Reflections from Passion Sunday

From Triumph to Despair
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church in Fremont, California,
via Zoom on April 5, 2020, by the Rev. Brenda Loreman.
Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11
Copyright © 2020 by Brenda Loreman

 

My guess is that you’ve seen a triumphant military parade in your lifetime. Even if it wasn’t live and in-person, maybe it was in a movie, or on the news, or on the History Channel. Any military parade has similar qualities, doesn’t it? There are troops in uniform, marching in formation. There are shiny weapons of the latest design, and military vehicles with flags flying. There are generals dressed in their finery, with their chests covered in medals and commendations. Often, there is a band, and military music.

With this model in mind, Jesus gets it all wrong. No vehicles, no uniforms, no weapons, or music or medals. Just Jesus, on a donkey, surrounded by a raggedy band of followers shouting, “hosanna,” which means “save us.” Instead of riding into town on a tank, Jesus rides in on a tractor.

This is important to pay attention to. Because from the other direction, Pontius Pilate was leading his own parade, this one a military procession into the city, reminding everyone during this Passover week that it was the Roman Empire that ruled their lives, and that any unrest during Passover will not be tolerated. Knowing this, it sets up a note of dissonance in the festival atmosphere of Jesus’s parade into Jerusalem.

This dissonance will grow stronger the further we get into Holy Week. The leaders of the temple, whose job it is to keep the peace among the faithful during the holy feast, will grow suspicious and fearful of Jesus. The people will turn against him. Rome will move swiftly to suppress any hint of rebellion. The week moves quickly from triumph, to turmoil, to betrayal, and to despair.

It’s easy for us to want to stay in the atmosphere of the triumphal parade. We want to move quickly form the palms and shouts of Hosanna to the joyful strains of resurrection on Easter. But that resurrection has no impact on our lives without us moving through the betrayal and despair of Holy Week. Especially now, when we are feeling so uncertain and fearful, when our lives are full of disorder and the grief over our lost lifestyles and relationships and our sense of “life as we know it,” we must confront the turmoil of Holy Week and meet it face-to-face. We must acknowledge our grief and loss so that we may receive the gift of hope and the promise of new life on Easter morning.

Jesus himself knew this. And so with him as our guide, we follow him into the shadows of grief and despair, trusting him to lead us through it all with the only weapon he ever traveled with: the power of his love.

 

 

Reflections on Good Friday
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church in Fremont, California,
via Zoom on April 5, 2020, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Matthew 27:27-31, 38-54
Copyright © 2020 by Jeffrey S. Spencer

 

Without a doubt, one of the most raw and heartbreaking lines in the stories of Jesus is one we heard in the last reading:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  I can’t fully imagine the agony of a Roman execution.  I can only guess at the physical pain, and no gospel writer fully expresses that pain.  Rather, the pain that is expressed is emotional pain, the pain of abandonment.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Are these words of reproach or words of pleading?  Perhaps both.  Perhaps Jesus, in his anguish, is both scolding God and seeking some comfort, some solace.

The stories that most break my heart coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic are the stories of people dying alone.  They are alone out of medical necessity.  Both hospitals here in Fremont have a strict “no visitors” policies in place.  No visitors for anyone, whether the patient has tested positive for the novel coronavirus or not.  My heart breaks for the families who cannot be with their loved one.  And my heart breaks at the loneliness I imagine the dying person might feel.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I understand what I need to do.  What we need to do.  My hands are raw from the washing.  I’m trying to figure out how to make a homemade mask to wear to the grocery store.  I go out for a walk and step into the street when someone approaches me from the other direction to maintain that physical distance.  I understand what I need to do, and I do it.  And I wonder how this pandemic will unfold.  I wonder what else we may be called to do for the sake of the whole community.  I wonder what else I may be called to do.

I think about the Christians in the 3rd century who, when a plague nearly wiped out the Roman Empire, became known for performing unsolicited acts of compassion and self-sacrifice.[1]  Will we be called to a self-sacrificial compassion?  And if we are, will we rise to the call?  Or will we be like the 14th century Christians who, when plague threatened Strasbourg, “rounded up the city’s Jewish people, accusing them of poisoning the Christians’ wells, demanded that they convert on the spot, and burned about 1,000 of them alive.”[2]

We began Lent on Ash Wednesday with a reminder of our mortality.  “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  We end Lent with Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the days when we allow the reality of death, revealed in the death of Jesus, to confront us.  I can’t help but wonder if Good Friday and these weeks of sheltering in place might not confront us with our own mortality in a deeper way than Good Friday does most years, stripping us bear of all pretenses, revealing who we really are in a more profound and healing way.

Amen.

[1] Elizabeth Palmer, “Thinking about Good Friday during a pandemic,” The Christian Century, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/thinking-about-good-friday-during-pandemic (posted and accessed 30 March 2020).

[2] Ibid.