Palm Sunday

March 16, 2008

Last week I stood by a

o Family lost a young son, father with young children

This week

o Family who made the decision, as per mother’s wishes, to remove artificial medical support systems, perform last rites, and then stood by as she faded from this world

Yesterday,

o driving down to bless Palm Crosses – having just heard right before the mother of a member of Flower Guild came out of surgery with discovery of cancer in all the lymph nodes.

o I’ve been working on a series of film clips that I’m going to use for our Wed. Night of Holy Week and there are several from the powerful Mel Gibson film, Passion of the Christ. It freshly burns in me the image of just how hard this world can be.

o We will review the Scriptural Narrative of the road that Jesus took to crucifixion at the end of the road for this Palm Sunday worship..

o We will focus again only on the Road to the Cross on Good Friday.

This week we center our imaginations around the reality that we live in a world where the siren is always going off as the EMR vehicle speeds by. We live in a world where, against our hopes and wishes, the rhythmic bump and beep of the EKG monitor goes flat and moves into monotone.

This is the world you and I were born into. There is beauty and love and wonder. But there is also the darkness and the suffering. Beautiful…but fallen.

This fallen world is the world of our yesterdays and our tomorrows. But, praise God, it is also the world that has now been entered by “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

It’s this world of sirens and flatlined monitors that Jesus has entered.

Judith last Sunday spoke of the compassion of Jesus at the grave of his friend Lazarus. That simple two word sentence: Jesus wept. Those two words speak volumes.

Lazarus: seemed to be a contemporary of Jesus; someone near his own relatively young age. But if we look closely at the original language written about the event we learn that Jesus was not weeping because of the pain of personal loss, but he wept because of the pain that death causes others. His weeping was not the weeping of a person who feels defeated by the power of death to take a friend. It was a deeper and stronger weeping. This weeping contains anger and indignation at the reality of things like illness and handicaps which were looked on as a manifestation of Satan’s kingdom of evil. The tears held both compassion for the pain of his friends, and a rage against an enemy he was fixing to face head-on in the one great cosmic battle with death.

The prophet Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah King of Israel would one day come riding on a donkey into Jerusalem in holy triumph. Therefore, today we say our “hosannas” as our imaginations remember our King Jesus riding into Jerusalem to do battle with Satan and death. Our King is going to war. He goes into EMT vehicles. He rides into the hospital rooms with the EKG monitors. He rides to do battle with sin and death. He rides to do battle with the tomb.

Therefore, listen to St. Paul with all your heart: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

These words echo with thoughts of bending, shaping, forming.
As I was driving to bless the Palm Crosses and pray with Jennie Hunter for her mother, I found myself thinking about the Palm Crosses we were going to wear today.

My message to you today is to remind you that the Cross you wear is green with hope and promise. Our King was not defeated!

The cross Jesus battled was formed and shaped by evil and death. But our King was not defeated! The Cross we now wear is green with life even as our spirit should be green and alive with forgiveness and hope and thanksgiving.

This green cross is to remind us that the God of all creation believes the life of love for which we are created is worth the risk of freedom that must come with it. God allows those who have the capacity to love Him to make dark choices and, therefore, allows us to live in a world now infected with the effects of dark choices …choices that have been accumulating for generations. Our God has shown us that He believes the opportunity of love is worth the risk of evil, the fact of sin, the consequence of spiritual darkness!

But He has sent us a heavenly King to do battle with the armed forces of darkness and our King was not defeated.

We wear green Crosses that remind us that, while God may allow evil to contradict his will, He will never allow it to prevent or overcome his will.

You see, it is the process of evil to take something good and twist it…take something good and deform it. But our King is not a defeated King. Jesus is lord of all. Our King takes a’hold of our twisted-up world and shapes it into something better than before. When Jesus was nailed to the Cross it was like he just snatched that cross out of the devil’s hand and then turned around and used it to literally beat the hell out of death!! Our King is not defeated!! He beat the hell out of death and then poured His own life back into it!

Today we wear a Cross of green to remind us that following Jesus Christ promises to fill our own death with His evergreen life.

There is one more thing I think the Holy Spirit let me see about our Palm Crosses yesterday. I saw it as I was praying at the altar rail.

This cross was made out of a fresh strip of palm grown right out of the ground of the Low Country South Carolina. It is made of one piece that has been shaped for today’s purposes.

The Holy Spirit speaks through this cross today to remind us “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave...the form of a servant.”

We are to have our minds reshaped and reformed to the mind of our king.

Our King took the form of a servant – a servant to our deepest needs. What would Christ Church look like if each one of us really gave ourselves to letting our Low Country lives take on more of the shape of a Cross? What I mean to say is, what do you need to let the Lord do with the “green life” of grace that He’s given you to make the life you present to this world be more of a recognizable emblem of the Gospel of the Undefeated King?

Are you going to let your life dry out or are you going to keep it green with worship and Christian fellowship and the Great Commission to go out with everything you have? Are you going to stay so green and alive with the gifts of God that your life can be more bendable in the shaping and forming work of the Holy Spirit?

May the Cross you wear today remind you not only what your King has done for your life, but what His Spirit is calling you to let Him do in your life, with your life, through your life.

May the lives we live tomorrow become more like the cross we wear today.

Pray.