Passion - My Sermon from the Duke Youth Academy

PASSION

A church down south was hosting a passion play during Lent several years ago. The director wanted it to be powerful and dramatic,realistic and haunting –sort of a Passion of the Christ before Mel Gibson had thought to do it.

And he had succeeded.It was as graphic and gruesome as any stage production can be.The audience watched in silent horror as the good-looking young man chosen to play Jesus appeared to be beaten, battered, and bloodied before them.

The sense of anguish in the room was palpable. When the actor sighed from the cross, “it is finished,” and bowed his head,one particular woman in the audience rushed up on stage,with heavy tears falling from her eyes.

You see, she had never heard the story before. And so, when the handsome young Jesus appeared to die, she ran up on stage, grabbed the actor’s feet,and through her unrestrained tears,wailed to him and to the congregation, "He can’t have died. A man this good cannot have died like this. Jesus cannot be dead!”

Now, the woman playing Mary the mother of Jesus,in an effort to comfort the nearly hysterical woman, blurted out, “oh, it’s okay, honey; he don’t stay that way for long!”

It is tempting to say that, isn’t it?         

We stare at the cross … 
We behold Christ’s suffering ... 
and just when we feel tears start to burn tracks down our faces, we say to ourselves: “oh, it’s okay, honey!” It’s tempting …

And not just for us as individuals … but for the church as a whole.

The Oberammergau Passion Play … one of the oldest and perhaps the most famous passion play in the world … has announced that they are shifting their focus away from the Passion  … more to the teachings of Jesus, … more Resurrection, less Crucifixion! Why? The Passion is too hard.

Here in our churches, more often than not, we skip from Palm Sunday to Easter,leap from “Hosanna” to “Alleluia,”parade from celebration to celebration with perhaps a nod in the direction of Calvary – but only a nod.

The first Good Friday service I ever preached, I walked into the church that Friday night, and there was a bunny on the altar and jelly beans and Easter grass lining the chancel rail.

“It’s okay, honey; he don’t stay that way for long.”

But, the judgment of Lamentations thunders over us: "Is it nothing to you, all who pass by?”

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But, you … you have spent a day lingering, refusing to rush ahead; you have stayed this day beneath the cross of Jesus.

You have taken your place – next to His Mother and Her sister. Next to His friend John. Next to Mary Magdalene. Next to Mary the wife of Clopas. There you are. Beneath the cross.

Your theme for this day, Passion, gives all of us the chance to pause, and to let Christ’s Passion fill our imaginations -- to let the sounds and sights and smells of a Friday in ancient Palestine fill our senses this day and this night -- to let it have its way with us.

Passion invites us into an upper room,

as Jesus takes bread, blesses and breaks it, and calls it his Body.

Passion invites us to a Garden to eavesdrop

As, through tears of blood, he prays for another way.

Passion invites us to hear

the steady dirge of soldier footfall

down the garden path.

            Passion invites us to feel the lips of Judas touch our own cheeks.

            Passion invites us to fear

in the ruckus that ensues as Jesus is arrested and

                                    Peter strikes back.

Passion invites us to chase after

as our Lord is drug

from palace to courtroom to palace to courtyard.

Passion invites us to watch

as disciples betray by abandoning,

and betray by deceiving.

Passion invites us to behold our Lord

interrogated and condemned

by the testimony of false witnesses against him.

Passion invites us to hear the judgment of the Roman governor

and then to feel the splash of water as Pilate washes his hands of Jesus.

Passion invites us to watch

as Christ trudges under the weight of the cross to Calvary.

Passion invites us to hear the thud of hammers,

the crack of bone, the squish of flesh,

the scream of agony.

Passion invites us to hold his mother

and cry with her as she watches her baby struggle for breath,

as she sings once again

that sweet lullaby she once sang to put him to bed at night.

           

            Passion invites us to see a spear be thrust in his side,

                        And to feel the spray of water and blood from his heart.

Passion demands we not avert our gaze from his suffering,

            “for he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.”

