Palm/Passion Sunday 2013

Palm/Passion Sunday 2013

In the physics of cartoons, a character will remain indefinitely suspended in open space after walking from a cliff or other precipice given that they do not look down…

So, for instance, Wile E. Coyote can run off of a cliff following the Roadrunner, but will not fall until he has realized what has happened. In an instant, with a forlorn look at the audience, and an understated “oops” sign, the Coyote goes whistling to the desert floor to impact with a mushroom cloud of dust.

As ridiculous as this is, I think that we could agree that there are a number of people in the world who feel that people of faith engage their lives in much this same way.

There is this sense that many of us walk through life with our heads in the clouds—and regardless of the circumstance always have some theological apologetic for why things happen, whether good or ill.

So when good things happen, we can easily attribute them to divine care and providence (which isn’t a terrible thing).

However, when things go bad—and bad things do happen—there is an equal assumption that we will either never look down—and therefore never fall; or if we do look down, we will naturally succumb to gravity and go whistling to the ground just like the Coyote…

 It’s a pretty cynical view, I know, but there might be some truth to the accusation. After all, for as many people we might know who are cynical about faith, there are probably just as many who engage their faith in the same way they might any powerful pain reliever.

And with popular Evangelical preachers like Joel Osteen promising that if we just believe hard enough, things will never get tough…well, it makes reality something that people need to continually reframe so their faith can make sense.

The trouble with all of this, of course, is that none of it actually reflects the Gospel message in the least; and our liturgy today is proof of this.

We begin the service by blessing palms, and enacting that joyous moment when Jesus entered Jerusalem. It was a scene that not only held tremendous cultural relevance for the people at that time, but it also makes what happens next in our liturgy a shocking counterpoint to the celebration. Suddenly we’re moved from excitement to tragedy as the tone of the liturgy changes with the Passion story.

But this is the way that we begin Holy Week—this time where we focus-in on that final week of Jesus’ life. The various liturgies in this week, then continue to recall parts of the story. We’re not allowed to jump right into Easter, because Easter, as we know, came only after pain and suffering—and over the next seven days, the Church is invited to inhabit that fact for a while.

This is the way the Church looks down…  

 We dwell with these stories in Holy Week not because we’re into compunction, but because we know that the story of Christ’s suffering is the story of all suffering. In his victimhood, we find all victimhood, and in his pain we try our best to make sense of the pain in the world. And to ignore this would be to ignore all that we endure, and all those places in life that aren’t made complete as the risen Christ is made complete.

Holy Week is about humanity. Holy Week is our wake-up call to the stark reality that the Gospel never shies away from the hard places in life—instead, the Gospel subsumes those things, and through Christ’s own suffering gives them meaning—and more importantly, gives us hope.

What we should realize in this is that our faith is not unfounded—we’re not victims of some hoax to make us float through life unharmed. Instead, we’ve been given a message of hope rooted in the midst of brutal reality. And in an odd way, we should take some comfort in this as well. Because just as we’ve been told in the letter to the Hebrews: “We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness,” and this is the very reason that we should find validation for our faith—because it is invested in one who knows the world’s suffering and unbelief intimately.

 As for those who choose to ignore this aspect of our faith—those who would rather walk with their heads in the clouds; well, I think they’re missing the very grounding that makes resurrection relevant to us in this life. If they’re never able to be reconciled to the fullness of their faith, then it’s likely that if they ever do ‘look down’, they’ll meet with a pretty hard impact—one which could even lead to a loss of faith.

This actually reminds me of a parable that I read about a group of blind men who were travelling through the mountains. Each one held the hands of the person in front of him and of the man behind him—and it was up to the leader to carefully navigate the pathways along the cliffs. After these men had travelled for a number of days, they found themselves deep into the mountains—when suddenly their leader cried out as he fell from the edge of a cliff. The rest of the blind men began panicking, and pressed against the cliff face. All of them were certain that they’d never get out of the mountains alive, and that they’d probably die there without their leader.

 And while these men were falling apart, they suddenly heard a voice from below that said: “I’m alright—the ledge was not that high, and the ground is much more even down here. If you want to live, fall immediately!”

What I think this story illustrates very well is what I’ve been getting at all along: first, that our faith is rooted in reality (sometimes even tragic reality).

Secondly, it’s when we engage our faith fully—with all of the pain and suffering included—we find its relevance to our lives. It turns out that when we do look down, and recognize this, we find a much more level place for us travel on our spiritual journey.

This is why I say that Holy Week is about humanity, and it is the very reason that the mystery of Easter has such power to change our lives. But we can’t allow ourselves to miss it—we’ve got to look down—otherwise we risk making our faith irrelevant to our own life, and even to the life of the world; the world that Jesus came to save.