March 20, 2005 - Palm Sunday - Father Andrew Green

PROCESSIONAL
READING: Matthew 21: 1-11
FIRST READING: Isaiah 50: 4-9a
PSALM: 31: 9-16
SECOND READING: Philippians 2: 5-11
GOSPEL: Matthew 26:14 - 27:66

You may not know it, but this is an historic occasion. It is the first time in 17 years that you have had a sermon on Palm Sunday. We were talking about it, and Mother Stephanie and I were talking about it. She said, "But you preach on Good Friday". And I said, "Yeah". She said, "How many people come on Good Friday?" "125 or so". "How many people come on Palm Sunday?" "About 450." Case closed. But I did promise that I would try to be brief.

A lot of our energy this year around the Passion comes from experience that we have had as clergy with people and their thinking about what the Passion of Jesus is all about and why His crucifixion came about - things like the movie last year, The Passion of the Christ, which I might note has been re-released, and they have cut out some of the violence in it. We are concerned because we often hear from people who say things like, "Well, you know Jesus had to die on the cross, because that was what God wanted" - that it was God's intention that Jesus be tortured and killed on the cross. Well, I have to ask you - if you knew of a parent nearby who wanted for their child that they would be tortured and crucified and executed, you would call the cops, wouldn't you? That is no person whom you would want as a parent, and I don't believe it is fair for us to assume that our God is that kind of a God. I can't imagine worshiping that kind of a God.

I want to talk about three characters or kinds of characters that are in this Passion Gospel. The first ones are the bullies. There is not just one; there are several. You can identify the bullies, I think, fairly easily, can't you? I don't even know if you need to go back to memories of the playground during elementary school to figure out who the bullies are. We have some of these leaders who are so concerned about their own place and position and about not rocking the boat, that they will say anything, do anything, and destroy anything to get their way. Those leaders are bullies. There is another bully there. I think Peter is a bully, because bullies often don't have much behind what they want; they just make a lot of loud noise around it and are pushy. Peter actually bullied Paul, the apostle. He bullied the other apostles until God had to make a special appearance in a dream to Peter - we will read about it after Easter, with Cornelius the centurion and his family - and finally let Peter know that he had to knock this off. I think Peter was a bully.

The other folks that we have are victims, and victims are folks who the world kind of just runs over. Everything happens to them and tosses them into chaos, and their lives are shattered by literally everything. Who do you think are the victims, or is the victim, in this particular passage? I think Judas is a victim. I don't think Judas really is even a bully. I think he is someone who is overwhelmed by the events that have taken place, because even after he has turned Jesus in, he doesn't know what to do with himself. He has no idea of how to turn it about or where he can go for help or relief or anything, and so he goes and hangs himself.

And then there is the third character we have, and that is a servant. We have a servant who is trying to accomplish something, but not by bullying, not by having 12 legions of angels come to His aid and kick their ______. We have a servant, who comes onto the scene, and, with full knowledge, offers himself as a way of accomplishing the ends that God has in mind. First of all, what are the ends that God has in mind? God's end is that all of us would be reconciled to one another and to God, and that the whole world would be renewed by being in sync with God and God's divine purposes. That is God's intention, and the history of salvation has shown that people always found ways to mess it up - sometimes by ignorance, sometimes because they were pushed around by bullies, and sometimes because they just didn't understand. And so God sent Jesus, not to just go to the cross and die, He sent Jesus to change the world. He sent Jesus to transform and to change the way these things were done, so that the world could actually move toward being reconciled.

Now, I know another servant. I don't know if I have mentioned him before, but I know I wrote about him once. He was the godfather of the first child I ever baptized - Uncle Peter. Uncle Peter was the first firefighter on the scene at one of the towers of the World Trade Center. His team was the first into the building. Peter didn't make it out of the building. Was Peter a victim? Peter was a servant. Peter ran into a burning building to save people. He tried to get up the stairs in order to rescue as many people as he and the rest of the team could, knowing, as every firefighter knows, that there is a better than even chance that you won't make it out. But the purpose is that you may have to put yourself on the line to accomplish the task. We call that kind of servant something else. We often call them a hero. Servants who are willing to be vulnerable and are willing to allow power to be played out on them are transformers. Bullies, when the power goes away, have nothing left. Servants who work with vulnerability and allow the work of the world to be played out even on their person change lives. I know that that godchild and her family have a whole different way of understanding about what it means to be family from having Peter in their family.

As you reflect this week on the sacrifice that we are aiming for on Good Friday, remember that Good Friday - and somebody asked why they called it Good Friday; it is kind of an Americanization of God's Friday - it is the day on which Jesus gave himself freely, in full knowledge, as a healthy adult, as what he believed was the only way to accomplish God's purpose which was to transform the world. Remember that, and remember that, as those who follow Him, we are called to empty ourselves, as Jesus did, and, with great humility, become servants - servants of the people we like, servants of the people we don't like - and, often, we end up even being servants to change bullies. That's our calling as Christians. It is not about being victims. It is about being vulnerable and about being servants who will literally change the world with God's help.

AMEN