Palm Sunday ("I am with you")

Year C, Palm Sunday
Liturgy of the Palms - Gospel: Luke 19:29-40
Liturgy of the Word - Passion Gospel: Luke 22:39-23:56


At the beginning of this service, we heard about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. People were singing, "Hosanna!" "Save us!" In the Passion Gospel, this tune changed to "Crucify him!"
The Passion means so many things, but one thing it means is that Jesus knows what it's like to be hurt - really, really hurt. He even knows what it's like to die. One of our beliefs as Christians is that Jesus' suffering and death can offer comfort to us, but it's not perhaps the kind of comfort we'd prefer.

Passion
What does it mean to describe this part of the gospel story as 'the Passion' ?
The way it's most commonly used, you'd think passion means long, slobbery kisses in romance movies. There's nothing like that in this story, though - there's a lot of shouting and hitting and pushing and crying; a man gets his ear cut off, and a whole group of people kill someone who's innocent and a couple other people who are probably guilty, but there are no passionate love scenes.
There is a sense in which passion means love, and so Jesus' Passion also means love, but it's a complicated kind of love. Real love, though it can involve kisses, also often involves tears - pain, sadess, confusion and other very difficult things - that's when the idea of passion gets closer to its real meaning.
The word passion comes from a Latin word that means 'to suffer.' And Jesus suffered - a lot. So it's called the Passion because it's about Jesus' suffering.

Suffering
The fact of suffering is one of the most difficult things we have to deal with in life, both because it hurts so much and because it doesn't make sense. Most of our hardest questions for God have to do with suffering.
Jesus' interactions with different people in the story illustrate, I think, questions people still have about pain.
The soldiers blindfolded Jesus and hit him, saying, 'Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?' It's like they were saying, 'If you're God, you should know everything, so where does pain come from?'
The chief priests and elders say, 'If you are the Messiah, tell us.' Jesus says, 'If I tell you, you will not believe...' I think this mirrors the confusion and frustration many of us feel at the fact that God is not tangible in ways we want or expect him to be, and we have to act so often on faith, hoping in things we can't see.
Even if he thinks they won't believe, why won't he tell them? I think because the whole point of his coming here, the whole point of the Incarnation was not to tell them a message anymore but to show them, because they hadn't been able to believe the message they were told.

Two Criminals
Perhaps the most important interaction occurs between Jesus and the criminals executed with him. One of the criminals questions him sarcastically: 'Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!'
The second criminal denounces him, saying, 'Do you not fear God?' He then says, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.'
The first criminal's question is really a hard one. Why would Jesus, if he's God's Son, not use his power to get himself - and us - out of our pain?
I don't fully know the answer.
But I think Jesus' response to the second criminal gives us some idea. 'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.'
It seems to me these two criminals are both saying essentially the same thing - the same thing everyone had been shouting on the way into Jerusalem the week before - "Save us!" They, and the crowd, and Pilate and the chief priests and elders and everyone else there, and we today, all want relief.


What relief?
What relief does Jesus' suffering offer for our suffering?
I think the 23rd Psalm, which has so often provided comfort in sorrow, offers part of the answer, and one passage particularly: "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
One message of Jesus' Passion was this: I am with you .... I am with you in your suffering.

There is no attempt to answer our 'Why?' with any sort of 'Because...' He simply says, 'I am with you.'
The meaning of compassion, literally, is to 'suffer with' someone. Their pain is your pain. Because of his Passion, his suffering, Jesus is able to have true compassion for us, to suffer with us - our pain is his pain. I am with you in your suffering.

The corollary comes next week, at Easter, when we say that his victory and his joy will also be ours - I am with you in suffering, and you will be with me in Paradise.

In the film, Shadowlands, about the life of C.S. Lewis and particularly his marriage to Joy Gresham, Joy contracts cancer not long after they get married. Though she is dying, there are periods of relative health, and during one of these, they go on a belated honeymoon. While on a walk in the countryside, it begins to rain and they run for cover under an awning. Joy turns to Lewis and begins to talk about what will happen when she dies; she wants him to look after her son. He doesn't want to talk about it, though. A minute before, they had been laughing, and it had almost seemed possible in that moment for him to forget she was dying.
'Don't spoil it,' he says.
'It doesn't spoil it,' she says. 'It makes it real. The pain then is part of the happiness now.'

I think that is also part of the message of the Passion.
God is with us in suffering - and we will be with him in Paradise.
The pain now is part of the happiness then. It doesn't spoil it. It makes it real.
Amen.

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Given to Vidor Presbyterian
Palm Sunday, 2007