Palm Sunday 2012

Our Lord Enters Jerusalem

Our Lord Bears the Cross

 

James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose

Palm Sunday Sermon
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster 1 April 2012
Mark 11:1-11 and Mark 15:1-39

What are we to make of today’s Gospel lessons? The first is so full of hope and anticipation. The King has come into his own! As he rode into Jerusalem in fulfillment of the prophesies, the people ran to acclaim him as King David’s long awaited heir. Surely the Kingdom of God was among men, and it was just a matter of time until “justice rolled down like a mighty river.” But then there is that second reading which recounts the Passion and Death of our Lord. Pain and suffering, alienation and loss, disappointment and fear are everywhere. The contrast is absolute. I for one would rather just talk about Jesus coming into our lives today, but that is not what the Scriptures or our Holy Mother the Church call me to do this day.

A wise man has said that some of the most wonderful things which happen in our lives often occur “in the shadow of a cross.” The architecture of our Church echoes that statement. At the very apex of our beautiful east window, the mythical pelican gives life to her chicks by shedding her own blood willingly. Just below her is the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world- by himself becoming the sacrifice for our sins. On the font where so many of us were baptized is carved the cross and crown, an ever present reminder that only the person who lays down his life will receive it again. Only the one who goes to the cross with Jesus will reign with him in glory. And perhaps most poignant of all is the cruciform nature of the path we walk as we gather at the Lord’s Table to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, as Chesterton says, “to eat the flesh of our God and to drink his blood.” And then we arise and walk again in the way of the cross as we go forth into the world to bear his love to everyone we meet.

The fact is that death and hardship and sin and evil are ever present realities in our world. I may by good fortune, sound investing, and skilled medical practice be able to avoid most of those things for a while, but eventually even the most protected and privileged of us run afoul of the evils of this world. Death comes to one we love at an early age. Divorce strikes in what seems like the most secure and loving relationship. Disease stalks in the food we eat and in the lifestyles we adopt, even when we try to do our best. War claims our sons and daughters in the prime of their lives, and even those who survive are never quite the same.

I would submit to you today that these realities which are all around us are the reason today’s odd combination of Gospel lessons is so very, very important. You see, we are not as those who hope based on what seems right, or on some philosophy we pray might be true. God has come among us and carried the cross. He has laid down his life willingly to demonstrate for us that he has the power to take it up again and claim the crown that is rightfully his. This is not some mere fantasy or novella of a good man’s life. The Bible names the names of eyewitnesses as if to say, “ask them if you don’t believe me.” The New Testament accounts were circulating widely during the lives of so many who were there, and the authors, guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, invited their hearers and readers to check the facts before they believed. People are pretty much the same in every historical era. Since the fall, our world has been plagued by sin and people have lived with its consequences. We have yearned for the happy times, and for a while, at least occasionally, they come to us. But there is always that shadow of the cross, that harbinger of the place of suffering. When Jesus Christ came among us and took up the cross and died for us, he entered into our world that we might know we are not alone in the midst of our sufferings. When he died for us, he became our great high priest and our sacrifice and our king. And because of what he accomplished in the midst of his suffering, we, like him, will live forever. Through his cross, we shall gain the crown of life which is offered to all who believe in him. Because he embraced the cross, we all might wear the crown.

One of my heroes has long been the gallant Montrose. Condemned by a perjured king to fight a battle that could not be won, he was defeated by his foes and betrayed by his friends. The poet Aytoun, late professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at Edinburgh, translated this good man’s words into verse in “The Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.”

“There is a chamber far away
Where sleep the good and brave,
But a better place ye have named for me
Than by my father’s grave.
For truth and right, ‘gainst treason’s might,
This hand hath always striven,
And ye raise it up for a witness still
In the eye of earth and heaven.
Then nail my head on yonder tower-
Give every town a limb-
And God who made shall gather them:
I go from you to Him!"


My hero understood the nature of the cross, and the promise and reality of the crown. Jesus made it clear to all who will believe, and that includes you and me. The darkness of pain and tragedy will come to us in this life, but we are not like those who are without hope. For with St. Paul we can say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” Pain is a reality in this world, as are death and loss and suffering and injustice. But our God is greater, and as he has come among us to bear the cross, so has he opened the way for us to reign with him in glory. May this be the reality of our lives in this world, and in the next. AMEN.