Palm Sunday, Year C Isaiah
45:21-25
March 28, 2010 Philippians 2: 5-11
Community of the Cross Luke 22:39-51 23: 1-49
Conchetta is the mother of
a friend of mine. She is 93 years old, born and raised in Italy,
and is one of the most devout women alive. Around her dining
room table, I heard the stories of Holy week in the old country.
People carry olive branches. They cut branches off the olive
trees and take them to church to be blessed. Then, they process
through the town, going from church to church in a grand parade,
waving the branches, and shouting "Hosanna"! When they
arrive home, the branch is thrust into the soil of their farmland,
blessing and all.
What exuberant and unabashed
celebrations of the whole community! Thinking of Conchetta's
story, I shared it with a Brazilian friend. He has childhood
memories of similar parades through out Holy Week. One day all
the village women meet at one church and take down a statue of
the Virgin Mary that is carried into the streets. The men gather
at another church and carry the form of Jesus. In the grand Passion
Narrative, Jesus has been taken away and Mary is searching for
her son. From church to church they go until the two groups meet
on the town green. Running toward each other, Mary reaches for
her Son! but it is too late. Jesus is going to die. The sermon
is given right then and there. Afterwards, the people all talk
about the sermon. If everyone isn't crying, it wasn't any good.
After all, Mary's son, Jesus is going to die.
Maybe the men and women of
those little villages know each other and each other's grandparents
and great grandparents. They have been held in one another's
arms falling over with laughter or sobbing in grief. Maybe those
who are good at crying together are also good at celebrating
together. Maybe those who find themselves sharing the pain of
life, also know the beauty of shared joy and can laugh out loud
together.
More than any other Sunday
of the church year, this Sunday touches the extremes of human
experience. All of life's ecstasy and sorrow, all of its beauty
and ugliness, all of its courage and uncertainty is summarized
in the hours of Christ's Passion. Perhaps God draws us together
to share Jesus' betrayals and sleepless night so that we learn
to share our own sleepless nights with each other. Perhaps Jesus
let's us hear him call his disciples to "watch and pray
with me" so we can absorb this model of community love and
prayer.
How are we to deal with the
roller coaster emotions that come with life's events, uninvited
and extreme, not only in the narrative of Christ's Passion but
in our own lives? What are we to make of Jesus who embraces
celebration and defeat and invites us to walk that road with
him.
The answer is quite simple.
The answer is about a spiritual community that is bound together
in Love. Jesus, the author of that community never gives up on
the faltering disciples who sleep their way through his night
of agony, or on Peter who proclaimed, "I'd even die with
you Lord" and then denies him three times. Jesus who said,
"Father forgive them"...shows us the way of community.
We have much to learn about community from our grandparents and
great grandparents of those villages, whether it was in a Yankee
village of Connecticut or a village in Brazil or Italy or in
the Holy land 2000 years ago.
The journey to the cross is
a journey of community. It is best made with those who are learning
to laugh and cry together, sharing celebrations and defeats,
going on parades together and grieving our losses together. Yesterday
the community of St. John's laughed and cried together as we
celebrated the life of a beloved parishioner, David Middleton.
This is the heart of community. Here is where we can find comfort,
and consolation. This is what Jesus sought that night in the
garden: comfort, consolation and the quiet joy of community.
The journey to the cross,
the joyful celebration and the tragic defeat can teach us to
make room for one another in our overcrowded lives and to make
room for the companionship of Christ. This journey to the cross
is a journey of the loved and forgiven community, laughing and
crying together. The promise made real on the cross is that life
in God's Kingdom is not an escape from pain and tears; but a
way to face the paradoxes and pain together. There is no vulnerability
or failure that is larger or more powerful than the companionship
of Christ within the community of God's Beloved ones, the Body
of Christ. In Christ, we are of Christ and part of one another.
If the cross teaches us anything on this Sunday of the Passion,
it teaches us that shame and failure have not triumphed: Together,
in the body of Christ, "failure is victory, losing is gaining
and dying makes possible new life."
