Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX 79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)
URL: http://www.xroadstx.com/~stmarys/hw2004preaching.htm
stmarys@xroadstx.com
Some things are just too big to handle, and in order to get at them, you need to
take a small part, and use it as a way into the whole. Palm Sunday is like that.
The vast sweep of events we have heard and re-enacted today is overwhelming.
From the triumphal entry to the crucifixion, these are the great deeds of our
salvation, and they are so fraught with meaning and significance that we really
do better to hear and so to experience them than to try to analyze them.
In the little dramas we have acted out today, we, as the crowd, the people, have
had several things to say, and I want to look at a couple of them this morning.
The first thing we said, in the Liturgy of the Palms, was to Jesus. We said
“hosanna” to Jesus. Now, we need to remember that ‘hosanna’ isn’t just a shout
of praise that means ‘yippie’ or some such. It was an imperative verb, a
hope-filled demand that meant ‘save us’, ‘save us now!’. The crowd in Jerusalem
was asking for something, they were asking for Jesus to save them, and they
thought they knew what that looked like. They thought it meant liberation from
political and religious tyranny, victory over the Romans, and a direct rule of
the nation by God, a rule that would solve their problems and meet their needs.
They were asking, demanding, that Jesus fix them, and that he fix their
world—the way they wanted it fixed. They wanted Jesus to go to work for them.
That’s the first thing the crowd said, the first thing we said.
O.K., fast forward to the trial before Pilate. We know what has happened during
Holy Week. Now, Jesus has been arrested and it’s time for a choice. Matthew
makes it clear that this is an ironic choice. There is another Jesus handy, a
prisoner named Jesus Barabbas, who, Mark and Luke tell us, was recently involved
in a riot or an insurrection in Jerusalem. Matthew says he was notorious, well
known. He was a man of action, a man who had taken up arms, a man who was no
friend of Rome, a man who was to be reckoned with. He might have gotten caught,
but so had Jesus of Nazareth, and Barabbas had at least tried to do something
that mattered, something that the crowd could identify with. He may have been a
bad man, but he was one they could understand.
Remember, the crowd, that’s us, wanted a savior, they wanted someone who would
make changes, and make things right. They wanted action. Barabbas was no hero,
but he seems to have struck a deep enough cord within the crowd to make the
choice of which Jesus to hold on to a pretty easy one. Barabbas appealed to a
part of themselves that Jesus of Nazareth did not. Barabbas was action instead
of refection, swords instead of parables, and doing-something-even-
if-it’s-wrong instead of passively standing there. When it came to folks who
were supposed to save them, Barabbas was probably closer to their hearts and
their imaginations than was the other Jesus, the one we now know more about, the
one we worship.
I suspect that, from time to time, he still is. I suspect that we know all too
well the crowd’s dilemma when faced with these two Jesuses; and the choice that
they made.
What is behind the attraction of Barabbas and his many successors is what I call
false hope, phony hope, hope that the world expects, hope that we seek in any
place other than the man the crowd rejected, and the Romans executed. It seems
to be the business of our culture, (perhaps of any culture, I just don’t know,
but certainly of ours), to offer these substitutes, these versions of Barabbas,
for our consumption.
When we say ‘Hosanna”, save us, what do we want? ||Barabbas is out there in lots
of forms:
Perhaps it’s to win the lottery and be financially secure—that’s a Barabbas
that’s sanctified by the state. Or to find the right other person, or to get
down to the right weight, or to get the revenge, or the satisfaction, or the
euphoria, or those special deep feelings, or the leader, or even the religious
experience we want, to get the political program that we believe in, or the
perfect job or the changes we crave in other people (changes they doubtless
need) all of these—while not necessarily evil in themselves, can, if they
capture our hearts and our imaginations, be a Barabbas we call for, a way to
chose the lesser, the false hope, the ashes, while the real thing stands
silently before us, pointing to the way of the cross—the way of love.
If Palm Sunday is to teach us anything, it can teach us this. It can reveal our
deepest desires, our fondest fantasies, give them a name, and stand them up
beside Jesus of Nazareth, and so make our choices clear. Perhaps then we can
begin to see the truly radical alternatives we are offered, and the depth of our
own need.
