Did you hear it? Did you notice it? Did you notice how jubilant Jesus’ friends and disciples were in the first reading we heard this morning, the one we call “the triumphal entry”? And then did you notice how distant they became when things went south, when triumph turned to crucifixion? Listen to the last line of our Passion Gospel describing where the disciples and those who knew him were during his crucifixion and death: “…all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.”

On a psychological and spiritual level, this is so true that it hurts. We, all of us, are present and jubilant at the triumphal entries of our lives, but when it comes to being present to what feels like our own inexplicable and undeserved suffering—this is harder if not impossible to do. So where we can, we distance ourselves from it, because it comes to us as a kind of unhappy interruption in the way our lives should be.

When I was the head of staff at General Seminary, one of the things I did was to be the person who worked with the general contractor renovating the Seminary’s library. Because it was the library of the oldest Episcopal Seminary in the country, it contained some treasures. The general contractor, Jerry, was a wonderful man who tried to retain his humor in the midst of what had turned into a very difficult project. Jerry and his subcontractors had worked very efficiently and had actually saved money on the project. So Jerry suggested that the Seminary use that money to add a dumb waiter to the project so that library workers could easily transport books from one floor to another.

However, this simple addition to the plans ended up changing everything. During the construction of the dumb waiter one of the workers made a serious mistake. While welding in the shaft where the dumb waiter was to be placed, sparks fell down onto plastic sheets covering books in the rare book room. This turned into an undetected and smoldering fire that damaged the entire rare book collection at the Seminary.

Months and many insurance claims later, Jerry and I met to work through monthly billing on the project. After a while, Jerry turned to me and said: “Melissa, the one thing I’ve learned in this process is that no good deed goes unpunished.” He said this and smiled, not meaning this in any flip or cynical way. No, it was just Jerry’s way of talking about the odd and mysterious connection between putting himself out there on a project he was engaged and successful in, and his own experience of suffering as a seeming result of the very investment and success he had.

No good deed goes unpunished—after my meeting with Jerry I thought, “Yes, there’s something true about this. You have a bright idea and it backfires; you try to help someone and you and others end up getting hurt. Jesus comes to bring a message of peace, healing and release to the city of Jerusalem and ends up getting nailed to the cross. No good deed goes unpunished.”

But then I thought, “That’s not it; that’s not quite right. The “punishment” word is at times descriptive or how it feels, all right, but, for me, it cannot be a description of what the cross of Christ is about, and along with that, it cannot be a description of what happens when we put ourselves out there, when we invest ourselves in something or someone and a sort of suffering comes to us.

No, for me, it’s more like this: no engagement and bold offering of ourselves comes without the shedding of our own blood. No vocation worth having, no relationship worth being in, no cause worth dedicating ourselves to comes without an offering of our life’s energy, poured out of us, yes, with some pain, some heartbreak, accompanying it. This engagement, this offering, this pouring out of who we are for something or someone else is a holy act called “sacrifice,” a word which means “to make holy.”

Growing up I did not like this word at all. It sounded to me like something your mother or your father did for you that later could be used to make you feel guilty. But now, a number of vocations later, two children later, after marriage and many friendships later, what I realize is that what has made my life real and valuable are the times I have given my heart and my life’s energy to something or someone and have laid myself open to the suffering that such giving must bring with it.

And so today as you and I might like to stand at a distance from the reality that to live engaged lives that give themselves to something or someone is to pour out our blood, to be a living sacrifice, we are invited again to look upon this reality to say yes—yes, to the nights of wakefulness and worry as a parent, yes to the challenges of our vocations and jobs, and yes, to the hours of work on what seem to be unsolvable issues in our society, yes, to the odd journey of being in relation to one another—to our spouses and partners, to our parents, to our friends, to the person next to us in the pew or at coffee hour.

We say yes for the same reason that Jesus said yes—because to live as a daughter or son of the Most High is to live the fully human life, a life lived authentically and in relationship to the people and the situations we find ourselves in, to offer our life’s energy, to give it away, trusting that in this offering, in this oblation, we participate in the great and holy paradox that giving our lives away is a way of receiving our lives, that being broken open is a way of being made whole.

On our website in that wonderful slide show about our identity there is a phrase that appears across one of the pictures: “splendor burning at the heart of things.” This is a line from Evelyn Underhill’s poem entitled “Corpus Christi:” the Body of Christ. What the poem is trying to describe is that the engagement and the pouring out of our life’s blood is the truth that the earth’s own cycle of fruition and harvest the cross of Christ, and Eucharist itself mediate to us. All of it, Underhill says, is one oblation, one offering of life to God. I have edited and “translated” part of this poem for our ears today.

COME, dear Heart!
The fields are white to harvest: come and see
….the timeless mystery
Of love, whereby we feed
On God, our bread indeed.
Torn by the sickles, see him share the smart
Of travailing Creation: maimed, despised,
Yet by his lovers the more dearly prized
Because he lays his beauty down…
Trace on these fields his everlasting Cross,
And o’er the stricken sheaves the Immortal Victim’s crown.

From far horizons came a Voice that said,
‘Lo! from the hand of Death take thou thy daily bread.’
Then I, awakening, saw
A splendour burning in the heart of things:
The flame of living love which lights the law
Of mystic death that works the mystic birth.
I knew the patient passion of the earth,
Maternal, everlasting, whence there springs
The Bread of Angels and the life of (all)

Now in each blade
I, blind no longer, see
The glory of God’s growth…

(Yes), I have understood
How all things are one great oblation made:
He on our altars, we on the world’s (cross).
Even as this corn,
Earth-born,
We are….

Reaped, ground to grist….
And offered at Life’s hands, a living Eucharist.

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