April 13, 2003

Palm Sunday

A Sermon by The Rev. Merrill Wade

My senses are overloaded.

At this point on Palm Sunday I am struggling to make sense of this vast cacophony of noise and image. I thank God that I have been to the Mount of Olives, like many of you have, and I have walked down the path that Jesus’ likely would have entered Jerusalem on this Palm Sunday. And in my imagination, I can see children rushing up to the scene, laughing, shouting, and echoing the passions of the adults - soaking up the spontaneity and surprise of that scene. One knows that spontaneity and surprise are such wonderful gifts to children and to those who remain young at heart.

Another image: I’ve never been to Iraq. Yet in my mind’s eye, trained by the television screen, I can see adults and children swaying and cheering as Saddam Hussein walks through the plaza. I’ve not been to Iraq, yet in my mind’s eye, I can see adults and children swaying and cheering and running about happily, yet almost madly, as American and British troops enter the city.

Images swirl this morning, from the Gospel and from the world we live in. I’ve not been to Viet Nam or Hong Kong or China, yet in my mind’s eye I can see and sense the fear and determination of those in the infectious diseases community around the world, gathering, working to find the source of this SARS epidemic that threatens our world.

Like you, I’ve had the privilege to hold the hands of a very sick and dying person. So many around us are getting sick and dying.

Images swirl in my mind’s eye. I can see Jesus being whipped and led to execution. I can hear the biting vitriol and the pent up hate. I can sense it.

So many images swirled this last Friday afternoon, Eric Liles and I were returning from Camp Allen after our spiritual formation retreat. We were driving back to Austin when we passed a car that had been totally made over to look like a cockroach. Yes, it actually looked like a cockroach, so we waved at the guy, who was crazy, and he blows his horn back at us and, of course, it plays "La Cucaracha." You know the old saying about "Keeping Austin Weird", it is. This weekend is the Austin Car Art Event.

And in my mind’s eye, with you, yet still I can see flamingos, gracing yards and yards of yards. What are we to do with the sounds and images that simultaneously bewilder and sadden and cheer us and frighten us and encourage us?

This is Holy Week. Sacred times, sacred space for the soul. But all of the images and sounds that rip at the fabric of our senses, that can misshape those portals of our souls, these can be focused this week. All of them can be focused. All of them can be focused to the one that stands ultimately and finally at center stage.

In this week, we Christians especially focus on Jesus and the drama of his last week of living. The church urges unusual commitment and attendance this week. For we attempt to step out of the cacophony and to narrow our focus onto the one Jesus. We gather for Holy Communion on Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 7:00 a.m., hearing the stories of that Holy Week that our lectionary provides, allowing us to deepen our understanding of his experiences of having his feet touched by Mary, blessed with nard as she understands his burial. We hear of Judas making the deal with the leadership. Jesus entering the temple, dealing with the money-changers - "My house shall be a place of prayer for all nations."

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we share our devotions with other churches. With our Christian brothers and sisters from Ascension Lutheran, First Presbyterian, Highland Park Baptist, Northwest Hills Methodist, St. Theresa’s Catholic Church, as we host, here at St. Matthew’s, ecumenical services. We gather at 11:30 a.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for a simple meal in Huffman Hall. We come over here at 12:15 for musical preludes and a 30-minute period of scripture, song and a meditation.

Every day, each day, of this Holy Week we will continue our faithful Evening Prayers in the Bell Tower at the center of our Campus. Reading the scripture and interceding for one another and for the world that swirls around us in such an array of sounds and sights.

Then we come to what we call the Triduum, the three days of even more heightened devotion, of greater focus, of seeing Jesus more clearly. The Maundy Thursday liturgy is Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. And in this service, our senses and spirits are thrust deeply into the life of Jesus and into the very heart of Jesus and indeed, into the very heart of God.

The liturgy begins joyfully, chanting the Gloria in Excelsis as we remember that on this night, Jesus gave to his church the Holy Eucharist, breaking the bread and pouring the chalice out for us. "This is my body. This is my blood," he says.

Then the reading from the Gospel of John. John tell us that at that Last Supper, Jesus took a towel and a basin of water and washed the feet of his disciples, a final act of robust servanthood – what an amazing act of grace at a time of tremendous stress and impending danger. So, we do the same.

We do something that we normally would not do. We expose ourselves. We make ourselves vulnerable to one another, removing our shoes and socks and washing one another’s feet. In this we don’t simply reenact what Jesus did, but we make real, to make readily apparent to one another, his expectation that we serve each other. That we serve each other and therefore serve the world that Jesus loved and gave himself for. You will be invited to come forward. There will be stations with bowls and basins across here to wash the feet of someone in attendance and to have your feet washed.

At the conclusion of the liturgy that Maundy Thursday night, we recall that Jesus agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Remove this cup from me. Yet, not what I want but what you want." Jesus is praying about his impending death. He is fearful and agitated. He has brought his three best friends with him to support him. They sleep. They turn away. He is alone.

To symbolize this betrayal at the conclusion of the liturgy, the clergy are stripped of the signs of their office, the altar is stripped bare, and the church is reduced to its barest light. Finally, in the near darkness, we read the story of Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asks his friends, "Could you not keep awake with me for one hour?" We are invited to respond with a "yes" to that question. We are now, each of us individually, and together as a congregation, focusing on Jesus. We can begin to see him more clearly, if we are willing. "Could you not keep awake with me one hour?" becomes a question for us.

If Episcopalians have something that you might call a revival, I suppose this is it. This is where we come our clearest vision of Jesus in his human suffering and self-giving. The Bell Tower will be open all night for prayers as you seek to answer our Lord’s question with your devotions. A sign up sheet for the prayer vigil is out there in the Commons. We’ll have a security guard through the night.

The Maundy Thursday prayer vigil of this great Holy Week persists up until 12 noon on Good Friday when the church gathers for the Good Friday Liturgy. In this liturgy we will hear the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to John, once again being assaulted with the sounds and images of the last hours of his life.

Then we will be encouraged to do something else quite unusual. We will venerate this large cross on our altar. By this I mean we will come forward and touch it with a prayer in our hearts, or briefly kneel before it, or make the sign of the cross before it or reverently make a solemn bow before it, but in some way, if you choose to participate to offer yourself to this sign, not worshiping the cross, but worshiping Jesus Christ as he has given himself on the cross. This time of veneration is a time for us to set this cross apart as a symbol of the death of Jesus in our midst.

So we continue as we began, as a large group. We continue to focus our prayers and our hearts, together as a group and as individuals, on Jesus, seeing him ever more clearly. We again gather at 5:45PM as our children will walk the Stations of the Cross with our Children’s Minister. At 6:00PM, we will walk the Station of the Cross throughout our campus pausing to reverence Christ step by step as he moves along his Way of Sorrows to crucifixion.

And as he is laid in the tomb and we await, our vision is quite narrow at this point. We see the cross and all its pathos, yet we sense its promise because we know the power of this story. And we trust the author of our salvation for all things, for we know that a truly spontaneous surprise awaits us and indeed, the whole world, Easter.

And we find that we can again open our vision to see and accept all these swirling images, all these noises and sounds, the tragedy and beauty of the world around us. We may not be happy with it but we can accept it, we can see it with new hope for we know that all is never lost. Our senses will be overloaded again with lights and colors and the wonders of Christ’s victory. And in that passage through Holy Week we learn that we can trust Jesus again, and again, and again. Amen.