Sermon delivered on Palm Sunday C, April 10 , 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 50.4-9a; Psalm 31.9-16; Philippians 2.5-11; St. Luke 22.14-23.56.

Today is the Sunday of the Passion, better known as Palm Sunday. For those of you who love to come to church to worship (and who doesn’t?), this is your day because you get two services for the price of one, and all under two hours. For newcomers to the Christian faith—and even for mature Christians like many of you are—today’s liturgy comes as a shock because we start out on a celebratory note with the Liturgy of the Palms where we commemorate our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem as Israel’s Messiah with all its anticipation and hope, but we end with his Passion and Death. Hope and the utter death of hope, all within a breathtakingly short span of less than a week. Can you relate? What are we to make of this? This is what I want us to look at this morning. 

The story of Christ’s Passion is straightforward enough and because it is the word of God, I trust its power to speak to you in ways God intends without further exposition from me. Neither do I want to spend much time looking at why the crowds turned on Christ that week. Instead I want us to look at what St. Luke wants us to focus on as we reflect on his Passion narrative. Clearly, St. Luke, with the rest of the evangelists, sees Christ’s Passion and Death as the turning point in history. As we saw last year on Passion Sunday, like the other evangelists, St. Luke is also a sophisticated writer and we see it clearly in his Passion narrative. Where is that, you ask? I’m glad you did so I can proceed with my sermon! Inexplicably the RCL geniuses again omit a key passage from his Palm narrative that we read during the Liturgy of the Palms. St. Luke tells us that after all the acclamation from the crowds, as Christ neared Jerusalem he broke down and wept over her fate. She had failed to recognize that God had visited his people to heal and restore them, not from the hated Romans but from their slavery to the power of Sin and Death. Instead of coming to God’s people as a conquering hero as the crowds expected, the Son of God came to them riding humbly on a donkey and advocating a radical new obedience to God through self-giving love. This explains in part why the crowds turned so viciously on Christ. Whenever deeply-held expectations are violated, we humans tend to react violently and Christ clearly violated their expectations. Here was the Son of God, God-become-human, coming to his stubborn and rebellious people in humility and weakness, at least as the world defines weakness, ready to die for his stubborn and rebellious people so that they could be reconciled to God their Father and made whole again. St. Paul tells us essentially the same thing in his letter to the Romans when he writes that at just the right time, Christ came to die for us sinners to rescue us from God’s just condemnation for our sins, not because God is an angry tyrant, eager to punish us at every turn, but to deal with the problem of Sin and the alienation and death it causes. If God cannot tolerate any form of evil, how can we sinners ever hope to live with him forever? And so God came to us to die for us while we were still his enemies so that we could be reconciled to him forever (Rm 5.6-10). Until Sin’s power was broken, until our sins have been dealt with adequately, we had no hope for living in this mortal life, let alone enjoying eternal life in God’s new world. Here we see St. Luke tell us the same thing in story rather than exposition. Here is God, coming to his people to set them free, and they failed to recognize his coming. We can almost hear him ask, Reader, what in your life prevents you from recognizing God’s visitation to you and yours? This is more than an interesting question. It is a life-or-death question we all must answer and why we know St. Luke saw Christ’s saving Death as the turning point in history. Before his visitation, we were dead people walking and without hope because of our slavery to Sin’s power. But now we are set free from its power over us if only we have the eyes to see God’s coming to us in Christ, i.e., if only we have the eyes of faith to see God in our crucified and risen Savior and Lord. 

St. Luke reinforces this notion of Christ’s Death as the turning point in history in his story of Christ’s arrest. In dark Gethsemane, Christ rebukes his disciples as they prepare to fight to prevent his arrest. He also rebukes his captors for coming for him as they would a common criminal. Why did he do this? Because this was the dark powers’ hour, along with their human minions. Christ had to submit to their evil and perversity in order to break their death-dealing grip on us. Here St. Luke is reminding us that there is more going on than meets our human senses; there is more at stake than the forgiveness of our sins and reconciling us to God our Father, massively important as that is. St. Luke is reminding us that Christ is engaged in a cosmic battle to defeat the invisible forces of Evil that were unleashed when our first human ancestors sinned in the garden. Why God allows evil forces to exert control over us is beyond our knowing and we should leave those questions alone. Instead, in telling the Passion narrative, St. Luke is inviting us to peer into the darkness as best we can with God’s help and see our rescue being accomplished by none other than God himself. Until the powers of Evil are defeated, we have no hope of ever being freed from our slavery to their control. The cross, St. Luke is telling us, is how God set us free from from Evil, Sin, and Death, how God is dealing with all the evil in our lives and his world, how God has changed the course of history. This knowledge is also vitally important to us because when we do not have this knowledge or believe it to be real and true, the dark powers conspire with our hard hearts to prevent us from seeing God’s visitation in the person of Christ; and without recognizing that visitation and giving our lives to Christ, we are without hope and as good as dead. Our freedom from the powers of Evil, Sin, and Death is the result of Christ’s Passion, my beloved, along with being reconciled with God our Father, the only Source of life, and this is why we must focus on the events of this coming Holy Week, reflecting on Christ’s great love for us and our response to that great love.