Where is our hope, what do we fear? What is the worst thing, and the best thing,
that can happen to us? Where do we find the healing and the fulfillment of this?
Where do we look for hope, real hope, hope that will stay with us no matter
what, no matter when? Who decides, finally, what we really need, and whose path
do we choose to walk? Who do we trust with our lives, with our futures, with our
today?
After all, the cry, the prayer, the painful shout of ‘Hosanna’ is always near to
our lips, we know that we are incomplete, broken, and missing something. Like
the crowd in Jerusalem whose words we spoke, we want salvation, wholeness,
restoration. But on whose terms?
At the end of the day, it is all about us, now, and not just about them, way
back then. We are faced daily with two images of hope, two ways to go, two paths
to follow. Sometimes it can be confusing and ironic, when both seem to have the
same name. What Jesus of Nazareth shows us is his way—the way of the cross, the
way of compassion, of self-giving love—the tough way through that holds,
finally, to trust in the Father’s love and nothing else. Then there are all the
other ways. We know those, too.
The choice is always ours.
Today's Lessons: Isaiah 45.21-25; Psalm22.1-11; Philippians 2.5-11; Matthew 26.36--27.66
Maundy Thursday
March 24, 2005
What we remember on Maundy Thursday is a gift, it is the gift the Lord gave to
us “on the night he was betrayed.” It is the gift of himself, and it is much,
much more. That first Eucharist takes a moment of time—it takes something that
happened then, and preserves that moment and expands that moment, and gives that
moment, in all its richness, to us today. First of all, in the Eucharist, Jesus
gives us the gift of himself. Just as he was there on that night, for the last
supper, so he has always been present, throughout the centuries, in every place
and every time, for every occasion, no matter what; and so he with us now,
whenever we break the bread and share the cup.
When Jesus said, “this is my body, which is for you” he really meant it; and so
the bread and the cup have been for us windows into his presence, and the sure
occasion of his grace and power, from that night forward. It is easy enough to
allow the extraordinary, by repetition, to become unremarkable. But we dare not
do that here. As St. Paul says, “whoever...eats the bread or drinks the cup of
the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the
Lord.” So this is not light thing we are given, no easy ritual, no passing
fancy.
At every Eucharist we come into the sacred and continuing presence of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and he stands with us around this Altar as surely and truly as he
did the first time, on that Thursday night during Passover. That is real, and
that is important.
And there is another piece to this as well, another dimension to this wonderful
gift, one we don’t think about as often. The central fact is simple. At that
first Maundy Thursday, as the Lord took, and broke, and blessed, and gave the
bread and the cup, the whole church was there. All the disciples were there.
Peter was there, and Judas was there, and the rest. Those who betrayed him,
those who fled, those who denied that they ever knew him, and those who did not
have the slightest idea of what he was all about—they were all there. The
children were certainly here, (they had to be if it was a Passover meal). And
the women and men who followed Jesus, quite likely most all the women and men
who followed Jesus, were also there. Not only Leonardo’s, but all of these
pictures of the Last Supper mislead us if we look at them and think there were
just 13 men at that table. Not by a long shot. The room was packed, the whole
church was there.
This is important—and this also continues. This also is part of the gift we
remember on Maundy Thursday. So tonight, and every time we gather in his name to
break the bread and share the cup, the Lord is with us, as he was with the
disciples; but there is always more. The whole church is also with us.
To say this is to say that we are surrounded—this room is packed, just as it is
always packed—with those who were there the first time, and everyone who has
been there since.
They are here because they are a part of us, because they are a part of what
means to be the Christian Church and, particularly, what it means to be St.
Mary’s, Big Spring, gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. So our guests tonight
include Peter and John and James and Judas. They include Christians strong and
weak, wise and stupid, good and bad, gathered here from 20 centuries and every
corner of our globe. What it means for us to celebrate the Eucharist includes
their presence, their witness, their example, and their prayers. Right here,
each and every time.
In just a moment we will say that we join our voices with “all the company of
heaven”. We really mean that, it is simply true. The whole church is here, just
like it was that first Thursday night so long ago.
