March 28, 2010: Palm Sunday
God in Heaven, the Lord stands before us, convicted, and on his way to his fate. And for this we praise his name. Amen.
As good, productive citizens of our world and culture we value success. We also ruthlessly examine any area of failure to find ways of improvement. Our desire to succeed motivates us to become harsh critics and to sometimes set unreachable goals in our private and communal lives. Holy Week presents us with the grim end coming this Friday. Holy Week sends us not to the top of the high mountain to taste the glory of God in all success, but instead we are sent to the horrible cross, upon which our sins and the sins of the world earn the result of conviction. In any human formula of production, dying on a cross is the opposite of success. We should then find a way to make Holy Week more successful, more productive for our spiritual lives. Yet there is no other more successful journey for us as God’s creatures than to journey along with Jesus to this failure of the Cross.
As we watch the scene unfold during Holy Week journey, we come to ever more deeply realize that our leader, our spiritual friend and teacher, our incredible link to the God that loved us and the whole world into being, is headed to his end. And more than that, we are invited to share in the same fate! We are invited to die to the drive for human success just like Jesus. Jesus could have at any time claimed his power and used it for human success: power was his, yet he denied it and instead emptied himself (hear Paul’s words again!), denied all his personal potential, to instead let his life be purely for God, his and our Father. We, his disciples, are invited into the same life, to no longer live for ourselves and our human goals. This is the same death and failure we are invited into.
As the story of our lives with God our creator often does, the end of the story is often an echo of the beginning. Our lives as creatures begin in the blessed hope of joyous newborn life and end in the joyous mansion of the heavenly home. Our spiritual lives begin and end in a similar pattern, but with our spirits their boundaries are a death. A death to self, the death on our cross, where Jesus leads us, is the echo of a first death. That first death of a disciple: the death to our sinful lives in the waters of baptism. Successful life as a Christian is in part to continually live into this dying, so that we may live the blessed life of the baptized.
As we have walked through this Lenten journey this year we have been subtly reminding ourselves of the promises we make in baptism. Those promises are the offerings of a disciple desiring like Peter and the rest to follow Christ with our best efforts. Three weeks ago I invited you to look at the first three promises made in the baptismal liturgy and how they are linked to our gospel readings this Lententide. Let’s examine the final three today. Pick up those red books called BCPs again with me and turn to page 302.
As the first three Sunday’s of Lent echoed the first three questions of the baptismal promises made by candidates and their sponsors and families (and I invite you to examine them further this Holy Week), look now at the fourth question on page 302, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our Savior?” Two Sundays ago we heard that incredible and often alluded to story of the Prodigal Son, who chooses to turn and return to the home where all things are provided for him, yet now no longer under appreciative of the gifts of the father made to him in the providing. Accepting the Savior is no greater achievement for the spirit in us all. Returning to God through Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life for us, and promising to do this as we enter the baptismal water is a teaching we work through often in our lives. And so like the Prodigal Son we can answer this question with the words, “I do”.
The fifth question seems much like the last, “Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?” Last week’s Gospel that most of us shared concerned a dinner meal held at Lazarus’s house, after his revivification. Martha serves dinner, and Mary chooses to take a bottle of costly perfume and spill it all over Jesus’ feet. Mary then even takes her beautiful hair and wipes his feet with the fragrant ointment. The scent fills the home, and the scene fills the heart. For Mary’s choice is one of pure adoration, placing every ounce of her spiritual heart in the hands of Jesus. This practice of Mary, to find ways to practice spiritually placing all of herself in Christ’s hands, is what we promise to do here in our baptisms. And like Mary we say, “I do”.
The last question asks the same fateful question that we ask of ourselves and our community today on Palm Sunday. In Baptism we ask of ourselves, “Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?” Peter tries to live up to this promise, as do all the disciples who ultimately face their dismay that Good day. Jesus invites all to follow him. The life of discipleship, the life of a called Christian, is one of following. Following the one who walked the pilgrim way to the cross on Golgotha. And so today, answer the question with your heart and soul. Will you follow? “I do”.
It is a remarkable thing for us to take this Lenten journey as an opportunity to find ways to live into our baptismal promises. We hold up these baptismal questions and their promises so that we can live into them, finding ways to practice them as we continue to grow in the knowledge and love of God. Our baptism may be a once in a lifetime affair, but the promises we make are to be grown into continually from the earliest moment we share in the stories of God to the last breaths we take on this beautiful Earth of God’s creating. The death we suffer in these mortal bodies is prepared for by the spiritual death we enter into in baptism. And so too the incredible new life we are invited into, a life in God as the incredible Body of Christ, is lived into through examining, praying, and growing in the knowledge of our baptismal promises. Lent prepares us for these final steps. Now Holy Week opens, and we are invited to keep walking, finding success in walking this road of failure.
So come, join hands and arms together and walk Holy Week, a body of Christ united and renewed by this yearly journey. Come to the evening services Monday, and come walk the Labyrinth afterwards, letting that spiritual journey in that ancient pattern be a practice for you to live. Come Tuesday and Wednesday evening and hear the story unfold. Come to church Thursday night and celebrate the institution of the sacrament of his body and blood that feed us as we walk these steps. Come Friday and share in the Goodness of Jesus’ cross. Come Saturday morning and dwell there, next to the tomb, holding on to the dim small candle of hope that flickers against the blowing winds of doubt. We form our lives in this foundry of faith that is Holy Week, where heat, pressure, and anxiety purify our lives and prepare us for the life we live into next Sunday and every Sunday. Come, accept Christ’s invitation to follow, and find your lives reformed and renewed, succeeding not in human terms, but instead find your lives successfully grounded in God.
