Sermon Sunday March 16, 2008
Palm Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The passion narrative that we read in our Gospel lesson for this morning has a bit of an ironic element to it. It is Matthew’s account of the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus so obviously we are talking about a narrative that is strongly Christ-focused. And yet through this whole long passage of 43 verses, Jesus only speaks twice.
Here is Jesus coming head on with His accusers and condemners, and He is silent. He is silent in the face of all the mocking, the taunts and even the torture. Here He is being verbally assaulted with insults by the same people who not long before this had welcomed Him with great pomp and circumstance. His disciples have scattered. He’s been betrayed by Judas and denied by Peter and yet He remains silent; passively taking whatever abuse they all might throw at Him.
What do we make of this? In the face of so much aggression and anger Jesus is silent? How successful are we at following this pattern of passive resistance? This silent submission that Jesus displays here is far from being reflective of the American way of standing up for your rights and asserting yourselves and making your voice heard. Millions of dollars and countless resources and court time have been utilized preserving the rights of people to make public and even vocal displays of their faith. That's not very passive.
Indeed, passive resistance is not our way of doing things. How many of us would have been real open to any suggestion of passive resistance to hostility on Sep. 11, 2001? And honestly we don’t need to go to the extreme of 9-11. The truth is that every day, in how we react to hostility of any sort be it that which reveals itself through international tragedy or that which reveals itself through someone cutting us off in traffic or someone looking at us the wrong way, in how we react to all of that we show that when it comes right down to it, in the face of real hostility, we’re much more comfortable with the idea of a violent liberator like Barabbas than we are with a passive and peaceful Messiah.
Indeed when one really looks at this passion story and meditates on the complete and utter passivity of Jesus it makes us uncomfortable. In the passion story we find Jesus, who is the living incarnation of God. In Jesus we find the God who created the universe and everything in it, coming to us in complete and passive vulnerability.
Think about what this must have seemed like to the Jewish people of this time. Jesus shows up proclaiming Himself to be the Savior. The Jewish people of this time would have been firmly under the oppressive thumb of the Roman authorities. But they had hope. They were waiting for a Savior and a Messiah. But they were expecting that Messiah to save them from civil oppression, and they were expecting and hoping for a Messiah and Savior who would do this through the use of great power and even violence.
They were not looking for a pacifist. And you wouldn’t have been either. If you were a part of this ancient Jewish culture, this vision of the Messiah as a powerful military leader would have been the vision that you had been taught to expect your whole life. This was the expectation of the same people who had previously welcomed Jesus with great pomp and circumstance as they waved palm branches shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David." When that vision of the Messiah as a great military leader was not the one that Jesus fulfilled, the people turned on Him, and you would have turned right with them.
You might remember a few years ago when the film "The Passion of the Christ" came out, there was great controversy over what many people saw as an anti-Semitic portrayal of the Jewish chief priests. It was alleged that the portrayal cast them in a much too negative and vicious light. Some countered that argument by pointing out that the portrayal of the Roman soldiers was equally as vicious, if not more-so. But the whole controversy surrounding that centered on one of the central questions relating to the Passion narrative and that is the question of ‘Who killed Jesus?’ or more accurately ‘Who is responsible for Jesus’ death?’
But to ask this question in a way that limits the accountability of Jesus’ death to those who were physically there that day misses the point entirely and reduces the suffering and death of the Savior to a miscarriage of justice. Certainly all those who were physically present that day had a hand in it, but the truth of the cross of Christ that lies deeper than the semantic question of whether the Jewish or the Roman authorities played a bigger part in coordinating of the crucifixion is that we all have a hand in it, we are all equally accountable for Jesus’ death.
With every sinful thought, deed, and desire we place ourselves among the vicious and angry crowd who called for the freedom of the murdering insurrectionist Barabbas and demanded the suffering and death of the Savior. Martin Luther wrote in regards to our accountability for the suffering and death of Christ; "You must get this thought through your head and not doubt that you are the one who is torturing Christ thus, for your sins have surely wrought this. ,… Therefore, when you see the nails piercing Christ’s hands, you can be certain that it is your work. When you behold his crown of thorns, you may rest assured that these are your evil thoughts, etc."
And yet as clear and obvious as this should be for us, most of us daily do what Pilate did. In one way or another we wash our hands and declare our innocence. We say that we’re good people. We say that we’re not responsible for the injustices of the world and we rationalize reasons to not get involved or simply ignore them. And in so doing we yet again place ourselves among those calling for Jesus’ death.