Many of don’t want to do this, however. The cross is still scandalous to us, an affront to our pride and desire to be our own boss. We don’t want to believe we are helpless to fix our sin-sickness. Others of us don’t want to have to do the hard work of finding our primary identity in Christ necessary to follow him, a process that involves putting to death our evil desires and old ways of thinking, and by following the way of the cross with its call to deny self and follow him in self-giving love so that we can rise with Christ and live with him forever in God’s new world. This, BTW, is how we should talk to those who struggle with their identities and seek to find themselves in death-dealing ways. None of these false ideologies will do because only in Christ do we find health, healing, and life. But we can’t help others find their identity in Christ if we haven’t learned it first for ourselves. Holy Week is a perfect time to start or continue in this process and if your schedule permits it, I exhort you to make Christ’s Death your own this week by attending the full slate of services we offer.

Start by reading and meditating on the Passion narratives on your own this week and then come with our Lord to the Upper Room Thursday night where he will give his disciples a meal as the means to help them understand what his impending passion and death is all about. Watch with him in the garden as he struggles and shrinks from the gigantic task of allowing the powers of Evil to do their worst to him, and the prospect of having to bear the judgment of God for the sins of the entire world, your sins and mine. Our own personal sins can be a terrible burden to us. Try to imagine having to bear the sins of the entire world and looking into the face of the Devil while you do! With that in mind, come and venerate the cross on Good Friday as you ponder and contemplate the presence of God among us in the death of his Son for your sake and the sake of the world. Such contemplation demands silence, desolation, humility, and honest confession that your sins and mine are also responsible for the godforsaken death of our Lord. Was there ever any suffering like our Lord’s (and if you answer yes to this question, there’s a good chance you don’t really understand the magnitude of what happened on Good Friday!)? Grieve with his first followers as they laid his crucified and dead body in the tomb with no expectation of Easter Sunday. Holy Saturday is the time to do just that, culminating with the Easter Vigil and the reading of the story of God’s salvation on Saturday evening and the renewal of our baptismal vows where we are reminded that we are yoked to Christ in his dying and rising and will therefore share in his suffering and glory. It simply won’t do to observe any of this from afar. It’s as unedifying as listening to one of Father Sang’s or Father Wylie’s sermons. Everything has changed because of Christ crucified and raised from the dead. That’s why we call it the Good News of Jesus Christ! We are no longer dead people walking, but rather Christ’s own forever, sealed with his precious blood and confirmed every time we come to the Table to feed on his body and blood. No, if you really love your Lord and have even an inkling as to what great love has effected your salvation and changed the course of history forever, how can you possibly stay away from our Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil services? You will rob Easter Sunday of its great power and joy if you fail to participate in these saving events. And on an even more somber note, if you are unwilling to give Christ your all as you are able, especially this week, you are likely living a lie and a delusion regarding your relationship with Christ and you probably need to take it up with him in prayer. So let none of us be too hasty to celebrate the Pascha next Sunday without first pondering and agonizing and reflecting on the great and astonishing love of God that flows from God’s very heart, a heart that was pierced by a Roman soldier’s spear, a heart through which a saving love was poured out for you and your salvation. To be sure, this isn’t a pretty or fun thing to do or contemplate. But if you commit yourself to walking with Christ this Holy Week it will change you in ways you cannot imagine or envision, and for the good. It will help you recognize God’s visitation to you in Christ and it will change you because it is the Good News of our salvation. May we all observe a blessed Holy Week together as the family of God’s people in Christ here at St. Augustine’s. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon delivered on Lent 5C, Sunday, April 3, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Passiontide begins today.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 43.16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3.4b-14; St. John 12.1-8.

What does it mean for God to “do a new thing”? 

In the days of Isaiah 43, the people were very discouraged and feeling quite unsure about God’s power as they saw the strength of the threatening super- power (nation) that was overwhelming them. Through Isaiah, God spoke a tremendous promise to the people, first reminding them of another time when a brand-new deed of God had been needed.
“Remember that I am the God who drowned Pharaoh’s army after making it possible for my people to walk with dry feet across the parted sea out of slavery. I did something new and marvelous then; I can do something new and marvelous now.”

The prophet Isaiah urges the people to forget the former things and behold the new ways that God is changing and renewing their lives for a greater good. But in order for them to see the new things that God is doing, they must open their eyes and see God. 

As human beings there are so many memories and experiences thwarting our movement into a fresh encounter with God. The windows of our hearts and souls are clouded with memories of the pain, hurt, and betrayal we have experienced over the years. But God wants to change all of that. God says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Will you not perceive it? Will you not know it? It springs up right before your very eyes. It is right before you. Can you not see it?” What new thing is God then doing in our lives?

