We Walk with Him Because He Walks with Us Palm/Passion Sunday 2019

We Walk with Him Because He Walks with Us Palm/Passion Sunday 2019

Welcome to the most manic-depressive day in the church year

From Hosannas to Crucify Him

From I will follow you to the grave and beyond to “I do not know the man”

From “we’ve got your back Jesus” to the disciples literally falling asleep on the job

From Triumphal Palm Parade to hanging on a cross alongside the most despised of criminals.

From the brightness of glorious light, to the depths of deepest darkness.

This day is tough. 

This day is painful

This day is depressing

And this day….and the more extended replay that makes up this most Holy of weeks…is absolutely necessary for us. We cannot relish in the miracle of the empty tomb without trudging through the reality of the disappointment, betrayal, denial, hate-fueled violence and utter despair of these next few days. Why? Because our lives are not lived on the mountaintop only, but also in the valleys.

As Bishop Sean mentioned in his sermon at last week’s service at the Cathedral—- we must accept that life is full of mountaintop glory and valleys of darkness, of He is Risen and of CRUCIFY him. 

You see in Holy Week we experience the fullness of this life, the fullness of what we—humanity—-deal with and are capable of. It’s the whole point of the incarnation—played out in intense technicolor truth: God came to be among us, in the person of Jesus Christ, to experience the absolute totality of human existence—from the vulnerability of infancy, to the depths of despair in Gethsemene and to the passage from death and degradation into eternal life. Jesus came to walk this walk and to lead us through that final step of our mortal journey—moving from death into eternal life. Folks, we don’t get to the light without the dark. So to those who say—“I can’t stand Holy Week, I can’t stand the sadness and the brutality and the horror of all that happened—-we are an Easter people, right? Let’s just stay in the brightness and light of new life and forget the rest,” I say:

We can’t. We mustn’t. We shouldn’t. 

For Jesus Christ came to be among us fully. And we need to be with him fully as well. That means shouting Hosanna and accepting that we also shout Crucify Him. It means saying we will never abandon him and then falling asleep. It means saying we will follow him to his death and then proclaiming, I don’t know the man. It means begging him to bring us into his kingdom and realizing that he will, in spite of all we’ve done and left undone. 

Yes, today is a bit jarring in its change of mood. 

Our job, as best as we can fulfill it, is to relish in the joy, experience the despair and walk the walk of Jesus of Nazareth knowing that there is no darkness, no pain, no abandonment and no terror that we experience in our life that our Lord and Savior hasn’t experienced as well. For God so loved the world God came to be among us in the person of Jesus Christ so that neither we nor he need ever be alone. 

So welcome to Holy Week, walk this walk with Jesus just as he has, just as he is and just as he always will, walk with us. Amen.