This is glorious, it is amazing, it is humbling, and it can help us keep in
perspective some of the continuing meaning of the gift the Lord gave us, on the
night he was betrayed.
There is a special part of this business of the whole church being here that
needs a separate word. That has to do with that part of the whole church that is
closest to us personally, and that matters to us the most.
Because it is not just Peter and John and Mary and all those other significant
but distant folks who are with us, who pack this place. It is also my dad, and
yours. It is also Barbara Kerley, and C.R., and Connie, and James, and Gene
Hargrove, and all of those who we remember, and hope for, and long for, and just
plain miss. There is no time that those who have died are closer to us, that the
veil between us is thinner, than around this altar. They gather with us, each
and every time, right here.
And as that special list we carry daily in our hearts becomes longer and longer,
and closer and closer, it is a good thing to remember that the Lord and the
whole church are with us here—and that they are with us risen, and healed, and
whole, and well, and made at last as God would have them be.
The place is packed, always, and that includes a bunch of people we know, people
who have been and who are very important to us. They are here, too. That is part
of the gift, that is part of what we have been given, part of what happens every
time we gather.
All of this we remember especially tonight. All of this the Lord gave us as he
transformed the ancient Passover liturgy into something that is uniquely his,
and uniquely ours. Then he led the disciples out of the room, and to the Garden
to pray, and the rest of the drama of this week begins. But just before, right
on the edge of the darkness, they gathered for a meal, and the Lord was there,
and the whole church was there. And they still are.
At no time do we stand closer to the mystery, the hiddenness, the total
otherness of God than we do at this hour, at this moment, at this cross. At no
other time do we see how completely not-us God is. This is not something we
know, or understand or have room for in our world or in our lives. Not one of us
would do this, or allow this, or gladly die to stop this from happening to
someone we love, most of all to our beloved child. There is no room in our world
for this. How do we approach this day, how do we begin to understand it?
As with so much else, we must begin with Abraham. God promised Abraham that
through him all the peoples of the earth would be blessed—that it was Israel’s
vocation to show the world who God is and what God is like. To begin to grasp
the barest hint of what is happening here today we must go to the people of
Abraham, there is no other place. No where else in human history or in human
thought can we find even the smallest insights into the mystery that we see
full-blown before us.
It begins with a different tragedy. Six hundred years before Jesus, the
Babylonians descended upon Jerusalem and destroyed it. They were not content
with destroying the city, they wanted to destroy the inner strength of its
people and their society as well. So they rounded up all the leaders of the
community—all the people who in our time would be bankers, and lawyers, and
doctors, and teachers, and professional musicians, and union leaders, even
clergy—and they bound them in chains and led them on the long northward trek to
Babylon to become the servants and slaves of their captors.
Fifty years passed by. Fifty years of bitter servanthood for the exiles and
their children. The Psalms are filled with their hymns of tears; and through the
Psalms their tears become part of their tradition and of ours.
And then the Babylonian empire fell to Persia, and another leader struck another
policy: let the servants go home, let them return to their own country and
rebuild their land in freedom.
Through both the darkness of exile and the first rays of hope, Israel kept
asking, “Why have we suffered so much? Why us?” And a poet appeared among them,
a poet-theologian, who wrote songs of unsurpassed beauty to suggest a hopeful
answer to those searching questions of human grief. He was a new genius, who was
guided to suggest an idea that, quite possibly, no one had ever suggested
before. He said something about a nation and a people that had, quite likely,
never been suggested of any nation and of any people before his time. He sang
new songs, different and an amazing songs. These songs come to us in the middle
of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, and today’s first reading is the heart of his
song.
This magnificent prophet fastened on the servant status of his people. They were
slaves and servants in bondage and oppression, and the poet took this image of
servant and re-worked it in terms of glory and salvation. It looked as though
his people were servants of oppression, but actually they were the servants of
God; and their suffering, born in hope and as an act of faith, was the key not
only to their salvation, but to the salvation of the world.
For the first time in human history, the mystery of sacrifice, which had almost
universally been a part of the religious life of our race, was seen as more than
a way of giving an angry or a hungry god something it wanted. For the first
time, sacrifice began to be seen as a rejection of the world’s categories of
worth, value, power and victory; and instead both as God’s way of faithfulness
and redemption for his chosen people, and as the hidden path to the salvation of
all creation. The servant in Isaiah sings of this, and it is a new song.
