Trinity Episcopal Church Hattiesburg, Mississippi Palm Sunday April 1, 2007 Go To Trinity's Home Page

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 23:1-49
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 75 th General Convention of the ECUSA

The assembly of the elders of the people rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.” Then Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He answered, “You say so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.” But they were insistent and said, “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.” When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies. Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him.” Then they all shouted out together, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!” (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.” But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished. As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.” And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. (Luke 23:1-49)

It is finished; it has only begun
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     Passion Sunday asks us – begs us really – to forget all about Easter morning and the resurrection, and to dwell in the betrayal, cruelty, and horror that we commemorate this week.[1] It asks us to forget that we will see the church filled once again with beautiful altar cloths and polished silver, and overflowing with the scent of beautiful Easter lilies. It begs us to forget the magnificent proclamation that we will sing next Sunday in “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.” Passion Sunday asks us to stop dead at the beginning of our walk through Holy Week, and remind ourselves that before the resurrection, the man we look up to as God incarnate, the perfect human who loved all of humanity with such purity and selflessness, died an excruciating and painful death at the hands of his fellow human beings.

     I am giving you nails as a reminder of what we are about this day. As I will hand them out, please pass them around so that each of you has a nail by the end of this homily. When you get your nail, hold it, look at it. Imagine that you are outside the walls of Jerusalem near the place where the city’s refuse was dumped. A place called Golgotha, the place of the skull. Imagine that you are a follower; someone who wandered with Jesus as he preached and taught. 

     To you, Jesus was someone very special. A man in whose life and words and work you saw the very face of God. A man who taught us that the love of neighbor was an act of godliness. A man who listened and cared, a man who somehow always put the other person first. A man who was willing to really walk the walk and live the life of a man of God. A man who loved so purely and so completely that just being near him caused you to feel weak, to tremble, and gave you a lump in your throat. 

     Now, look! There he is, lying on the ground in front of us, with his arms and legs outstretched. A soldier is pounding nails one at a time through his wrists and ankles. Centuries of precise knowledge are at work here, each nail is placed at the exact spot where it will inflict the greatest amount of pain. With each blow, and with each cry of pain from our friend Jesus, we realize with brutal finality that “it is finished.” 

     Now, he is raised up on that rough wood cross just above our heads. He is close enough that we can see the blood from his scourged back staining the splintered wood as his body sags under its own weight.

     There he is, hanging above our heads. He is in excruciating pain, slowly suffocating as the weight of his body overcomes the ability of his arms to hold him up. He is naked, alone, dying in disgrace. Abandoned by his followers, he was the victim of religion, society, and the state. 

     Who are you at Golgotha? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Are you one of the disciples who first defended Jesus, but then ran away in fear? Are you like Peter, who denied even knowing him? Are you one of the women with the beloved disciple at Jesus’ feet? Do you identify with his mother? 

     I wonder if I would have been one of the priests who did everything possible to be sure that people understood the horrific consequences of blasphemy. I wonder if I would have been a soldier taking advantage of this man’s misfortune and gambling for his clothing. I wonder if I would have cried out “Take him away! Crucify him!” and then gone on about the daily business of living. Who are you? Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

     The gospels preserve the depth of contradictions in the attitudes toward Jesus. Pilate attempted to release Jesus, but then turned him over for crucifixion. The bandits crucified with him chose to deride him as they hung next to him dying as well. The centurion who oversaw the execution of Jesus was so moved by his death that he declared Jesus, truly God’s son. . 

     As fickle as the people who knew Jesus were, one thing became clear to the early church. And that was that was a relationship between salvation and looking upon a crucified God. How very puzzling this is. The theologian, Jürgen Moltman in his book The Crucified God, says that the cross is “the really irreligious thing in Christian faith. It is the suffering of God in Christ, rejected and killed in the absence of God, which qualifies Christian Faith as faith, and as something different from the projection of [our own] desire.”[2] The cross is a symbol that speaks powerfully, and like every other symbol, it points to something beyond itself. The cross points to “the God who was crucified not between two candles on an altar, but between two thieves in the place of the skull, where outcasts belong.”[3]

     The cross doesn’t just invite thought; it demands a change of mind. It is a symbol that leads beyond our comfort zones into fellowship with the hurt, the abandoned, and the oppressed. At the same time, it also calls the oppressed, the lonely, and the hurting into fellowship with the crucified God who knows pain and suffering like no other. 

