Palms and Passion

What is your passion? What is  one thing that you love to do, that you would do anyway if no one was paying or looking ?  The thing that you do with zest and joy and focus ? For each of us the answer is necessarily different, although people do share passions. Sports for example, or antique collecting or video games. There  are whole subcultures devoted to the passionate pursuit of  golf  or gardening or biking or baking. With the development of the internet,  its much easier to connect with fellow fans world wide.  

Passion’s power is that it taps into the emotional centers of our brains, sometimes in unexpected and unpredictable ways. When our passion is directed toward a person , it can be even more moving, exciting. When  persons  fall in love with  each other it seems there is  an irresistible force that comes into play. It cannot be felt by outsiders, only observed, with a knowing smile by those who have themselves  been hit by cupid’s arrow.  This strong desire and  love  is like a force field, moving one toward the beloved person.   Romantic passion overtakes us, moves us, delights us and motivates us to go beyond ourselves in  some mysterious, glorious,  fulfilling way. 

 Today, Palm Sunday is a day of high passion. Pun intended, because it is also, traditionally, Passion Sunday. A day in which the church has blessed palms and also read the story of Christ’s passion, the last hours of his life until his death. A day to wave branches and jump with exuberance  that the Messiah is coming. And also a day when  the mind  wanders ahead, to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, those days when the story turns dark and difficult. And so we must hold these two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time:  The one who is blessed because he comes in the name of the Lord, is the One who will come to a bitter end and  then that very same one  will be  raised to new joy. 

Like life itself, this story of Palm and Passion Sunday is  bitter sweet. This fits in quite well with the Hebrew culture into which Jesus was born and raised, which is recapitulated  at the Seder meal which the Jewish people will gather for tomorrow evening. This meal remembers the Hebrews flight from  Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land. It evokes a number of symbols of incompleteness and distress, just as it says that their  march was aimed toward freedom and justice.  At the  Seder it is customary to dip sweet herbs  in salt water and then eat horseradish  in a matzo sandwich.   Sweet and sour. Mixed bag. Up and down. Sorrow and joy.

We Christians have our own bittersweet symbol:  The cross.   A place of  incalculable suffering and pain, and incalculable victory  and  joy.   It seems that in our faith, we cannot have one without the other. 

For the early disciples, the cross was a source of confusion and questions. How was it that the one they knew as teacher and prophet could end so terribly shamefully as a criminal ? They  had no clear answer but in combing through their Hebrew  scriptures they began to see a theme of sacrifice and offering. Enmeshed as they were in the Jewish practice of  blood sacrifice at the Temple, they began to talk about Jesus in that way, the lamb who was slain.  Much of our language of the cross as a  blood offering to God, comes from this era. It is not a language that is easy to understand and it can even repel us. Many of us have  asked, Why did  Jesus have to suffer such a gruesome  death ?  Or what kind of God would demand such an end for  God’s  beloved?   It is often when we are dwelling on these terrible details that we are reflecting the language of blood sacrifice so prominent in ancient time,

Later, in the Middle Ages, this sacrificial language was taken up by theologians who looked to the Roman empire’s legal traditions for answers to these same questions. One theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, in the 11^th  century , elaborated the theory that the weight of human sin demanded that God send one to make up the difference so that humans could be reconciled  with God. Human sin is so heavy that only God can lift it. So it was necessary for Jesus-the God human-- to die so that the greatness of our sin would be equaled by the death of someone great enough to carry it.  In this theory, the Cross of Jesus is reduced to a transactional payment for a debt we cannot meet on our own. A legalistic formula for a legalistic time, and mindset.

In later, more modern times, the cross of Christ has come to be an example of self- giving love and a model for us of self sacrifice, and devotion to others.

Many martyrs and social activists have found in this version their inspiration for courageous acts in the face of oppression and injustice. We seem to understand instinctively that this model can help those who are working for social good, for Christ on the cross is laboring for a new world where there is ultimate value of giving of one self for a greater good. A Dietrich Bonhoeffer kind of love which provides ultimate meaning for one who is pressed to the limit by the forces of evil, as Bonhoeffer was by the Nazis who killed him, just before the end of World War II.  

