This is one of those sermons you really want to listen to. Trust me. It was a weird week and the sermon didn't even really come together until it was coming out of my mouth (thanks be to God). You can find the video recording at this link. Or, if you must, read the manuscript below.
Well, that escalated quickly didn’t? This is one of the most bizarre Sundays on our church calendar. We enter waving palm branches proclaiming Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, singing praises to our God and King. That was only a few minutes ago, wasn’t it?
And then our joyful shouts of Hosanna quickly become pleas for a gruesome and painful death. Crucify, Crucify him the crowds cry out!
This feels like absolute liturgical whiplash.
Hosanna in the highest we shouted! Crucify him, we cry. It seems the deepest tensions of our faith are on display within minutes in a single service of worship.
And it does sort of make us wonder: What happened? How did we get here? How did the crowds turn so quickly? How did the tone change in just a matter of moments?
Cloaks that once paved the way for the one who comes in the name of the Lord, now stripped from Jesus the king of the Jews, as he’s mocked and beaten. Palm branches turned to reeds for striking. Tears of joy turns to weeping and mourning. Hope smudged with fear.
Hosanna, we shout. Crucify him! We cry.
What a tenuous, unnerving moment this is for our faith. I mean it’s one thing to spend 40 days, a full season of Lent in penitence and repentance… taking on the gut-churning work of introspection… but then there is this one day when we move so quickly from triumph to anguish that as a preacher, I’m not even sure what to do with it.
Welcome to Holy Week.
Holy week calls us to wrestle with the uncomfortable. To situate ourselves in the unpleasant reality of our history in faith. There is no denying the angst that stirs-up within us as we transition abruptly from Palm Sunday to Passion Sunday. It happens in a matter of minutes.
As we do with many Bible stories, we tend to try to find ourselves within each of the characters in the narrative. We shift uncomfortably in our seats as we think:
I would never turn on Jesus! How could Judas do such a thing. No amount of money or bribe would cause me to turn on my faith… would it? And Peter— what a coward! There’s no way I would deny Jesus… especially three times… right? And of course there’s no way you’d find me in the crowd that convicts him… crying out for his death. I mean I may not stand in opposition to the crowd, but I certainly wouldn’t be shouting “crucify him!”
This is the only week, in the entire Christian church year that we read the story of Jesus’ passion. For 6 days a year we focus on Jesus’ death. And if we are people who proclaim both the death and resurrection of Jesus, then it seems to me that this week in our church calendar is an important one.
We need this Holy Week. Not simply to be reminded of Jesus’ gruesome and inhumane crucifixion… but we need this tenuous, gut-wrenching week, because caught between “Hosanna in the Highest” and “Crucify him” is an entire existence of human emotion. This week is important for our faith because it gives us a space to shout. To Groan. To cry out. More than any other place in our liturgy and in our tradition, this week lets us feel all the feelings.
As a society, we are generally not very good at feeling all the feelings. We are often given a day of two to grieve the death of our loved ones before we feel the pressure of moving on. We only get a couple of hours or maybe a day to really fully celebrate a deep joy in our life with our family and friends. We seem to live in a society that tells us that we can feel, just not too much. Not so much that it might make someone else uncomfortable. Or it might interrupt the normal productivity of the day. Perhaps you have felt this pressure before? The pressure to stifle a sob in the midst of a horrible day, or even the pressure to suppress your excitement over a new job or promotion for fear of making other’s feel bad.
But this week… I might invite you to feel all of your feelings, like we do in the span of just an hour here in worship. Hope, anger, grief, fear, embarrassment— whatever we might need to feel in these moments, feel them. Because we are living in an odd time. We can feel the whiplash of hope and despair in our communal lives right now— the hope that as vaccines become available we might be getting closer and closer to “normal life” once again… and the despair for all that we have lost this year and the reality that nothing will every truly be normal again. The hope of new life and growth within our community, and the grief of looking around to notice who is missing.
So whether we shout with hope, anger, or everything in between… Holy Week embraces the complexity of our deepest feelings. Our restlessness is given a voice and a place. Our grief, mourning, frustrations, and angst are heard. Holy Week empowers us to be vulnerable.
We cry out to Jesus with a longing. We groan for hope.
We shout at the temptation of sin. We cry out in fear.
God meets us here. God meets us in this tension and this vulnerability. In fact, God calls us to it.
As we shout our way to the cross this week, don’t hold back.
Holy Week welcomes you. Invites you and your restless soul to cry out to the Lord.
And whatever it stirs up within you, embrace it. If today’s text causes you wrestle...wrestle. If it makes you tremble...then tremble.
Because most of all, we enter Holy Week with the faith, hope, and love.
Faith in a God who not only hears our cries, but took on our cries as his own in the flesh and blood of Christ Jesus.
Faith in a God who abides with us in our fleeing, denying, and wandering alone.
Hope in a God who takes the groans of the world, the shouts of longing, the desperate pleas, and the cries of fear, and nails them to the cross.
Hope in a God who on the third day bellows from an empty tomb that Jesus Christ is risen. He is not here.
Love from a God who offers a new cry...
A new cry that will raise up and resonate across the world as voices of all times and places cry out in endless song and praise.
On the third day God gives light and life to our longing.
The laments of God’s people are heard.
And so it is with sure hope and confidence in the resurrection of our Lord and Savior that we enter into Holy Week.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Amen.
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