All Saints Lutheran Church
Pastor Raita Neely
Palm/Passion Sunday - Luke
April 4, 2004



Let us pray: Jesus, our Savior and Lord, enter the gates of our hearts as we join you in this time of your Passion. With you, let us remember and celebrate your birth, your calling, your ministry. Give us the grace not to turn away from your suffering and the cross. Jesus, our teacher and guide, walk with us in our journey. Open our eyes and ears and hearts to the guiding of your Spirit who calls us to costly faithfulness and to joyous wholeness. Amen.

Today we enter Holy Week with its cycle of life, death and new life. Jesus, the holy one, the whole one, enters Jerusalem as he rides on the back of a donkey. Crowds spread out their robes and cry out, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."

Jerusalem was in the mood for a celebration. Streets jammed with people from all corners of the world. There was a frenzy of activity; voices pitched higher than normal; children scampering about, people talking, greeting, gathering. The crowd was growing larger, noisier and it worried the Roman soldiers and Pilate. The crowd thinks Jesus will free them from Rome, but that is not his purpose, nor his work.

And so, their hopes, dreams and prayers are not realized. The choice is made and executed with typical Roman precision - nail into flesh. There Jesus hangs, to be mocked , to be scorned, to die. We hear the voices once again. The leaders say, "He saved others; let him save himself!". The soldiers chide, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!". A crucified criminal mocks, "Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"

It happens over and over again in our world. Jesus is rejected, some are disappointed in Him, He has not done what they wanted Him to do. He does not act according to their expectations. Some want to put him in a box bound by the limitations of their experience and imagination and Jesus won't stay bound. There is apathy - God? Jesus? So what? Who cares? Religion is just a crutch for the weak. He is crucified again today by our rationalization and excuses. "Not now Jesus, I'm too busy - You ask too much, You want my whole life and I can only lend you a small part."

Although our world is violent in many ways, it is hard for us to look at His cross for very long. We want to turn away. We cannot look long enough at the cross to take it seriously for our lives. But God insists that we look long and hard. Refusing to avert our eyes, we slowly drink in the life that is Jesus. And along with the thief we are given the grace to whisper, "Remember me, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Those who reject Jesus' cross, find their own cross heavier, for without him, we have to carry ours by ourselves, be it despair or emptiness, meaninglessness or loneliness.

It is only in his death that our life is made possible - for our forgiveness has been made real. Love has become flesh. God's grace has been poured over us like life giving water. New possibilities are offered. We enter Christ's suffering and the suffering of each other knowing it will bend but not break us. It will silence the body but not the soul. To know this it to rob suffering of its pain and to release its power.

The Passion is not simply to see suffering as in a play or a movie, but to share in suffering. It is to weep as Jesus wept at the brokenness of what is meant to be whole, to see a thing as it is meant to be and to experience it broken, fractured, and shattered, not just our Savior's body but the body of the world; to suffer with indignity and inhumanity, to weep at injustice and crime, violence and abuse, and deprivation and depravity, to enter into the sorrows of another as it they were our own, because they are our own.

Jesus died that we might see the wounds and the wounded that are all around us as belonging to us. He died that we might live fully and hopefully in the ambiguous reality that is ours here and now. He died that we might know his forgiveness and love.

Every year, Holy Week presents us with a challenge and an invitation. This is no time to hold back. This is the time to give yourself to Jesus without reservation. Do not withdraw from his teaching or his pain. Come before him this week - on Maundy Thursday hear his invitation to you to love your neighbor with self - giving love, for no other reason than that Jesus loves you. Allow him to nourish you with his body and blood so that you will know His presence with you and within you. On Good Friday, be with him at the cross. Think about and absorb the magnitude of Jesus' love for you. Look at the cross and your suffering bleeding Savior. Beyond the tragedy is truth redeemed. So let us walk through this week in the full knowledge of our sinfulness, for as we do, we shall recognize in the staggering events of Holy Week, in Christ's suffering, death and finally in His resurrection comes the overwhelming joy of our deliverance. Look to Him and live! Without the events of Holy Week, Easter is empty of its power for new life. Amen.