The Sunday of Passion: Palm Sunday
A Reflection for Morning Prayer
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The Headstrong Daughter
Every homiletics professor I ever had, every liturgics professor I ever had, always cautioned their students that the Palm Sunday Liturgy preached itself. By that they meant that the sermon should be the shortest we ever preached.
You can ask any health care professional and you will learn that this week, Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, hospital ERs will be filled with people who have attempted suicide.
So, it is with a keen awareness of the tension of these two realities that I enter into the awesome responsibility of preaching to you this morning.
Later on today, I hope you tune into a proper Palm Sunday Service. Please do not stop at this service of Morning Prayer but rather allow it to provide a foundation for you to enter more fully into Holy Week.
When you listen to the Passion of Christ, it is easy to become disconsolate and discouraged – to take a dim view of humanity and see only the destruction and debasement of anything that claims to be civilization.
If that happens, please remember this story:
"Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. "We are at our best,” Mead said, “when we serve others. Be civilized.”
As you listen to the Passion of Jesus, please remember that, when Jesus was carrying his cross and fell the first time, some in the crowd came to assist him.
Remember, please that a woman named Veronica wiped his face of sweat and blood and tears.
Remember that Jesus was never left alone – not while he suffered on the cross, not while he breathed his last breath, nor when he died and was taken down from the cross by the soldiers.
Remember that the women never left him alone.
Remember, please that a woman named Veronica wiped his face of sweat and blood and tears.
Remember that Jesus was never left alone – not while he suffered on the cross, not while he breathed his last breath, nor when he died and was taken down from the cross by the soldiers.
Remember that the women never left him alone.
Remember that the Sanhedrin had the political power to appoint the king and the high priest, declare war, and expand the territory of Jerusalem and the Temple. Judicially, it could try a high priest, a false prophet, a rebellious elder, or an errant tribe. Remember that they did not believe in resurrection as the Pharisees did.
This will be important to remember when you recall that a man named Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin who had come to him by night and had been converted to being a follower of Jesus, gave up his own tomb so that the body of Christ would not become food for the jackals.
If gloom and doubt about humanity and civilization begin to wear you down this week, remember all these things. Remember, please, that we know how the story ends. We know that, on the third day, that tomb will be empty and even though Joseph of Arimathea did not believe in resurrection, it happened. Anyway.
And, know this: By his broken bones, Jesus provided a way for the brokenness of the world to be healed.
When you feel the last temptation of Lent to give into despair, hold onto hope, my friends. Good Friday is coming, but so is Easter. Hold onto all that is good, all that is noble, all that is true, all that is hope, which Emily Dickenson described as “a thing with feathers”.
And, if you can’t remember that, remember what Margaret Mead said, “We are at our best when we serve others.”
Amen.
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