Palm Sunday Yr B

This is one of the hardest stories to hear. Jesus, friend of the sinner, friend of the outcast, friend of the marginalized, put to death in the most horrific way possible, on a cross. Maybe some of you even squirm listening to me say it. It's hard to look in the face of death, especially when that death is violent and innocent. Remember when we all went to see The Passion of Christ? One of the criticisms was that it was so graphic. Who needs to see all that blood and gore? And yet, we'll go to the movies to see body parts and blood and guts flying across the screen when it's an action adventure, or a horror movie.

But when we go to church we really don't want to be confronted with life and death, do we. We really just want to feel good, sing some good songs, say hi to our friends, and then go out to breakfast. And then we are confronted with this story. Jesus was tortured and killed by the government of his day, for turning the tables, for raising the dead, for freeing the imprisoned.

It's not much different than what we do most of the time. We shy away from death and grief. Our language even reflects our discomfort with death. People say that someone has passed away, what does that mean? Or we lost our mother last week. What did she do, get stuck behind the sofa? Death is real and grief hurts. We know this, we are in the midst of it. A world without sadness is a world without importance. If we are not sad, if we are not inconsolable at the death of our loved ones, or at the death of so many we don't even know, we have lost the importance of human life, and we have lost humanity's relationship to our Creator God.

I read, like many of you, the Hunger Games. You may know the story because it's in the movie theaters now. It is an awful story, incredibly well written and awful. It's the story of a culture that has lost the ability to be sad at death. And like the gladiators of old in the coliseum, these killings are televised for the country to watch. But what makes these killings even more horrible, it is children killing children. Human life, life, becomes unimportant. Relationship, has become unimportant. Someone must point humanity toward toward the dignity and importance of life, in the Hunger Games, the main characters do that. In the story before us today, Jesus points humanity toward the importance of life. Jesus collects all of our pain and suffering and embraces it, Jesus takes it with him, and leaves us with love. Joy and pain, are part of love.

The week that lays before us, Holy Week, encourages us to live fully and completely in the sadness of death, and the joy of life. Both things are happening simultaneously. One cannot happen without the other. I encourage you to participate fully in the events of this week, the darkness and hope of the Service of Darkness on Wednesday night. The servant ministry of foot washing and holy communion on Thursday night. The story of Jesus passion told again in a new way on Friday night. And the Great Vigil on Saturday night, when we light the new fire of Easter, when we tell the epic stories that form us as a people, when we baptize and renew our own baptism, when we rejoice in the acclamation of Jesus resurrection, and the new life that affects for each of us.

I invite you to a Holy Week.