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‘B’ // Palm/Passion Sunday // 4-5-09 // Celebration of Worship,
Northside Presbyterian & St. Aidan’s Episcopal Churches
Scriptures Mark 11:1-11 (Procession of the Palms)
Mark 14:26-15:47 (Passion of Jesus)
Dying to Love Us
I have to confess: After hearing the scripture of Jesus’ triumphal entry before our Procession of the Palms this morning and experiencing the lengthy Passion narrative with you just a few moments ago, I don’t rightly know whether I am coming or going!
And so, in my confusion as to which end of Holy Week is up, I bid you: Would you join me as I send the following prayerful sermon to God this morning? Please pray with me – however you are accustomed to praying – for the course of the next few minutes. I’ve kept it briefer than most sermons, I trust – the better to let the copious scripture narratives we have already heard speak for themselves.
Lord of all love, and God of all grace –
We rejoice with the madding, palm-laden Jerusalem crowd as they welcome today their king – your son – our Lord.
We rejoice with them as he comes riding in with humility: on a jackass that’s never been ridden.
We rejoice with them as he comes riding with humility into the Holy City from Bethphage and Bethany – from the east – while Roman governor Pontius Pilate – and his great white steed – and his garrison for Passover crowd control – loomed ominously, from the west.1
Ominously, from the west: To potect imperial interests. To build new nations. To resist indigenous celebrations of liberations lost – of Passovers past …
-- in Palestine
-- in Afghanistan
– in Iraq.
Looming ominously, from the west.
We rejoice, O God, that our Prince of Peace has arrived in humility to Jerusalem today. Arriving from the east, to save us from our addiction to war from the west.
We rejoice – let us say it – that he has come to save us from ourselves.
And yet: What – O God – is Jesus saving us for?
Is he saving us for living one final week of life with him – a last gasp at revolution – until his death do us part?
Or is he saving us, not for his final days of life unto his death, but for our ongoing deaths unto our renewals of life –
Saving us for our deaths – our dyings to desire – you call us to die each and every day:
n Dying to the desire to honk at the jerk who cut us off in traffic, that we might realize she is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.
n Dying to the desire to judge the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly, that we might discover he is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.
n Dying to the desire to look the other way from that scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!), that we might come to understand he is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.
n Dying to our desire to grouse at that old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress, that we might come to see they are savoring this moment – knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.
n Dying to our desire to stay where we are in life, when we are being called otherwise – even, elsewhere …
Dying to our desire to cling to life as we know it – and life as we want it – and life as we imagine it should, and would, and could, and must be. All because we would purposely or purposelessly avoid – all around us, and at all costs – your gracious nudges of struggle and sorrow and sadness.
These are the deaths – the deaths of our desires:
Our desires to be frustrated …
Our desires to be anxious …
Our desires to be apathetic ...
Our desires to be angry …
Our desires to be fearful.
These are the deaths – the deaths of our desires – you call us to die each day, O God.
You call us – dare we say, you save us – to die to them. That we might find room within us and among us for your one true desire – your Passion – unawares. In our midst, already. In our midst, always.
You call us to die to these desires. For this very week, you are desiring to show us, in your very flesh, that you are dying to love us.
Not dying among us – or dying to spite us – or dying in spite of us – or even dying for us.
But you, this very week, are dying to love us!
O Lord of all love, and God of all grace –
As you die to love us this week – let us learn, day by day, in every way, to die to love you, as well. In our neighbors. In your creation. In all your living creatures. Even … in ourselves.
That in the midst of our deaths – and death all around us – there may be new life … and new life, abundant!
In the name of our Prince of Peace – and the jackass he rode in on –
we make this, our prayer …
we make this, our hope …
we make this, our joy!
Amen, and amen!
1For a delightful excursus on Mark’s symbolic contrast of Jesus “counterprocession” entering from the east as Pilate’s forces were entering Jerusalem from the west for the Passover week, see Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem (Harper San Francisco, 2006), pp. 2-5. | 
