put a life of addictions behind them through a group such as Alcoholics Anonymous and they have become a new person. But often the situation that was part of their “hitting rock bottom”, such as the disintegration of their marriage, is not fixable. The spouse or children may forgive but can’t go back. There may be a new husband or wife and that new relationship is life giving.
The new life that we find when the power of God brings us to new life, may not be back to the “same old- same old” but it is the opportunity for new life just the same. Sometimes people need to make a new start in a new place and sometimes the old place can be a place of new beginnings.
But the ways in which the community allow the person to be a part of life once again is a vital part of the process of bringing someone to new life - to continue to hold the past over someone’s head is, in a great sense, to deny the power of God to bring about that new life. To be able to look at someone in a new way is a sign of the power working within us
This passage is not just a quaint story about something that happened long ago; it is a story that shows us the very power of God. This is the God who created the heavens and the earth. This is the God who gave hope to the prophet Ezekiel by showing him a nation brought back to life. This is the power that can bring us, and our neighbours to a new experience and understanding of this creative and life changing power - a power that can turn mourning into dancing and weeping and sorrow into laughter and joy.
Let’s not stand in the way of our own healing, nor that of anyone else.
Amen!
Isaiah 50: 4-9
Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29
Philippians 2: 5-11
Matthew 21: 1-11
Have you ever watched one of those American morning shows, the ones with the segment filmed outside of the studio, with the cheering crowds in the background? The people who have planned to go that day sometimes have hand-made signs that are designed to make the cameras notice them. Five years ago, a friend and I went to New York City. We were walking along one day and we saw a stage and a crowd gathering in the Plaza outside one of the television studios. Being naturally curious Canadians, we asked what was going on and were told that Bonnie Raitt was going to be there for a taping for one of those early morning shows. I really didn’t have a clue who Bonnie Raitt was, but my friend did, so we stayed. When they aired the show, if you knew to look for the bright yellow shorts and top you would have seen me at the back of the crowd as the camera panned in our direction.
A few years ago I was talking to a proud grandmother. This Gramma told me her grandson was taking part in a “spectacle” at his school. Because it was en français , it sounded so much more elegant than a simple “school concert” which, while important to the family and friends, hardly merits coverage on The National with Peter Mansbridge. The National is the flagship news program of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Mansbridge its anchor
We have sometimes gotten the impression that this Palm Sunday Parade was like one of the parades we go to or see on TV with the heroes waving at the crowds. I read somewhere that the political leaders of Jerusalem would ride into the city at the time of Passover and you can bet it was with all the pomp and power they could muster!
Today, we see that Jesus rode with all the humility he could muster. Huuuuum! Jesus words and actions were different enough from what would have been expected that the differences merit our attention
At Passover time the city of Jerusalem would have been full of pilgrims and I am told that it would be close to “chaos” on the streets. You’ve been to “Town” on “Parade Day”, or on “Fireworks Night”. And that is NOTHING compared to this! No room to move. No place to stay. No parking (for your donkey - of course)
Even so, as much as we’d like to think it was, the “first and original” Palm Sunday Parade was probably a much more informal thing than we might have first imagined, with the participants being those who just “stopped to see what was going on and got caught up in the hype”. Perhaps most of the people shouting “Hosanna” (Which means “save us”) didn’t really know what was going on. Perhaps some DID see him as the conquering hero, as the only rightful king of their tiny nation.
When we think of Palm Sunday and its “glory, laud and honour” we must always remember that the hype of this day is connected to the tragedy of Good Friday. You can’t get a truly accurate picture of this “palm waving” event unless you know what follows it - which is the crucifixion. As I showed the children, its easy to turn that palm leaf into a cross. This story has to become “our story” or else it loses its power and meaning.
It is hard, if not impossible, to get “behind Easter” and tell the Holy Week story as if Good Friday were the end, the defeat of the “Jesus Movement”. Yet somehow during the week ahead we must stay in the moment and try to feel what those first disciples felt - when they did not know they would have a Good News story to tell afterward.
On Friday we will read those readings and extinguish candles to symbolize the darkness that came over those first followers when their hopes about Jesus appeared to be dashed.
When I hear of the people spreading palm branches or even cloaks on the ground in front of a king on a donkey I can’t help but think of the story I learned in elementary school about Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh. He is supposed to have put his coat on the ground in front of the Queen when they came upon a puddle - so that she would not get her feet wet or dirty. 500 years ago that is what a gentlemen did for a Royal, and 2000 years ago that is what people did for a king. Yet, as I have already said, this was a king with a difference.
In the week to come, those who cared to pay attention, would come to know just how different.
For the early church it was important that Jesus was the fulfilment of prophecy so they make sure to tell of the first passage that would have come to mind about the expected saviour king riding on a donkey. The writer of today’s gospel lesson saw Jesus in the books of Isaiah and Zechariah, quoting a couple of passages in order to tell the story. Notice though that even Zechariah saw this saviour king on a donkey; a beast of burden. Clearly Jesus, and this prophet, were thinking of earthly power in a way which was different from the norm . It was actually very different from King David, a man of great power.
If you had been there you would have been seeing him in the context of the celebration of the Passover; the old story of God acting to save the people from bondage in Egypt. This was the connection made by the early church. Jesus was the new Passover lamb.
Whether or not it was the same crowd who shouted “Hosanna” as the crowd that cried “Crucify Him” we will never know. What we are told is that this king who rode into the city in triumph died a common criminal, partially because everyone, even his closest followers had deserted him.
The story of Palm Sunday AND of the rest of Holy Week must become our story if the story of Easter is to become our story. (As I told the children) we have plenty of experience of friends being deserted when the going became a little difficult. We have hailed the coming of the one who was to make a difference and then when all of our expectations were not fulfilled in the ways and time-line that we had set, we withdrew our support and went looking for another.
Most people like to go to celebrations but avoid occasions where there might be conflict or struggle involved. But what we discover when we look at the story of Jesus from Palm Sunday to Good Friday and beyond is that God is also present in the conflict and the struggle; God is present in the hard times. We have no trouble seeing God in the joy, but unfortunately we forget to look around for God in the sadness and the pain and we miss out. The message of the Gospel is that God is present there too; and the message of the Gospel is that this is where God’s people are called to be and to minister too!
The Good News of God in Jesus isn’t just for the parades and the celebrations; it’s also for the tragedy and the tears - all the times of our lives. Thanks be to God. That’s not just show, that’s all substance.
Amen!