As Christians, we point also to another deliverance, God’s deliverance of humanity from no hope to every hope through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God brought forth a new deed by doing something no “proper” god would have done: God became vulnerable to us by exposing to us his great love for us. It was a new thing, unheard of, inconceivable. And it had as its purpose one intent: to show us how to enter personally into new, joyful, freed-up life and relationship with God.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we saw a woman, in John’s version Mary the sister of Lazarus, who anointed Jesus’ feet. She would not have been a prostitute, unlike the woman in the story from the gospel of Luke (Luke 7:36-50), for she was Lazarus’ sister, also the sister of Martha. Martha served Jesus dinner. Let’s put the occasion into context. Jesus had just raised their brother, Lazarus, from the dead. This was an action which caused the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews, to decide that Jesus must die. “From that day on, they took counsel to put Jesus to death.” (John 11:53) Later, in the same chapter as today’s lesson, Jesus will announce that the hour of his death has come (12:20-36).

Facing death, Jesus, and apparently his close disciple Judas, who would soon betray him, ate at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Even as they ate, something new was happening, for Mary took a huge step outside of the social convention of her day.

While Martha did her usual part in the kitchen, Mary, never the practical one, anointed Jesus’ feet by letting down her hair and pouring some very high-priced ointment all over them.

According to tradition, nobody anointed feet in those days. “If one had expensive, perfumed oil, other parts of the body were anointed, but not the feet. Feet were not customarily anointed until after death, when a body was being prepared for burial.” This means that Mary was treating Jesus, who had just given life to dead Lazarus, as though he were already dead. And it is suggested that in her action, Mary could not have known that her act of extravagance prepared Jesus for the greatest act of extravagance of all – the Cross.

Judas was appalled at what happened between Mary and Jesus. He was offended by her extravagance, stating that the money she had spent on the oil should have been used in a more appropriate way, to feed the poor. The entire story for today, however, would tell us that God was doing something beyond what WE or any other religious group might define as “appropriate.” doing something New, God was being extravagant as Jesus headed toward Jerusalem to give up his own life so that others could and can live.

The religious folks of Jesus’ day couldn’t see the NEW things God was doing through Jesus, but a woman who seemed not only impractical but without propriety WAS able to see and embrace God’s new ways. Judas, a man who had walked closely with Jesus during his ministry, couldn’t accept what God was doing when it didn’t fit within his definition of what God should do. In John’s Gospel, those who should have seen never do, and the unexpected ones catch on just fine. The final irony in this story: Just as Judas sanctimoniously criticized Mary’s extravagance, he himself ended up being the catalyst for the largest extravagance ever, the pouring out of Jesus’ life. “Do not remember former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing…” (Is. 43:18-19)

Does anybody here this morning really think that God is doing something new today? Are we expecting it? Are we looking for it? Do we even want it?

In our Epistle lesson today, Paul outlines a lengthy list of his own accomplishments. He does this often in his letters to the early church, in part as a common way of giving credibility to what he was going to say in line with the rhetorical patterns of the day, and also because he often was up against others who claimed to be the religious authorities on this newly emerging Christianity (see the “Super apostles” in 2 Corinthians). At the beginning of our passage, Paul again lists his resume, and it’s a good one. He talks about his background and heritage, his education, his passion and religious convictions, and his righteous lifestyle. This is the total package.

Paul writes about dismissal of his resume. Eugene Peterson’s The Message interprets verses 7 and 8 like this:

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash – along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ.

God is doing a new thing.

Paul is so compelled, so transformed by the good news of the gospel that he cannot help but leave all that he knew, all that he had worked for and gained, all that he was, behind. It’s important here to note that what he was leaving wasn’t bad. As Fred Craddock reminds us: Paul does not toss away junk to gain Christ; he tosses away that which was of tremendous value to him. Therein lies the extraordinary impact of his testimony and the high commendation of faith in Jesus Christ . . . What Paul is saying is that Christ surpasses everything of worth to me. And let’s the worth go.

God doing a new thing.

Often times in talking about letting go of things in faith, especially during this season of Lent, we talk about giving up the things that are weighing us down– our sins and shortcomings. But here, we are also reminded that sometimes developing our faith involves giving up those things that can be seen as good, but still get in the way of our best relationship with God. 

For Paul, that is what happens when he lets all the other things fall away and instead is simply focuses on knowing Jesus Christ. This knowledge of his Savior is what allows him to remember what truly matters, and more importantly, who matters.  He can only get there by letting go, and pushing forward into the future.

What is it that is getting on your way in having the best relationship with God that you are called to let go?

I hear the words of the prophet Isaiah echoing in the background:
            “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. God is about to do something brand-new. Don’t you see it?

Let us pray:
Lord, you know how un-new we are inside, how worn out and worn down, how much we need to be changed by this Lenten season and Holy Week as they show us your heart and then Easter promises Christ’s hope and promise. Touch us now, make our hearts new, and show us how to truly share in Jesus’ Passion and Life. In the name of God, the Father the son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.