I am convinced that Jesus himself grew into his own sense of vocation and
mission under the power of these words, and that he saw himself as that servant,
and his path as that way of gentle faithfulness that all too often leads to
suffering. This cross is what that faithfulness finally came to look like in his
world. The inspired song from Isaiah is revealed in its fullness, and with its
greatest power, in the agony, defeat, and shame of Golgotha. To be a Christian
means to sing this way. It means to find in this peculiar and distressing
direction the depth of God’s truth.
I am not suggesting that all suffering leads directly to salvation. Even less do
I want to imply that suffering is somehow good and that we would all be better
people if there were more of it. Nothing as simplistic or as facile as this is
going on here. None the less, the suffering of Christ who was made the slave of
oppression and who was vindicated as the Servant of God goes on; and it is still
the key to the world’s transformation.
And there is more, for if we fasten our attention so single-mindedly on this one
moment, this one day in the past, that we cannot recognize the brokenness of our
hearts and the brokenness of our world as God’s eternal key to new being, we
will have missed the central point.
In Jesus, and in his cross, we can begin to see how this ancient poet of Israel,
so long forgotten and ignored, was truly given the gift of seeing into the heart
and soul of God. In spite of what the world thinks, in spite of what seems to us
the way things are and the way things have to be, in spite of our own values,
hopes and dreams, in spite of all of that: here is the meaning of life, here is
the way of God, here is our hope, and the hope of our world.
That hope, so obscured from our vision by his pain, continues. First, we can
make it our own. We can recognize that only here can our own inner divisions,
our own sinfulness, our own brokenness, receive the possibility of healing and
of wholeness. A great rabbi once said, “There is no heart so whole as a broken
heart.” Such is the fruit of this sacrifice. But remember, as with Isaiah’s
Servant and as with the Christ, the wholeness we receive is for the life of the
world.
Second, we are now given the opportunity to discover once more that today’s
servants of oppression—the poor, the victims of war, famine, and callous
indifference, the dis-valued of the earth—that these are the face of Christ for
us today. In their suffering we may see the very crucible in which the work of
God is being forged, for God’s work is to bring to all creation the truth of his
Servant, and to so to bring His vision of hope renewed to all humanity.
On the one day we call Good, we stand at the foot of an ancient mystery of
sacrifice and salvation, given poetic voice by the rivers of Babylon and fully
revealed only here. We can choose to embrace this mystery, this path, as our
own, or we can turn away, and seek our own path. And we will do one or the
other.
“Behold my servant...he shall be exalted and lifted up”
Easter Day
March 27, 2005
Alleluia, Christ is Risen
The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia.
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene
came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.” The
stone had been rolled away. All four Gospels tell us that. That is the first
word of Easter. The stone over the grave is moved, and that ugly hole is left
open. Now, if you think about it for a minute, it’s clear that the stone is not
rolled away in order for Jesus to get out. The risen Lord was way past being
troubled by physical barriers to his presence—walls, stones, locked doors, none
of that mattered any more. No, that stone was not rolled away for Jesus to get
out—it was rolled away so that we could get in. And that’s what I want to talk
about for a minute this Easter morning—two realities that are made clear because
the stone is rolled away.
First of all, the stone was rolled away so those first disciples could look in
and see that the tomb was empty. That empty tomb—and even more the experiences
of the disciples and the ongoing life of the Church for all these centuries—all
of these are facts that ground us in the central, historical reality of our
faith. Jesus of Nazareth had been dead, he was raised again, and he lives among
us still. Period. This is not a metaphor, it is not a symbol, it is not an
accident, and there is absolutely nothing natural or inevitable about it.
