Palm Sunday, Year C

Isaiah, 45:21-25
Philippians, 2:5-11
Luke, 22:39-23:56

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Many, many forests have been wasted in proclaiming the innocence and purity of children. It's true that adults ruin children, but children are a mess to begin with. Roald Dahl was one of my favorite authors when I was a child. He wrote many weird, witty, droll children's books, and he knew his audience. He had learned in school that "Parents and schoolteachers are the enemy. The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that when it is born is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all." ⁽¹⁾

We call God 'our Father.' Scripture calls us the 'children of God.' These are not arbitrary phrases. They tell us a truth about ourselves as well as about God. Christianity is the best thing we have to help us grow up, the best thing to civilize us, the best thing to help us be what God wants us to be. The Church teaches us practices and habits and manners to strengthen our faith and to help us become more human. One of these things is pilgrimage, the practice of making a journey to a sacred place.

S. Paul understood all of life as a pilgrimage to heaven. (Phil 3:20) The epistle to the Hebrews calls us "strangers and exiles on earth" who are seeking our true homeland, "a better country, a heavenly one." (Heb 11:13-16) The word 'pilgrim' comes from the Latin peregrinus, meaning a foreigner, an alien. We are resident aliens, but on a journey to a better place. Spiritual tools direct and speed us to our true home. We need a moral compass, a compassionate heart, a lively practice of our faith, regular spiritual habits and disciplines.

As early as the second century, Christians began making pilgrimages to the Holy Land to see where Jesus lived and taught and suffered. Throughout the ages, visiting the sites mentioned in the gospels have brought the gospel stories alive and intensified faith. ⁽²⁾ Pilgrimages renew faith and ground us more deeply in faith. What we are embarking upon today is a pilgrimage. Palm Sunday and the three great days of Holy Week are the heart of our faith, the essence of Christianity. Our observance of them is a journey, a journey that changes lives, a journey that witnesses to Christ, a journey that builds faith, a journey that leads to new life.

In a recent letter to his parish, Fr. Sloane recalled that invitations to the coronation of the British sovereign declare: "all excuses set aside." You don't send regrets under any circumstances. No need to R.S.V.P. because you are expected. Holy Week is the same thing. The coronation, as it were, of our Lord, his resurrection, is a single event, but it unfolds in three acts, each of which is essential to our faith. This week shows us who we are, where we are going, what we are to become.

Palm Sunday is the prelude. Jesus began his entry to Jerusalem at the Mount of Olives, nearly two miles outside of Jerusalem. To show that he comes in peace, Jesus mounted a colt, a simple, borrowed ass, not a warhorse of conquering emperor. This is not the type of messiahship that the people expected. It repudiates violence and worldly rule. As he proceeded, his disciples spread their garments along the way. Think of Sir Walter Raleigh throwing his velvet cloak in the mud for Queen Elizabeth. The disciples recognized the kingship of Jesus - even if not the type of kingship. As we did this morning in blessing the palms, the disciples cried out 'Glory in the highest,' the song of the angels at his nativity. The promise of peace on earth made to the shepherds is another step closer to fulfilment. But they had no idea of the horror necessary for the fulfilment.

The scene is rich with other bits of irony. First, Jesus entered Jerusalem, whose name means the city of peace, but where there is no peace. Just as it is today, Jerusalem was a city of deep, violent tensions, and these would lead to the passion and death of Jesus. Second, the triumphant entrance leads to betrayal and death. Third, the crowds waved palm fronds, symbols of victory, but to most Christ's victory looked like humiliating defeat. It makes sense that early Christians would associate the palm with the martyr's victory, the martyr's witness of Christ all the way to death. For us, today as we take up the palm frond, we liturgically acknowledge our need to take up our Lord's cross, to share in it. We want to share in our Lord's victory, the victory of love, but being faithful to Christ requires sacrifice. Love entails suffering.

Maundy Thursday shows us divine love. The word 'maundy' derives from the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment: a new commandment that I give you that you love one another as I have loved you. (Jn 13:34) Maundy Thursday could be called 'Commandment Thursday' or 'Love Thursday.' Jesus shows us what the commandment looks like in two ways: 1) by instituting the mass, giving us his body and blood; and, 2) by washing the feet of his followers, including those who betray him and deny him and run from him. We re-enact this on Thursday evening as clergy wash the feet of twelve people, representing the twelve apostles. This act of humility and charity is the ideal of our common life together. It represents the pinnacle of civilized, Christian behavior.