God – who was as near to us in Christ as God was in the Garden at the beginning –

            now retreats from us a bit more with each labored, dying breath.

                        Passion invites us to feel the absence of God in the world.

                                    (which, incidentally, is why we don’t come to the Table tonight …

In the place where we celebrate Christ’s real presence, Passion invites us to know the real absence of Christ in our midst.)

Beneath the cross of Jesus, it is not okay, honey.

The world has gone mad.

                        The earth trembles at what is happening.

Darkness closes in.

For this day, death reigns.

                                                            Hope is destroyed.

                                                                        Love is murdered.

                                                                                    God dies.

Good Lord, no wonder we hurry on by.

            No wonder we rush toward Easter –

                        When angels comfort, stones move, tombs are empty.

On Sunday, we are surrounded by bunnies and bonnets and baskets

and each in their own way reassures: “It’s okay, honey.”

But, today, on this Friday, beneath the cross of Jesus,

            It’s not okay … not just yet.

                        For tonight, the words of Charles Wesley come to mind –

                                    “’tis mystery all! th’Immortal dies.

Who can explain his strange design?”[1]

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Which makes me ask …

Why would anyone...why would anyone choose to linger beneath the cross of Jesus? Why, on a Friday night in June in Durham, North Carolina, would we come to the cross? Most Friday nights on this campus, the cross is the last place people stop. So, why would we?

There is only one reason to take our place here,

            To sit and wait and watch, to feel the Passion in its fullness,

                        To enter into the suffering of the Master,

                                    To feel the dis-ease that comes from knowing that God could suffer like this.

Love. As the thirteenth century mystic said, “love is the hammer that nails us to the cross.”[2]

It is love that makes us come to the cross, and it is love that makes us stay here.

            Friends, we come and linger because here we behold the love of God.

                        Here, we experience the depth of divine compassion.

                                    Here, we meet the Lord who says to Julian of Norwich,

                                                “If I could have suffered more, I would have suffered more.”

“If I could have died once for each, I would have died once for each.”

            And here, from the foot of the cross, from this vantage,

in response to His Suffering and in response to His Love,

                                    we can turn back to the world and its suffering –

                                                and risk loving our neighbor by entering their suffering, too.

                                                We can risk stretching out our arms

                                                            To embrace the world that Christ died to save.

                                                           

            Friends, if we just rushed ahead …

                        If we just nodded in this direction …

                                    If we hurried on toward Sunday as if Friday never happened …

                                                How would we ever learn to love?

            For tonight, it’s not okay just yet, honey.

                        But, I have a feeling …

                                    That if this suffering can teach us to love,

                                                That Love itself can raise the dead. Amen.     

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[1] Charles Wesley, “And Can it Be?,” UMH 363.

[2] Bishop Porter Taylor, Diocese of Western North Carolina, sermon for Good Friday.

Palm Sunday Sermon at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate, Chapel Hill, NC

The Questions With Which We Wrestle (Mark 11.1-11)

Tolstoy is quoted as saying that “Certain questions are put to human-kind not that we should answer them, but that we should forever wrestle with them.”[1]

This Holy Week confronts us with questions that cannot be answered or answered cavalierly; it confronts us with questions that demand our wrestling, our struggle – and not just our cerebral struggle, not just intellectual sparring but the struggle of the soul, the wrestling with whose and what we really are. Holy Week is Lent condensed; Holy Week is sort of like the final exam for Lent – the week when all of the self-examination we have done, when all the penitence we have made, when all the sacrifice we have endured is held beneath a cross, and all our Lenten preparing pales in comparison to the dying One who hangs on that tree. This is the week of soul-struggle. This is the week when the questions we wrestle with get louder and more focused. Day-after-day in this holy week, new questions are put to us, and we have no choice but to wrestle.

It begins today with the apparent but not easy question – what parade do we pay attention to?

