Even Here, God Is With Us

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Mark 14:1-15:47. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

One of the things that always gets to me about Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion, is the incredible mix of emotions that we feel in this service. As we join together in the Palm Parade, and the Reading of the Passion, and the celebration of the Eucharist, our prayers and our devotions and our thoughts and our feelings get tugged in all sorts of different directions, our emotions get all mixed up together, we aspire to some parts of this experience and we recoil from others, we have the greatest joy and the deepest sorrow side by side, cheek by jowl — and somehow we have to deal with the whole range of it.

I mean, just think of all the emotions we cram into this one liturgy:

At one moment we are waving our palms and shouting “Hosanna!” and singing “All glory, laud, and honor to thee, Redeemer, King” and generally carrying on like it’s all a big celebration. At another moment we are receiving the bread and wine and feeling our communion with Christ in his Body and Blood. At still another moment we are taking the part of the Crowd in the Passion reading and shouting out — even though we’re horrified at the sound of our own voices shouting it — we shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Celebration and communion and horror: it’s all there, it’s all mixed together.

At one moment we remember how Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, how Jesus consciously and deliberately identified himself as Messiah, coming to the holy city in the way the prophet promised the holy messiah would come. At another moment we remember how Jesus showed such tender love and companionship for his disciples by giving them a sign to remember him by — and not just to remember him, but to feel his presence with them — when he gave them bread and said, “This is my body, my substance, my life — break this bread and share it in remembrance of me.” At yet another moment we remember how Jesus cried out in terrible despair, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, why have you forgotten me, why have you abandoned me?” You know, in Mark’s version of the Passion, which we read today, Mark includes Jesus’ cry of dereliction in Aramaic, which was the everyday language of the people. Matthew includes the cry in Hebrew, which was the language of the scriptures, so Matthew makes it clear that Jesus is quoting from Psalm 22. But Mark quotes the cry in Aramaic, hinting that for Jesus this wasn’t just a Psalm, it was the way he was really feeling, it was the cry of his deepest heart. In this moment we remember how Jesus, even Jesus, felt personally lost and abandoned and forsaken by God. And yet, even in that desolate moment, Jesus still called out to God, "My God, my God." Messiahship and companionship and abandonment: it’s all there, it’s all mixed together.

At one moment we feel joy, and at the next moment sorrow. At one moment we feel triumph, and at the next moment tragedy. At one moment we feel full to bursting with the love of God, and at the next moment we feel empty and abandoned and lost. It’s all here, and it’s all mixed up together.

And that makes this Palm Sunday liturgy a lot like real life. Because our experiences, our moments, our lives come with all sorts of feelings, all sorts of emotions, all sorts of thoughts and interpretations and decisions all mixed up together, all tugging us this way and that way, back and forth, up and down. We know all about having to deal with this huge range of emotions. Our Palm Sunday liturgy isn’t just a historical remembrance or a dramatic re-enactment of something long past; it’s our own lives, our own world, how we live, connected, here and now, with the story of Jesus’ life.

One moment we are working on a relationship, building a friendship, thinking we're establishing a real connection and a real rapport — and the next moment an unkind word or a careless act can make us wonder if there's really any friendship there.

One moment we feel like we're finally getting some recovery from the lingering recession — and the next moment a bad earnings report, or an unexpected personal bill, throws us back into a sudden sense of insecurity.

One moment we feel firm in our faith, enjoying the warm community and close friendships we have here in our church — and the next moment we are reminded that the church is changing, the church is always changing, and we feel our faith is challenged to go outside ourselves and take risks to invite and welcome new people, perhaps people very different from us, to come to know Christ’s love in this place.

One moment life itself feels like a splendid gift from God — and the next ... I remember one time when the weather was beautiful, and the day was free, and I went out for a bike ride in the morning and rejoiced in the sheer wonderfulness of God’s creation and the privilege of being — and when I got back there was a phone message waiting for me, that someone had been taken to the emergency room, and I felt the sudden chill of wondering where was God in all of this.

We know only too well what it is to be tugged around by all these different feelings. This Passion Sunday liturgy, with all its ups and downs, is a mirror of our own real lives.

And that’s why the good news of Palm Sunday speaks to us exactly where we are. Because the good news is that God is here in the midst of all of it, God is at work in the whole range of feelings, the whole mix of emotions, God is working to bring good out of it all, to bring a happy issue our of all our afflictions — even when it seems to us that God is a million miles away, even when it seems to us that we must cry out, “God, why have you forsaken us?”, even when it seems to us that the powers of death and destruction and despair have won, even then, God is still here, and the love of God will never, ever, ever let us go. The good news is that this whole range of crazy, mixed-up emotions is precisely the place where God is with us, precisely the place where God will form us into people of new life.

That is why we celebrate today. That is why we sing. That is why we wave our palms and shout Hosannas. That is why we read the Passion. That is why we shout “Crucify!” That is why we break bread and pour wine. That is why we say “Amen.” Because God is with us here, in the midst of it, in the whole range of thoughts and feelings and emotions and decisions that we reflect in this Palm Sunday liturgy. And it is because God is here with us in it all that we can pray: “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of Christ’s suffering today, and also share in his resurrection in the days to come.”

May you have a blessed and transformative Holy Week. Amen.