April 5, 2009 Sermon
Palm Sunday
This page is offered for those unable to attend the service or who would like more time to study the message.
Palm Sunday - B 2009
Allan Conkling Emmanuel, San Angelo
April 5, 2009
When I was a boy my family would travel every summer to visit my grandparents in Spearfish, South Dakota. Spearfish was the home of the Black Hills Passion Play--an outdoor dramatic production of the crucifixion of Christ, patterned after, and some say rivaling, the world renowned production in Europe in Oberamergau, Germany.
In the Black Hills production, the main parts were played by professional actors, but the unique part, at least for a 9 year old, was that all of the "extras"--the cast of thousands--was played by the town folks of Spearfish. Smaller children got to sit at the feet of Jesus; older boys got to be shepherds, girls helped the women at the well. And if you were an adult, or an especially well behaved teenager, you were allowed to stay late and be one of the crowd yelling, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him." It was not until years later, through the course of living, that I began to experience first-hand the fullness and frailty of the human species. Only then did the story begin to sink in.
Author Herbert O Driscoll in his book Four Days in Spring, writes:
"We who read these events as sacred scripture are witnessing how our human nature negotiates those moments in life when crisis strikes...
"All of us live in some kind of self-constructed story. When life shatters our assumptions about the world and ourselves, suddenly bringing us into crisis- illness or pain or great loss--we are forced to discover what resources we have to respond or survive." (pg. 620)
Palm Sunday is a participatory event; perhaps not the greatest reenactment--not when compared to the Passion Play. But nonetheless we are bid to participate; to see our own lives, faith, and lack of faith reflected in the characters. Every one of us will have our moments when we are Caiaphas, Pilate, Peter, Judas, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and John. Every group will have bystanders, hecklers, soldiers, guards and bandits. Hope, frustration and conflict is what makes this story so universal. As Herbert O'Driscoll says:
"To follow him means that we fully embrace the terror of the moment, acknowledge its grim reality, even risk being overcome by it, then move through the depths of human suffering to the realization that we are not alone, that there is a source of strength beyond ourselves, that we are in the arms of a loving and gracious God."
Today begins the most sacred week of the Christian year. It is a day so full of symbolism that one can spend a lifetime reflecting on its irony:
Living plants in the shape of a Cross, representing both life and death;
The Savior killed by those he came to save;
You hold in your hand your free ticket to the events of Holy Week: your Palm Cross. Keep it close by this week, then stick it in a book or on your mirror, and find it again from time to time. Be challenged by it; healed by it, changed by it.
"In
thy most bitter passion my heart to share doth cry,
with thee for my salvation upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my
heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath,
to mourn thee, well beloved, yet thank thee for thy death."
(Hymn 168, v.3)
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Revised: 04/14/09