April 1, 2007 Sixth Sunday in Lent, Palm and Passion Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Luke19: 29-40: 21:37-43: 56
If we take seriously the story we have heard today, we need to give it room
to sink into our mind and heart and soul. We need to feel its impact in our bodies.
God needs us to pay attention so that we may hear what the story is telling us to do
in our life, what choices and changes it is asking us to make now.
The story is primarily about the choice Jesus made to sacrifice his life—a
choice some think he made because it was what God planned for him all along.
Others of us think he chose the cross because it is where the sacred way by which
he lived led him in the face of others’ choices of how to respond to his ministry.
They chose to reject and stop him. He chose to stay true to God’s way to the end.
He desired to live the way and be the way more than he desired life itself. That
great desire determined each step he took.
So he chose not to tell the priests or Pilate what they wanted to hear. He
chose not to please Herod with a miracle. He chose not to take back his claim that
he represented God, and that God’s ways were not their ways. So he chose death,
in the faith that it would lead on toward God’s realm if he was truly following the
way of God’s will. He chose to sacrifice himself because more than anything he
wanted to stay true to the way of love and nonviolence which is the way of God’s
realm.
This may be the central choice in the story, but there are many other
choices along the way. Peter chooses to deny Jesus, Judas chooses to betray him.
In the Garden of Gethsemane the disciples choose to escape grief through sleep,
and then to take up the sword. Jesus chooses not to escape in any sense and not to
accept violence even in self-defense. The crowd chooses the bold, militaristic
rebel, Barabbas, over Jesus with his message of repentance, forgiveness and love.
The crucified bandits make their choices, one to join the crowd and ridicule Jesus,
the other to stand alone and have compassion for Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea
chooses to risk his high standing by honoring Jesus’ dead body. The women
choose to remain faithful and follow to see where Jesus is buried.
What makes the story so interesting and so real is to see how people choose
between alternatives. Some of the choices are made out of human self-interest,
but some are made for reasons that seem to go against self-advancement or self-
preservation. We dismay at the choices of Peter and Judas in part because on
some level we can identify with them, seeing their possibility in our own heart.
We admire the women and Joseph of Arimathea for their courage, we love the
compassionate bandit for his nobleness of heart. We hope when our times of trial
come that we might show such courage and compassion. We wonder, would we
sleep in the Garden, or stay awake watching and praying? Would we deny
knowing Jesus, or risk our own death on a cross by choosing to speak the truth?
A man went though the worst time of his life. His business failed, his
marriage failed, his health failed and he sank into a terrible, long dark night of the
soul. He could not feel any desire to live or love. God seemed completely absent
or dead. The easy choice was to give in to despair, to let life go. But he made the
conscious choice to live as if God did exist, as if he felt love, as if his life
mattered. He chose to live as principled a life as he could. He chose against the
easy way out, even though is meant choosing excruciating pain. He did so by
force of will because even more that wanting comfort and relief, he willed for light
to triumph over darkness and love to triumph over despair. But he lived also by
grace, because his will found support in a community of faithful, steadfast love
that surrounded him. Through him they learned that to choose to live for a cause
can be as much a sacrifice as to choose to die for a cause. Although it is often the
other way around, sometimes to choose to die is a betrayal and to choose to live is
our cross.
The Mahatma Gandhi was famous for the sacrifices he chose. He gave up
the considerable comforts of his respectable, Western-style life as a lawyer in the
British Empire in order to live and lead as one of his people. He gave up fine
tailored London suits and put on the homespun loincloth of a peasant. He gave up
a large house with servants in exchange for the communal responsibilities of a
humble ashram where he took turns cleaning the latrine. He gave up safety and
chose to risk his life again and again for the sake of truth and justice and non-
violence.
Yet as he watched others around him struggling to make those kinds of
choices, this is what he said to them.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort
from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give
it up in a mood of self sacrifice or out of a stern sense
of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that
unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only
give up a thing when you want some other condition
so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for
you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is
more greatly desired.
Give up a thing only when you want some other condition so much that you
can see how this thing interferes with what you more greatly desire. This is the
key to understanding how the man who lost everything was able to give up his
death wish and keep on living for the sake of light he could not see and love he
could not feel. It is also the key to understanding all the sacrifices people chose in
the Passion story. Some chose to sacrifice Christ because they desired money or
safety or power more. Some chose to sacrifice themselves in some way because
they desired the way of healing and justice and peace that Jesus showed them—
desired it so much there were sacrifices they were willing to choose.
What about you? Having heard the familiar story again today, having
looked at the choices and sacrifices others made and Jesus made, what message
are you getting about your life and your world? What condition do you desire in
your heart of hearts? Do you desire it enough to give up something that until now
you have not been able to give up?
Let us pray in silence, asking the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us in
our choices of what we will sacrifice and what we will serve. Let us listen in
silence for the Spirit’s direction now…
Sermon 04/01/2006