And yet Jesus kept going and He remained silent. Indeed Jesus could have called for 10,000 angels to come and show His persecutors a thing or two. But He kept going because as Paul reminds us in today’s 2nd lesson, Christ Jesus did not regard His equality with God as something to be exploited. He remained silently submissive to the will of His Father, giving His back to those who struck Him, giving His cheeks to those would pull out His beard and not hiding His face from insult and spitting. He continued on this path of emptying Himself, humbling Himself and remaining obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
And praise be to God that He did, because it is on the cross that God reveals just how much He loves you and how much He wants to be with you. In the cross you see God giving Himself to you in the person of His Son your Savior, Christ Jesus. In the cross you see your Lord Christ Jesus bearing the wrath and punishment that rightfully belongs to the sinners who condemn Him, and you're one of them. On the cross Christ Jesus exposes Himself to the fury of human pride and sin carried out to the fullest extent of its most gruesome imaginations. On the cross you see your sin being put to death.
And because Christ was obedient to the point of death on a cross, through faith in Him, you are made impervious to the slings and arrows that sin, death, and the devil will throw at you. You’ll still struggle with sin on a day-to-day basis, but you have the assurance of knowing that one day all things will be made new and the old will be done away.
Because of the silently submissive obedience of Christ, you have been marked with His cross and you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. And so we can see that as Christ breathed His last, new life was already forming in the tombs as it says that many of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And after the resurrection they came out of the tombs and appeared to many.
Through the perfect obedience of Christ in His life, death, and resurrection you have been given new and eternal life in Christ. You have been delivered from death by Christ’s obedience unto death and you are stirred to life by the Holy Spirit. And you have been delivered by the resurrection to your neighbor, where you now stand with the Roman centurion proclaiming about Christ Jesus; truly, this man is God’s Son.
Amen
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The passion narrative that we read in our Gospel lesson for this morning has a bit of an ironic element to it. It is Matthew’s account of the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus so obviously we are talking about a narrative that is strongly Christ-focused. And yet through this whole long passage of 43 verses, Jesus only speaks twice.
Here is Jesus coming head on with His accusers and condemners, and He is silent. He is silent in the face of all the mocking, the taunts and even the torture. Here He is being verbally assaulted with insults by the same people who not long before this had welcomed Him with great pomp and circumstance. His disciples have scattered. He’s been betrayed by Judas and denied by Peter and yet He remains silent; passively taking whatever abuse they all might throw at Him.
What do we make of this? In the face of so much aggression and anger Jesus is silent? How successful are we at following this pattern of passive resistance? This silent submission that Jesus displays here is far from being reflective of the American way of standing up for your rights and asserting yourselves and making your voice heard. Millions of dollars and countless resources and court time have been utilized preserving the rights of people to make public and even vocal displays of their faith. That's not very passive.
Indeed, passive resistance is not our way of doing things. How many of us would have been real open to any suggestion of passive resistance to hostility on Sep. 11, 2001? And honestly we don’t need to go to the extreme of 9-11. The truth is that every day, in how we react to hostility of any sort be it that which reveals itself through international tragedy or that which reveals itself through someone cutting us off in traffic or someone looking at us the wrong way, in how we react to all of that we show that when it comes right down to it, in the face of real hostility, we’re much more comfortable with the idea of a violent liberator like Barabbas than we are with a passive and peaceful Messiah.
Indeed when one really looks at this passion story and meditates on the complete and utter passivity of Jesus it makes us uncomfortable. In the passion story we find Jesus, who is the living incarnation of God. In Jesus we find the God who created the universe and everything in it, coming to us in complete and passive vulnerability.
Think about what this must have seemed like to the Jewish people of this time. Jesus shows up proclaiming Himself to be the Savior. The Jewish people of this time would have been firmly under the oppressive thumb of the Roman authorities. But they had hope. They were waiting for a Savior and a Messiah. But they were expecting that Messiah to save them from civil oppression, and they were expecting and hoping for a Messiah and Savior who would do this through the use of great power and even violence.
They were not looking for a pacifist. And you wouldn’t have been either. If you were a part of this ancient Jewish culture, this vision of the Messiah as a powerful military leader would have been the vision that you had been taught to expect your whole life. This was the expectation of the same people who had previously welcomed Jesus with great pomp and circumstance as they waved palm branches shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David." When that vision of the Messiah as a great military leader was not the one that Jesus fulfilled, the people turned on Him, and you would have turned right with them.
