April 1, 2007 At Saint Mark Church Norman, OK
Isaiah 50:4-7 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Luke 22: 14-23:56
One more time this week, the Passion of Christ will be proclaimed in our churches. It is long, ponderous, and painful to hear if you really listen. Like the Stations of the Cross, it is story of brutality, savage and cruel. It is the story of a society that has become comfortable with execution, and a society capable of executing the innocent, and afterward congratulating itself for having done what had to be done. It is the story of a society that entertains itself with violence; a society that cheers at fights, dismisses the death of the innocent with a shrug and goes about its grim business as though it never happened.
While our humanity may have grown some, it can at least recognize Christ as the Son of God in history. We are at least not proud of what we did in the past on Calvary. But on the whole, we are today only a little less comfortable with the evil of violence than were the crowds in Pilate’s court. We are barely outraged by brutality, and it still sells big time, and it flows through cables into our homes. We have only become a little more sensitive than was Pilate to the presence of God in the people we hurt physically, emotionally or economically. And those who oppose it are not much more numerous today than they were in Pilate’s time, and certainly no more effective.
So, we tell the story again as we have for centuries. It becomes hauntingly familiar, and the more we realize that we are not proclaiming a historical event, the more it might really bring about our conversion. For this is not the story of something that happened a long time ago when there were Romans and Herod lived. It has happened today and may happen again tomorrow if we just stand and watch, or cheer and clap.
Christ did not choose to be crucified. He chose to be faithful. It was his fidelity that saves us, not the suffering to which that fidelity led him. The crucifixion was pure and simple human violence at its most brutal and most mindless. Christ was really only one among hundreds of millions over the centuries who have fallen victim to human violence. The fact that we begin to recognize that is our first clue and our first hope to asking why it should continue, and by asking that question, the first movement of salvation begins.
The palms we have held in our hands are ancient signs of peace. We have taken them, blessed them, and now will carry them home. Where they end up and where they are seen must be a place of peace. Those who hold them must be people of peace, for the cry that goes up from palm holders is a cry for peace.
My dear friends, make the meaning of the palms stronger in your life today. If we do not begin to greet one another with the palm, we shall continue to greet one another with the cross. Which shall it be in our lifetime, the palm or the cross?