The American Biblical scholar Marcus Borg tells us that there are two parades that enter Jerusalem on Sunday. On the one hand, from the east, there is the 2-mile pilgrimage procession into Jerusalem from Bethany and Bethpage, past the Mount of Olives. This is Jesus’ route. This parade begins with Jesus on the cloak-covered back of a borrowed colt. Among the pilgrims making their way into Jerusalem for Passover, there he rides. And the people respond. They spread cloaks on the road. Cut branches from trees and lay them in his path, and they raise the historic, the prophetic shout: Hosanna! Blessed is He! And Jesus rides on.

There was another parade entering Jerusalem that day. If Jesus and the pilgrims were entering from the east, there was a parade entering from the west. It was the military parade of Pilate and his legions, entering the city after a march from the coast to secure it during the Passover festivities. You remember that Pilate is on borrowed time. There have been uprisings during his tenure, the kinds of uprisings that get you noticed in Rome and not in a good way if you’re the governor. One more uprising. One more disturbance. So, Pilate is fearful. There will be no uprising in Jerusalem during Passover. And, as Hal Knight notes, if there was a triumphant entry into the city on Palm Sunday, it was not Jesus’ but Pilate’s procession.

Two simultaneous parades into the city, and yet, for us, an obvious but not easy question – which parade do we pay attention to? In our own life and work, which procession takes precedence? Which is more meaningful? More impacting? Is it the parade of the humble Savior? Or is it the parade of power? Is it the parade of the 99% or the parade of the 1? For us, there is no simple answer. For us, there is only struggle; there is only the work it takes to figure it out. There are certain questions human-kind cannot answer but that we are given to wrestle with forever. Which parade matters most?

A second question follows --- How is it that humanity can cheer Jesus on Sunday with words and palms of peace and then jeer him on Friday with violence in their hearts and on their minds? How can it be?

It is too simple to say that the crowd that greeted Jesus on Sunday with “Hosanna” on their lips was the same crowd that booed him, that leered at him, that jeered at him, that chose Barabbas over him. It is too simple, and historically, it’s debatable. We don’t know for sure that it was the same crowd there on Sunday, there on Friday.

What we do know is that the two sides of humanity make an appearance. On Sunday, we have the optimistic, hopeful side of humanity; we have the hurting crying for healing and the attentive seeing and seeking God in their midst. On Friday, though, we have the jaded side, the brokenhearted, the power-hungry, the jealous, the wounded, the hurting who see no possibility of healing, the conniving clamoring for crucifixion.

Now, for those of us who have been chastened by life, who have been humbled by heartache and who have been bashed by betrayal … for all of us who have grown cynical, Sunday is a challenge to that. Don’t give up. People see God and people seek God still. They will spread their garments before him. They will give their colt to his service. Don’t give up hope. For all of us who are war-weary, the crowd waves palms of peace and welcomes a different kind of king to take his throne.  On Sunday, a different kind of kingdom happens in our midst.

But, for all of us who want to be hopeful, who want to be optimistic about the future, who want to talk only about the good in humanity, Friday is a challenge to that. Friday sobers us to dark reality. Friday reminds us that we have the capacity as human beings to turn our back on God, to reject grace and deny what is good.  For all of us who seek peace, Friday makes clear our love for and reliance upon violence. 

Carl Sandberg once described himself as having an eagle within that wants to soar and a hippopotamus within that wants to wallow in mud. There is within us Sunday and Friday.  

And so we must wrestle – how is it that humans can cheer and jeer in the same week? How is it that we can seek the things for peace even as we plot violence? This is the week for our soul’s struggle – will we belong to Sunday or will we belong to Friday? “Certain questions are put to humankind not for us to answer, but so that we might forever wrestle with them.”

I like what David Whyte says. “[There are] questions that can make or unmake a life, questions that [ wait ] for you, questions that have no right to go away.”

If we listen, this week will pose them. Not that we might answer. But that we might struggle, and like Jacob, in our wrestling, find that there is blessing. Amen.

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[1] Quoted in William Sloane Coffin, “The Things that Make For Peace,” in The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Volume I. p. 65