Palm Sunday

Next Sunday we begin Holy Week with the remembrance of Christ's entrance into Jerusalem and read of his passion. It is an emotional Sunday. Here is a sermon I wrote in 1999 that looks at this emotional roller coaster and connects it with the times in our lives that we have felt lost and forsaken.

Passion/Palm Sunday

March 28, 1999

Passion According to St. Matthew

St. Alban’s, Brentwood, CA

The Rev. Valerie A. Valle

         What an emotional roller coaster this Sunday is. We move from the emotional high and joy of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem to his death on the cross in less than an hour. What an emotional roller coaster it was for Jesus’ followers during that week of the Passover so many years ago. The service this morning is designed to encourage us to feel these emotions, to get a taste of the experience of that fateful week. We are asked to speak the words that represent so much of the story.

We cheer, “Hosanna in the highest”

And quickly, before we know it, we shout “Let him be crucified!”

We mock “He saved others; he cannot save himself”

and we speak those words from the psalm “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”

         Let us think about this incredible week from the perspective of Jesus’ followers. What a high, what a rush it must have been for them when Jesus was welcomed to Jerusalem. All Jesus’ talk of death must have been easily forgotten in all the excitement. Finally he was being acknowledged. Finally all the wandering and sacrificing was coming to fruition. Finally he was being hailed as the savior, as the new king, everything was going to be wonderful from now on. Such joy they must have felt. Such confidence in God. Such a sense that everything was fine now and would always be fine. A joy that they were sure would last forever. A total faith in this man who was being celebrated. There were no doubts then, no questions, no fear, just unbridled joy.

         Most of us have felt like that at some point in our spiritual lives. Perhaps after we first were introduced to Christ, or came back to the church. Perhaps during or after a spiritual retreat, where we felt Christ’s presence so clearly, so totally, that all the questions were gone. Perhaps after having a particularly profound personal experience where we knew, we knew deep in our hearts, that Christ was there with us. At such times there is a deep joy. Not the sort of superficial joy that we might get when things go right in our lives, but a deep joyousness that wells up from the depths of our beings. A joyousness that fills our lives. A joy that makes us want to shout “Thank You.” A joy that burst from us in songs of praise. When we feel this, when we experience this, we feel that it will never end. We feel a sureness in our faith, and unquestioning confidence in the truth of our Lord. And we really feel that this will never end, that finally we have found the answer, that all our questions all our doubts have been swept away. We sing Hosanna, Hosanna in our hearts and feel that if we did not sing it, the very rocks would shout out.

         But that high, that spiritual high, does not last forever. The spiritual journey is not that simple, that straight forward. We discover that we must come down from the mountain top. And sometimes the climb down is steep, as it was for Jesus’ disciples. In less than a week, everything had changed. What should have been a triumphant conclusion to the story, quickly turned to tragedy. The hopes and dreams that had been put on the carpenter from Nazareth were being shattered at an alarming rate. And the followers self concepts were also being shattered. All that is the worst in human beings was coming up.

         Betrayal. With the news about Judas, the others must have though, “How could one of us betray him? Could I have betrayed him?” 

         Cowardice. All the disciples fled and hid. No one stayed and stood beside him. What had happened to the fearlessness they had felt just a few days before when the crowds were on their side?

         Denial. Peter, his closest disciple, denies he even knew him. “Would I have denied him if I were in Peter’s position?”

         Hatred. “How could the same crowd that had cheered him as messiah now be calling for his death?” “Do I have inside me the hidden hatred that could want to see someone dead?”

         Arrogance. Did Pilate really think he could wash his hands of this choice? Jesus’ followers must have wondered whether they too might have had some responsibility that they wanted to deny.

         Cruelty. Mocking a dying man. Mocking a gentle man dying in great agony. The worst of human cruelty emerged that day, that horrible and dark day.

         And hopelessness. That stark cry “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” The anguish of feeling forsaken by God. Jesus spoke not just for himself, but undoubtedly echoed the feelings of his followers. They had lost their leader, they had lost their dreams, they had lost their hope, they too felt forsaken by God.

         And what of us? What of our spiritual journeys? Most of us, I believe, have known all of those emotions. What happens when we no longer feel the presence of God? What happens inside us when we are no longer on the mountain top, praising God, but find ourselves suddenly in the valley?

         We have known betrayal. Most of us have felt betrayed at some point in our lives, sometimes by a close friend or relative. And, when we look at ourselves honestly, we have betrayed others, or certainly betrayed God when we have not acted as we know we could have.

         Cowardice. We all know cowardice. We all have experienced the horrible feeling of knowing that we have not stood with a friend in need. We all have wondered inside if we would have the courage that we read about in the saints who were willing to die for their beliefs, and, if you are like me, you suspect that you would have run away when the soldiers came.

         We have known denial. Who among us has not at some point chosen not to acknowledge their Christian beliefs because it would be too uncomfortable? The story of Peter’s denial lives on so clearly because we can all identify with it. We all know what it is like to take the easy way out.

         Hatred. We all like to believe that we are beyond hatred. That we would not be among the crowd yelling crucify him. But are we? I’m not sure about myself. If someone hurt or killed one of my children, would my broken heart cry out to have him killed? Is it that hard for us to assent to capital punishment when the crime is particularly ghastly? Who among us could be sure that with the right provocation we would not know hatred?

         Arrogance. If we can deny that we would know hatred, we certainly have to accept that we have all felt arrogant. In fact we even use our religiosity to feel better than others. I’m not like them, I’m purer, holier, more in tune with God. Arrogance, that we can wash our hands of what is happening around us, that we can deny responsibility for the acts of the crowd, as if we were not part of the crowd. As if we had done all in our power to stop it. We indeed can easily fall into arrogance, washing our hands of all the pain and suffering around us. Oh, yes, we do know arrogance.

         Cruelty. We hope and pray that we are not cruel, but sometimes our cruelty comes out. Every now and then we find ourselves saying or doing something that we know to be cruel. We find ourselves caught up in the crowd, in the teasing, in the mocking. We have all known cruelty.

         And finally hopelessness. We can easily identify with the ring of those words, those powerfully mournful words “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” We sometimes find ourselves unable to experience the presence of God. We discover that somehow we are no longer on the mountain top with God, but deep in a crevasse where we are unable to find God. Perhaps we find ourselves there because of grief, the loss of a loved one, of a job, of a position. Perhaps we find ourselves there because of illness. Perhaps there is nothing different in the outside world, but something has happened inside us, and we cannot find God. That joy, that love, that peace that we felt not so long ago is but a memory and we begin to wonder if it had been real at all. We all go through on our spiritual journeys times of hopelessness, times when we feel forsaken by God. The writer of the psalm, felt it, felt it so strongly that he was able to express it eloquently. Even Jesus felt it, Jesus who had lived his life fully in the presence of God, felt it gone, felt forsaken, felt that anguish.

         When we are deep in the experience of God’s presence it is hard to imagine or remember when we didn’t feel that wonderful love surrounding us. And when we feel forsaken, when it has gone away, it is hard to imagine or remember what it felt like to know God’s presence. We have all felt at times forsaken, hopeless. We have all had times when our hearts have cried out “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

         We have all known times when even that is too much for our hearts to say, and all we can express is a deep and painful question “Why?”

         And sometimes we are left in the dark stillness of that question - waiting.

         Waiting for the first sliver of sunrise. Waiting for the dawn.  Waiting for the resurrection that transforms the darkness into light and our sorrow into joy. Waiting to know, to really know that even in the darkest tomb, in the most forsaken moment, God is still present and working.