A17 Passion Sunday

Homily for

The Sunday of the Passion

Sunday 2 April 2017

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

A Parish of the Diocese of Bethlehem and The Episcopal Church

Readings:

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/HolyWk/APalmSun_RCL.html

Today’s readings give us a foretaste of what we are about to experience throughout the remainder of the week.  We have commemorated today the triumphant entry of our Lord into Jerusalem.  We have witnessed once more the crowds greeting Christ as a victorious king, a servant of the people and of God.  Today’s liturgy begins on the highest of highs.

And then we heard the Passion Gospel from Matthew’s Gospel.  I am always amazed at how quickly the people turn from shouts of joy and victory to cries of violence and condemnation, all of which is targeted at Jesus of Nazareth.  It hardly seems possible that the same people could change so quickly.  And yet they do.  And the effect of it is that by the end of this liturgy we have gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

Throughout this coming week, we will walk through this change and the development of the Passion.  The good news is that as this is hardly the first time that we who are the Church have walked through this Passion, we know how the story fully develops.  Even on this Sunday of the Passion we celebrate the Resurrection, which we shall celebrate with great joy once more at the conclusion of this holiest of all weeks in the year.  If Christ were not risen from the dead and truly victorious in a way that the crowd that waived palm branches at the entry of Our Lord into the Holy City, there would be no point in commemorating all these things that we have heard and will hear in days to come.  Truthfully, it would be more than we could stomach to ponder on these things, for without the resurrection, this is merely defeat.

But this is not defeat.  Christ is victorious.  He is the conqueror who fights our battle against sin and death, who wins not for himself but for us.  With that in mind, dear friends, I invite you and encourage you to fully jump into the celebrations of this week.  Don’t avoid the messiness of this week.  Plunge into it and feel again the emotions of this Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and know that all of these things Christ endures because of his great love for us whom he has chosen to call his friends for whom he is willing to lay down his life, to take it up again, and to share it with us and the whole world.

Why is it so important to jump into the messiness of this week?  Let me remind you, friends, of the saying, “You get out of something what you put into it.”  If you avoid everything between now and the Great Vigil when we shall once again shout with joy, it will be a cheaper experience of the Resurrection than if we all walk with Christ on the way of the cross and to the empty tomb in which we encounter our Lord and God who cannot be held captive to anything, not even sin and death, not even the fickle attitudes of crowds who one day shout “Hosanna” and days later cry out “Crucify him!”

Come, let us walk with Jesus each day this week, anticipating a greater joy in the celebration of the Resurrection than we can envision or put into words on this day.

Father

Timothy

Alleman