One negative aspect of some of these cross theologies, is that they can be used to justify oppression, by those in power.  So when suffering occurs, reference to the cross is made:  It is just their cross to carry. A terrible distortion of course. 

Why this short history lesson?  It does help, I think,  to know the context, and  understand the culture which nurtured certain theological theories.  And to keep in mind that each of these descriptions of the cross are effective to a certain extent. Sometimes we might feel that we want to offer something back to God, in regret for sinful acts.  Then we can understand something about the cross as sacrificial offering. At other times, when we are aware, deeply aware of our own shortcomings, the idea that the free gift of grace is given through  Christ’s death can be very freeing. Then we have connected to that idea of the cross as taking away our sin. And when we remember Jesus gift of self, and we want to emulate him, we have connected to that version.  So there are at least these three traditional ways of understanding the meaning of the cross.   This is a blessing, by the way, of being a non creedal church.

For we live into one or another or these meanings without being wed any one of them and free to explore others as well. 

 As we continue to probe into the historical and cultural context, we are still faced with  a question: what is Christianity  without the cross ? What sense would it make if Christ had died in bed surrounded by loved ones, a serene, non -violent death ? Would it speak to us, a Christian faith without a cross ?

Put differently, would it speak to us if the Messiah as he was proclaimed on this festive day of palms, upon  entry into Jerusalem, became a political leader who rallied the troops  against the roman empire,  won the battle and brought in the reign of God ? How would it be if  the story  had ended  there and then in triumph? 

Its not as if we don’t want it that way: we do. I do. This in- between time is taking too long ! When is the Reign of God going to be inaugurated?   It seems we have waited too long.

Today Palm Sunday, we want it, we taste it. Its almost here  !  Raise your voices, wave branches and palms, shout out stones and animals and people. Its time ! We are ready !

But this faith of ours doesn’t seem to work that way.

Instead of the longed for wish fulfillment we get a different kind of God,  a different kind of answer.  A last meal with friends that will bond them eternally. A night of praying that it would be other wise. Then  a   betrayal by  one disciple ,  which would lead to a painful death on a cross. The grief of a few who stood by loyally and the indifference of many who did not understand. And then three days later, an unexpected new beginning.  

If we don’t adhere to some of these earlier theological theories of why Jesus died, what then can we say ? Can this cross still speak ? 

Perhaps the continued resonance and meaning of the cross for our lives joins our experience of passion. This very experience we have of being drawn in, devoted, focused, being passionate about some one or some  thing can  tell us something about  the Holy One.

Our passions seem to be built into who we are, and seem to come unbidden, or be awakened, in mysterious ways. Once we surrender to our passion, be it love for another, or love of a particular object or goal,  we will do just about anything to fulfill our desire.  Maybe this gives us a hint, about how God loves us—passionately. And God would do anything to show the depth of love, even being willing to risk joining humans in earthly life. In this person of Jesus, God was willing to take on all the powers that would thwart this love.   God is passionate about humans to the point of going to the cross, and  to the point of joining us in our earthly  experience and taking up our  lives into God’s life. To the point of dying with us as we die,  suffering as we suffer, and being with us in our experience as it is, a fully human experience. God's passion is to love us fully to the end of our lives and beyond. And that in a sense, God’s willingness is like our own, mysterious, emotional, non -negotiable. 

The palms we raise, the branches we shake, our cries of happiness, our voices loud and full: we sing out to  our God  who is with us at the high moments and the low. To a God who wills to suffer with us this human life, so that we will know that even, and perhaps most especially,  in the parts of life that are too hard to bear, we are not alone.   To our God who walks with us through this holy week:  in partnership at the table, in agony in the garden, in physical solidarity with all whose bodies hurt, in connection with all who have been unfairly treated and betrayed.   This is the one we laud today, one who knows anguish and takes us  beyond it to new life.  Palms and passion!  Raise high and celebrate the  One who lives passionately through to the end, and beyond. Amen