Sermon for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29+Mark 11:1-11
Psalm 31:9-16+Philippians 2:5-11+Mark 14:1 - 15:47
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death -
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:7b-8)
There is, in my estimation at least, a certain beauty and comfort in the order of how our liturgies, our worship, is structured. There are rules to be followed and, from time to time, broken. But not today.
Oh sure, I - like many of you - would much rather stay in the revelry and chaotic joy of that procession from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem with the One who is going to set people free from the Roman oppressors. As many of our mothers and grandmothers might have said to us, "It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt." Because one simply did not taunt the power of empire like this.
So, while I would love to stay with those hosannas and palms, the rules for today take us all the way to the inevitable, horrible, terrifying outcome.
There are those who say that we read the Passion Narrative today because so many of you will simply go straight from Hosanna to Alleluia without participating in all that comes between. I prefer to think of this as a film that tells us what's going to happen before taking us through it step by step, building the tension, forcing us not to turn away, revealing our helplessness in the face of the Roman cruelty, and our complicity with it to save our own skin.
There is another rule we follow today as well as every other Sunday, and that is that this is the Lord's Day, and nothing supersedes that except for a major feast of the Church, like Easter or Pentecost or All Saints' Day. If today were not a Sunday, we would be remembering Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated 44 years ago today as he celebrated Mass in San Salvador. I'm going to bend this rule just a bit today.
Romero had been appointed bishop because it was believed that he was a company man, he would not rock the boat or call out the Church for being a little too cozy with the authoritarian government of El Salvador. Increasingly radicalized by the oppressive poverty of the people of El Salvador and the pervasive violence of the death squads, Romero began to challenge the Church's silence almost immediately. The authorities harassed him and accused him of promoting violence. He responded:
We have never preached violence,
except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross.…
The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred.
It is the violence of love, of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.[1]
When violence is your method of choice, I suppose that anything that challenges it must look like violence, too.
Just days before his assassination, Romero was quoted in a Mexican news magazine:
I need to say that as a Christian I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.… If they manage to carry out their threats, as of now, I offer my blood for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, then may my blood be the seed of liberty and the sign that hope will soon become a reality. May my death, if it is accepted by God, be for the liberation of my people, as a witness of hope in what is to come. You can tell them that if they succeed in killing me, I pardon and bless those who do it. A bishop may die, but the Church of God, which is in the people, will never die.[2]
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," is how the 2nd century Christian writer Tertullian put it.[3]
Jesus was that first seed as I spoke about last week, the seed whose fruit is the Church. Throughout our history, there have been others who have sacrificed much, not for honor or glory or power, but for their neighbor. For the poor, the suffering, the marginalized, and the oppressed.
Maybe in listening to the story of the Passion and following that path through this week all the way to the cross, we can be reminded of what is demanded of us as we live our lives as followers of Jesus; reminded of what others have done so that we may sit here and worship freely, reminded that Christ "died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them" (2 Corinthians 5:15).
[1] http://www.romerotrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/violenceoflove.pdf (p. 25)
[2] https://kellogg.nd.edu/archbishop-oscar-romero
[3] Apologeticus, L. 13