The Maundy Thursday mass begins cheerfully. We wear white vestments and sing the Gloria, which is introduced with ringing bells and a thundering organ. We are rejoicing in the great gift of the Blessed Sacrament. On Maundy Thursday, the night of his betrayal, our Lord gave us his body and blood at the Last Supper. We celebrate his giving, his sacrifice, of himself to us. But once the Gloria has been sung, the tone of the mass gradually becomes more somber. There's no more organ; no more bells. The celebrant bids peace as normal: "The peace of the Lord be alway with you." But the sacred ministers do not exchange the peace because we remember that on Maundy Thursday at the Last Supper Jesus only kissed Judas Iscariot, the traitor.

Following the mass, the altar party takes the Blessed Sacrament, the body of our Lord, away from the High Altar, and processes slowly to the Altar of Repose amid the ancient chant of the Pange Lingua. Our Lord spent his final evening in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Altar of Repose is Gethsemane. We, the disciples of Christ, go with him to Gethsemane and pray with him. As he entered his agony, as he prayed for his Father to remove the cup of suffering, he asked us to watch with him. Can we not watch with him Thursday night or Friday morning, if only for a half hour? All Thursday night and Friday morning, we have an opportunity to sit with our Lord - to say our prayers, to say devotions, to meditate on his Passion, on his goodness to us, to count our blessings, or simply to sit and be with him.

The last act of Maundy Thursday is to strip the altars, just as Jesus was stripped of his clothes before his crucifixion. The choir sings Psalm 22, the psalm which describes the agony and abandonment of the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Only the eyes of the hardest won't well with tears. We strip the altars. The church is left bare. We leave in silence.

Good Friday is a day of mourning, suggesting the bleakness of life without Jesus. The liturgy begins at noon, about the hour Jesus was nailed to the cross. The altar party enters in silence and falls prostrate before the barren altar. There are some collects and readings. The Passion is sung. We pray the Solemn Collects, our intercessions for all the world. Then we creep to the cross to express our sorrow and contrition for our Lord's Passion. We creep to adore him, to kiss his feet, the feet of our true king. Words are not enough to express ourselves. We make a tender and meek bodily act to express our sorrow, our contritition, our love.

The mass is never said on Good Friday. Instead we receive the Blessed Sacrament consecrated on Maundy Thursday. We process back over to the Altar of Repose, the Garden of Gethsemane, and bring our Lord back to the High Altar, Mount Calvary. We make our communion, and the last word said is the choir singing "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Christ has died.

Then comes the final movement, the greatest, most profound, most moving, most exciting moment of the Church's year, the most ancient of the Church's liturgies. If you go to no other service during the year, this is the one to attend. We'll begin outside, in front of the church, and strike a fire - the New Fire. Genesis, creation begins with light; Resurrection, the renewed creation, begins with light, with the fire of the Holy Spirit, always moving over the deep and bringing forth creation.

We use the New Fire to light the Paschal Candle, which represents Christ. Then we'll slowly process into the dark church, everyone holding lit candles. We are entering Christ's tomb. The light of Christ penetrates, and will overcome, the darkness. Then the cantor sings the Exsultet, a hymn of praise to the Paschal Candle. This is followed by four Old Testament readings about God's creative work and his saving acts. Water is a primary element in three of them: the creation story, Noah and his ark, Moses leading Israel through the Red Sea. Each of these stories is a type of baptism, and they lead us to the next act of the Vigil, the blessing of the baptismal font and the renewal of our baptismal vows. The Paschal Candle is plunged three times into the waters of the font, inseminating it so that it may bring forth new life, eternal life. We sing the litany of the saints because the hope of baptism is that we will become saints, that we will have eternal life with God in the company of the holy angels and all of the saints.

Then we hear again the great song of the angels, the song of the heavens, the abode of the saints, Glory be to God on high. There can be peace on earth because Christ has risen. Bells ring, the organ blasts, the lights come on, darkness and death has given way to light and life. Christ comes forth from the tomb. God has triumphed over sin and death. Christ has risen, and so we can celebrate the mass and receive his risen body and blood.

Holy Week is what we are, people who have gone from sin and despair and indifference to strength and hope and purpose. It renews us. It changes us. It civilizes us. This is a week of pilgrimage for us, to walk in our Lord's steps from the gate of Jerusalem, to the Upper Room of his Last Supper, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to worldly condemnation before Pilate, to Mount Calvary, to the Sepulchre, to the Resurrection. We walk with Jesus this week, and his story of a changed life will be ours. We take another step toward being what God our Father wants us to be and growing up.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

1. Jonathan Yardley, 'Roald Dahl, Beyond the Chocolate Factory,' The Washington Post, 27 March 2004.

2. Fiona Bowie, 'Pilgrimage' article in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, Adrian Hastings, ed., OUP (2000), p. 541.