Instead, God has acted. God has acted uniquely, and without precedent. God has
raised this one particular dead man to a new and exalted life; and in doing this
God has proclaimed for all eternity that the faithfulness of Jesus, and the path
of Jesus, and the values and the priorities, of Jesus, and the life of
Jesus—that these are the way, the truth, and the life of God himself. In doing
this, God has made it known both that in and through this man Jesus we can see,
and know, and participate in the very heart of God, and that no power in heaven,
on earth, or in hell itself can finally overcome the power of faithful,
self-giving love. This is bedrock, this is our hope; it is the hope of our
world.|| “Christ is risen”, Chrysostom proclaims, “and life reigns”. The man
Jesus is vindicated as the Christ of God.
This is the first word of Easter, the bare fact of the glory of God. It is
always the first word of Easter. Existence has greater depths of beauty,
mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream.
Christ our Lord has risen. Hear that well.
But that is not the only word of Easter. The stone was also rolled away for us,
now. It was rolled away so that we, alive and walking around under today’s sun,
can do what Mary Magdalene, and Peter and John did, and there discover again the
present truth of this ancient event. The stone was rolled away so that we can go
in.
After all, death is not something that belongs exclusively to the dead—we all
know about that. And the grave, the place where dead stuff is put, well, that’s
also something all too familiar to every one of us, in one way or another. First
of all, we each have our own physical deaths to face, a stone-cold reality that
is as substantial, and as certain, as are our many efforts to evade and deny it.
That future death is always a present reality. We know about this. To this the
resurrection offers hope.
But there are other parts and places of our lives—parts and places of our
todays, our yesterdays, and our tomorrows—that are as deaths to us—places where
we dare not go—places where we see only judgment or meaninglessness or fear or
destruction. These are our other deaths, and we fear them and avoid them, even
as they, too, threaten to overwhelm and consume us. They may be the fruits of
our own sinfulness, of things done and left undone; they may be the hurts we
have absorbed from others; they may be the simple, hard stuff of life its own
self. For most of us, the little deaths we carry around with us include bits and
pieces of all of these. We know about this, too.
We know what it was like for Mary Magdalene to walk in the dark to the tomb that
morning, with neither hope nor illusions, dragging herself along to do what had
to be done knowing that one more chance at joy and meaning seemed to be gone
forever.
Mary walked past the stone and looked in into that tomb with grief and
hopelessness and despair. Instead of what she was expecting, she discovered her
new life, everyone there discovered their new life—a life that had been hid with
Christ in God, a life that could only be begun by the stone being rolled away,
and by looking into the hopelessness of a grave, and there discovering the
beginnings of life unimaginable. I read recently that “The edges of God are
tragedy; the depths of God are joy, beauty, resurrection, life. Resurrection
answers crucifixion; life answers death.” It still works like that.
We know what it is like to have things buried in a cave somewhere, things we
have rolled a big stone in front of, things we can neither look at nor name
without pain, disillusionment, guilt or fear. We know.
And Easter tells us that our stone has been rolled away, it has been rolled away
for us—so that we, too, may enter, and face whatever might be in there, and
find, instead of what we expect, the power and the love and the healing grace of
God.
Easter lets us in to the deepest mysteries of life and death, of our lives and
of our deaths, and in doing that, it offers us hope, and the possibilities of
new beginnings. Easter means that we can go anywhere, anywhere at all, even into
the tomb itself, and there we will find God, and we will not be alone, and there
will be good news.
I know a bit of this from my own story—as you know it from yours. We are all
different, we all have different caves, different hurts, different needs.
Tomorrow, God willing, I will celebrate 24 years of sobriety—a healing gift of
God that was made possible by going to some hard places, and looking into what
appeared to be a grave, and, like Mary Magdalene, discovering instead the voices
of angels and the hope of new life. Again, we are, each one of us, different in
our needs; but the resurrection is for all us of, and whatever is in your cave,
your place of fear and death, those same voices are waiting for you.
This is all part of the ongoing, every day, reality of Easter. The stone was
rolled away for us—so we can go in. So take heart, and rejoice. Today we are
shown the greatest secret of the universe, the secret of love stronger than
death. The stone is rolled away, the Lord is risen, and new life flows from that
tomb to you and to me and to all creation.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen
The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia.
Back to Holy Week Preaching Page
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)
URL: http://www.xroadstx.com/~stmarys/hw2004preaching.htm
stmarys@xroadstx.com
This page last updated on
03/27/2006