April 10, 2022 – Passion (with palms) Sunday

Though we may never understand or accept the various atonement theories around Jesus’ self-sacrifice, the most important thing to understand and accept is God’s redeeming and eternal love.

Let us pray.  Holy and merciful God, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place, and within each one of us. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

It is not uncommon on this Sunday, or on Good Friday, for there to be no sermon at all, and simply to allow people to reflect on the passion of our Lord Jess Christ from the Gospel we have just read.  I’m still going to share, but a somewhat briefer reflection. And I think it would be good for us to begin exactly where we left off in the Gospel reading - these words: “But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.”

Let us start with the women and the other acquaintances because this is essentially where we are as well.  We are separated, not only by physical distance, but also the great separation of time – close to 2,000 years. But we have, in fact, just “stood at a distance” and watched, or rather listened to, the description of what happened on that day of Jesus’ crucifixion.

What do you think those original acquaintances were thinking and feeling? That might be a good place to start – to put ourselves in their shoes. Those who followed him from Galilee would have been with him for two or three years. Clearly they had accepted that this man, Jesus, held the key to the future and particularly their future, and that in some form he was God’s Messiah – even if that definition was different for different people. They would have heard from Jesus about the predictions of his up and coming death, but they would have watched and experienced his fall from ‘triumphant king’ entering Jerusalem to ‘worthless, powerless, criminal’ in just a few days. His inner circle of disciples had scattered and now their Messiah was executed among the lowest members of society. Some may have thought that Jesus’ plan had failed. Others may have simply been bewildered by what they were witnessing. They probably couldn’t comprehend why – why did this happen? But they would know that Jesus was obeying God. That somehow this had to happen, though they probably had little idea of why. And knowing how everything else that Jesus did was entirely motivated by radical love, this act must have been too. They would have no idea how or why – just that he was doing it out of love and sacrificing himself. It would take his resurrection, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and years of sharing the Good News of Jesus’ victory over death on our behalf, to begin to understand God’s purposes – why the ‘crucified Christ.’

It was some 25 or 30 years later that Saint Paul would write in his letter to the church in Rome, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into this death?” And he would continue, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” Now it begins to sink in. Somehow, in a way that is far beyond our ability to understand, this torturous self-sacrifice by Jesus was the superlative of radical love for every human being – past, present, and future. Our Collect Prayer this morning states it very clearly. We prayed these words, “Almighty and everliving God, in tender love for all our human race you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take our flesh and suffer death upon a cruel cross.” So this God, our God, taking on our flesh as Jesus, and willingly submitting to the worst, most degrading, most dehumanizing treatment possible, and dying, in order to restore us in our intended relationship and fellowship with God, forever.

Now, we can begin to feel guilt or shame that our sinful lives and our self-centred or evil attitudes and actions are what caused this need for Jesus’ sacrifice. That would be true, and it might be helpful – causing us to identify where in our lives we need God’s forgiveness, and where we need God’s grace to help us change, but that reflection is still about us, and the impact that Jesus’ passion has on us. Even before we open our mouths or begin to think about ourselves, even our great need for forgiveness or for grace to change, we need to fully receive the gift of this amazing love that we have been given, and what that love does in us and for us.

This is exactly what the 17th century hymn writer, Samuel Crossman, was doing when he wrote the hymn “My Song Is Love Unknown.” We will sing that hymn this morning. I invite you to turn, if you will, to page 12 in your service bulletin because I want to look at a few of the verses. The first four lines of verse 1 read, “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me, love to the loveless  shown that they might lovely be.” An “unknown love”. It’s not as though those who watched from a distance as Christ died were moved by the love they were receiving, by the dying man on the cross, any more than we are until we open ourselves and come to terms with what is happening, as our hymn writer does in the last part of verse 1. “O who am I, that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh, and die?” Read those words to yourself, using yourself as the “I”. Think about it because it is that personal just like your baptism was personal. Only your name was heard at the moment of your baptism into Christ. And when you really let the reality of God’s love for you to sink deeply – the love that bears everything you’ve said, done, or failed to do, everything you’re ashamed of that causes you to think less of yourself – to see yourself in those moments as “love-less”, that love from the one hanging on the cross has never flinched, never faded, never had second thoughts – about his love you.

Then you can understand Samuel Crossman’s final verse. “Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine; never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine! This is my friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend.” This is the posture that the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ is inviting us into. Make those words yours. Open yourself completely to that love - and give thanks.

Amen.