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Sermon of the Month Sermon preached by Fr. Spencer on Sunday, March 14 Come and journey with us! Regular parishioners will find these words very familiar. It is the invitation that we add on to our church’s mission statement. And it is adapted from the song that we often sing here at the beginning of our Sunday service, “Come and journey with me!” What we do when we say these words is to conceive of our Christian lives as a journey—a faith journey—and to invite others to share the journey with us. This morning, I invite each of you to come journey together in a more particular way. Not just the faith journey of your own life, but a journey that encapsulates, that recapitulates, that makes real anew to each of us, Jesus’ own story—his journey through Holy Week. For the arc of Holy Week reflects the drama of Jesus’ last week. And make no mistake, it is a drama. It begins today, Palm Sunday, with the promise of his acclamation as he rides into Jerusalem. Then on Maundy Thursday amidst the growing danger he and his disciples are facing, he exhorts them to serve one another as he dramatizes this in kneeling to wash their feet. It is also the evening of the Last Supper, with its intimations of danger hovering very near. And then the wheels fall off. Disaster strikes on Friday. Death strikes on Friday. And all seems utter failure. The disciples are routed, defeated men. And then, after a time of grief and despair, ultimate triumph. God’s resources are there to conquer sin, failure, and death. This is the arc, the drama, of the final week of Jesus’ life. And it is also the arc, the drama, of his entire ministry. The promise and the joy of his birth; the service and the teaching of his ministry; the rejection and apparent failure, and the glorious triumph, the comeback, if you will, in the resurrection. It’s all there: the early promise and optimism; the struggle of service; rejection; and vindication. I said earlier that I was issuing an invitation to come journey through Holy Week and that this was different from the invitation to journey with us on the Christian journey. But really, it is not so different. For what I am calling the arc and the drama of Jesus’ last week, of Jesus’ ministry, is also very much the arc and the drama of our own Christian lives, stripped of the particulars that make each life unique. Our Palm Sunday is our conversion, our first real commitment to Jesus. It is a time of promise and optimism, when all things are new, all things seem possible. And so we respond in faithful service, as best we can, the Maundy Thursday period of our journey. And we all, to some extent, perform our Christian service in a dangerous environment. Not usually dangerous to our physical wellbeing, but certainly to our spiritual health. There are dangers all around. And Good Friday? This is the failure that we have all known at times in our Christian lives, those times when we have just flat fallen on our faces. Some of us have known extremely dark times, and we have not been certain of a way forward at all. All was black; all was hopeless. Until we emerge into the light again and know the ultimate triumph of God’s acceptance and forgiveness. This is the arc and drama of the life of faith: promise; service and commitment, danger, failure, and ultimate triumph. This is the journey you are invited to share when you become a Christian—in this community of Christ this week. Of course it is possible to take short cuts on this journey. One can—and so many do—jump from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. (That is why we get the passion reading this Sunday, which is actually very much out of order. It makes no liturgical sense to read this story of Jesus’ crucifixion on this day, when we will be doing so, much more appropriately, on Good Friday. But so many people miss the reading of this story on Good Friday that it is included today so that it will not be missed altogether.) But to take this shortcut from Palm Sunday to Easter is to miss out on the power of living through these events in the proper order, with the proper emphases, throughout the week. It is like jumping straight to dessert without the nourishing meal that is meant to precede it. It is to move to cheap grace, without acknowledging and making real to oneself the commitment, the danger, the failures that lie between the promise and the ultimate success. It is to deny the reality of the darkness of our human journey. And to miss the darkness of Good Friday is to rob Easter of its context and of so much of its spiritual impact. To know all of Holy Week in the beauty of its liturgy is both to make real Christ’s story and to make it ours as well. When we do this we are changed; we become more like Christ. And the entire week becomes a sacrament—the outer and visible sign of inward grace, as God works change within us. You are off to a good start. You are here for the promise. Come to Maundy Thursday. Come to Good Friday—either or both the Stations of the Cross or the evening Good Friday service. Come for the huge celebration of Easter Vigil on Saturday. And of course come next Easter Sunday. Come to them all. Know the entire drama of the Christian story. Know it. Live it. Make it real. Come and journey with us! Fr. Spencer |
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