     Somewhere in the crowd when Jesus died was an old man named Joseph who must have felt close to death himself, for he had had his own tomb recently hewn out of the rock. When Jesus died, Joseph did an extraordinary thing. He went to the governor of the Roman Empire, and asked for Jesus’ body. It was risky business asking the Roman government for anything, but it was especially risky to ask for the body of a man who had just been executed as a political prisoner, and about whom extraordinary mystical claims had been made. But Joseph took a chance and was granted the body of Jesus. With reverence and care he wrapped the body in a “clean linen cloth” and laid it in his own new tomb. This was an extravagant and generous act on the part of this stranger.

     Why did he do it? Because he was a disciple. He wasn’t one o the twelve apostles, but just somebody like you and me who recognized the godliness in Jesus. He was one of the followers of Jesus who really and truly understood the call of the Gospel. Joseph of Arimathea recognized the pain of Mary Magdalene and the others who wept at the foot of the cross that day. He felt compassion, and was moved to act with care and generosity. 

     And that is the call of the Gospel to us still: to reach beyond the walls of our own selves and to adopt humanity as our own family: to clothe the naked; to feed the hungry; to give drink to the thirsty; to shelter the homeless; to visit the sick; to bury the dead. We are to enter into solidarity with the victimized. That is the call from the cross to us today. Were you there when they pierced him in the side? Did you hear that call from the cross?

     The nails you have are tangible reminders of that crucifixion and its varied symbolic meanings. They are reminders of the pain endured at Golgotha and the pain still suffered in so many places of the world. How many crucifixions take place today? That is a word we use today to describe serious harm done to someone – usually harm that is especially cruel or unjustified. How many such crucifixions have we explicitly condoned, or contributed to by unfounded talk or action, or tacitly accepted by silence or indifference?  The nails are reminders that we are called to minister to the wounded Christ wherever and whenever we find him today. The cross calls us to a change of mind and heart. Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

     The nails and the cross were the instruments by which God experienced unimaginable physical pain, and the tormenting grief of rejection and condemnation by the world. Let these nails become for each of us symbols of the pain that we have in our lives. Let them remind us of our hurt and pain; feelings of rejection and abandonment; of loneliness and grief. Over the next week, let us hold onto these nails while we deeply examine our own lives. Let us prayerfully look into ourselves, confident that God will understand all fears and anxieties, physical and emotional pain, feelings of guilt, and thoughts of personal rejection because God experienced all of these things and more as Jesus suffered and died. 

     Because the cross is also a symbol of victory as well as a symbol of defeat, bring your nails back to church with you at one of the services next Friday – Good Friday. A cross will be here, and I will invite you to come up and put your nail into a basin. If you can’t come to the Good Friday service, I suggest that you bring them with you to the Easter Vigil or to one of the Easter Day services and put them in the offering plate. 

     By those symbolic acts, you can give your pain and personal suffering to the God who loves you and knows what it is to suffer. By that symbolic act, you can acknowledge that you were there when they crucified our Lord. By returning your pain to the God who can absorb all of the pain of the world, you acknowledge that on the day that Christ died you trembled and you were changed. 

     Leave your hurt at the cross where it belongs, and then go forth, telling God that you will live into the Gospel call.

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Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens-- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

Psalm 31:9-16, In te, Domine, speravi

9 Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I am in trouble; *
my eye is consumed with sorrow,
and also my throat and my belly.

10 For my life is wasted with grief,
and my years with sighing; *
my strength fails me because of affliction,
and my bones are consumed.

11 I have become a reproach to all my enemies and even to my neighbors,
a dismay to those of my acquaintance; *
when they see me in the street they avoid me.

12 I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; *
I am as useless as a broken pot.

13 For I have heard the whispering of the crowd;
fear is all around; *
they put their heads together against me;
they plot to take my life.

14 But as for me, I have trusted in you, O LORD. *
I have said, “You are my God.

15 My times are in your hand; *
rescue me from the hand of my enemies,
and from those who persecute me.

16 Make your face to shine upon your servant, *
and in your loving-kindness save me.”

Philippians 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Luke 23:1-49

The assembly of the elders of the people rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.” Then Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He answered, “You say so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.” But they were insistent and said, “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.” When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies. Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him.” Then they all shouted out together, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!” (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.” But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished. As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.” And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

Collect of the Day

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[1] This sermon was inspired by The Rev. Kim Baker, Rector, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Westfield, NY, who preached on Good Friday at St. James Episcopal Church, Austin, TX on March 29, 2002.
[2] Jürgen Moltman. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 37.
[3] Moltman, 40.

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