You might remember a few years ago when the film "The Passion of the Christ" came out, there was great controversy over what many people saw as an anti-Semitic portrayal of the Jewish chief priests. It was alleged that the portrayal cast them in a much too negative and vicious light. Some countered that argument by pointing out that the portrayal of the Roman soldiers was equally as vicious, if not more-so. But the whole controversy surrounding that centered on one of the central questions relating to the Passion narrative and that is the question of ‘Who killed Jesus?’ or more accurately ‘Who is responsible for Jesus’ death?’
But to ask this question in a way that limits the accountability of Jesus’ death to those who were physically there that day misses the point entirely and reduces the suffering and death of the Savior to a miscarriage of justice. Certainly all those who were physically present that day had a hand in it, but the truth of the cross of Christ that lies deeper than the semantic question of whether the Jewish or the Roman authorities played a bigger part in coordinating of the crucifixion is that we all have a hand in it, we are all equally accountable for Jesus’ death.
With every sinful thought, deed, and desire we place ourselves among the vicious and angry crowd who called for the freedom of the murdering insurrectionist Barabbas and demanded the suffering and death of the Savior. Martin Luther wrote in regards to our accountability for the suffering and death of Christ; "You must get this thought through your head and not doubt that you are the one who is torturing Christ thus, for your sins have surely wrought this. ,… Therefore, when you see the nails piercing Christ’s hands, you can be certain that it is your work. When you behold his crown of thorns, you may rest assured that these are your evil thoughts, etc."
And yet as clear and obvious as this should be for us, most of us daily do what Pilate did. In one way or another we wash our hands and declare our innocence. We say that we’re good people. We say that we’re not responsible for the injustices of the world and we rationalize reasons to not get involved or simply ignore them. And in so doing we yet again place ourselves among those calling for Jesus’ death.
And yet Jesus kept going and He remained silent. Indeed Jesus could have called for 10,000 angels to come and show His persecutors a thing or two. But He kept going because as Paul reminds us in today’s 2nd lesson, Christ Jesus did not regard His equality with God as something to be exploited. He remained silently submissive to the will of His Father, giving His back to those who struck Him, giving His cheeks to those would pull out His beard and not hiding His face from insult and spitting. He continued on this path of emptying Himself, humbling Himself and remaining obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
And praise be to God that He did, because it is on the cross that God reveals just how much He loves you and how much He wants to be with you. In the cross you see God giving Himself to you in the person of His Son your Savior, Christ Jesus. In the cross you see your Lord Christ Jesus bearing the wrath and punishment that rightfully belongs to the sinners who condemn Him, and you're one of them. On the cross Christ Jesus exposes Himself to the fury of human pride and sin carried out to the fullest extent of its most gruesome imaginations. On the cross you see your sin being put to death.
And because Christ was obedient to the point of death on a cross, through faith in Him, you are made impervious to the slings and arrows that sin, death, and the devil will throw at you. You’ll still struggle with sin on a day-to-day basis, but you have the assurance of knowing that one day all things will be made new and the old will be done away.
Because of the silently submissive obedience of Christ, you have been marked with His cross and you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. And so we can see that as Christ breathed His last, new life was already forming in the tombs as it says that many of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And after the resurrection they came out of the tombs and appeared to many.
Through the perfect obedience of Christ in His life, death, and resurrection you have been given new and eternal life in Christ. You have been delivered from death by Christ’s obedience unto death and you are stirred to life by the Holy Spirit. And you have been delivered by the resurrection to your neighbor, where you now stand with the Roman centurion proclaiming about Christ Jesus; truly, this man is God’s Son.
Amen
posted by Steve at 11:51 AM
1 Comments:
Great sermon, again! Wonderful use of Palm/Passion Sunday texts. The last paragraph really hits home, connecting the dead rising in Matt. to our being raised now, too.
This is great!
"And yet Jesus kept going and He remained silent. Indeed Jesus could have called for 10,000 angels to come and show His persecutors a thing or two. But He kept going because as Paul reminds us in today’s 2nd lesson, Christ Jesus did not regard His equality with God as something to be exploited. He remained silently submissive to the will of His Father, giving His back to those who struck Him, giving His cheeks to those would pull out His beard and not hiding His face from insult and spitting. He continued on this path of emptying Himself, humbling Himself and remaining obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
And praise be to God that He did, because it is on the cross that God reveals just how much He loves you and how much He wants to be with you. In the cross you see God giving Himself to you in the person of His Son your Savior, Christ Jesus. In the cross you see your Lord Christ Jesus bearing the wrath and punishment that rightfully belongs to the sinners who condemn Him, and you're one of them. On the cross Christ Jesus exposes Himself to the fury of human pride and sin carried out to the fullest extent of its most gruesome imaginations. On the cross you see your sin being put to death."
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