Sermon by The Rev. Richard Buhrer
Palm Sunday, 2004
My mothers people came from South Dakota, so every summer we would go there. There’s a small town called Spearfish who claim to fame is an offshoot of the Oberammergau Passion Play. Every summer the local churches support the pageant with their young people and children providing the crowd scenes and a descendant of a man named Josef Meyer plays the Christ.
My cousin named Norma Jean (not the real Marilyn Monroe) took me to see the passion play. Afterwards, I had a fantasy of being a powerful Roman youth and saw myself storming up to the hill of Golgotha in my chariot, rescuing Jesus from the Cross, driving him away and nursing him back to health in my home. (a fantasy born of love of Jesus and confused sexuality, I recognize now)
But in spite of the juvenile nature of my fantasy, the story of Jesus did not have to turn out the way it did.
What would it have taken to make the story come out differently?
The people with power making the choices that required the death of Jesus on the Cross, would have had to allow their hearts and minds to be radically changed.
Judas would have had to have a heart more like John’s. Rather than trying to force Jesus’ hand to bring about a miraculous but violent revolt against the Roman overlords, he would have needed to trust that Jesus’ way was the best, whatever it was.
Herod and his wife Herodias would have had to listen to the preaching of John the Baptist. The two of them had divorced their first spouse in order to form an alliance aimed at power and prestige not at love. They would have had to repent of their sins and sought to change their relationship to serve the Truth.
Annas and Caiaphas would have had to been like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and been ready to really listen to Jesus teaching and allow God to do something new in their time. Instead they just practiced cynical politics trying to save the Jewish civilization of their time. “It is better for just one man to die, that for the nation to perish.”
Pilate would have had to have been willing to be like the centurion who begged Jesus to heal his boy. He would have had to be willing to see the flaws in Roman culture and religion and been open to the Law and the Prophets of the people he was sent to subjugate.
How It Would Have Ended Anyway?
But Jesus would have eventually died anyway, and probably died horribly.
In the Talmud, a commentary on the law of the Jewish upon whwich modern Judaism is based. There is a debate over the name of the Messiah. The participans propose a series of names that are really puns on the names of prominent Rabbis and then they agree that the name of the Messiah would be: “Leper Scholar.” He would recognizable because he only changes one bandage at a time so that he is always ready to be called by the people Israel.
The incarnation itself necessitated the humble, probably humiliating death of Jesus
That’s why we bow at the phrase in the Creed: “He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” Not at the phrase “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried.” Jesus (you should pardon the expression) bought the farm when Mary said yes to his conception where God the Word had said yes to that conception and the death it absolutely mandated from before the beginning of time.
The Carmen Christi
This passage we read today from Philippians is sometimes called the Carmen Christi, the Song of Christ. Scholars believe it was a hymn current in the church at the time Paul wrote his letter. Paul uses it as an examplar of the love of Christ manifested in his incarnation and death: Let that mind be within you that was in Christ Jesus. He did not count equality with God something to be grasped at.
This phrase “something to be grasped at” is a single word in Greek: harpagmos. It means something stolen or worth stealing. It is a reference to the story of the fall in Genesis: The way that the serpent tempted Eve to eat the apple was by telling her “You will be like God.” The fall was the result of humankind’s attempt to steal equality with God from the Creator. The great irony of this is that equality with God was what the Creator wanted to give us in the first place.
In the face of the first great betrayal and the overwhelming tide of refusal to serve God the the early parts of the book of Genesis portrays. I will not serve, I will not serve, vengeance for Cain seven times, vengeance for Lamech seventy-seven times. In the face of all this disobedience, finally one single voice turns the tide: Jesus saying “I will serve.”
The Roman Catholic Theologian has a paper that I read in seminary that talked about why Christ had to die for us. It was not because our sins were so heinous that they required a sacrifice of surpassing value to atone for them (though as a race, our sins are heinous, and the sacrifice of Christ is of surpassing value) but rather because, being human, the only time we can make a full gift of ourselves is in the moment of death. Up until we die, all of our offerings are provisional—for here, for now—but this could change. Only when we die can we make a full gift of ourselves. And Jesus make this full gift of himself as a human being to the Father of Mercies. In that instant, the entire universe shifted on its axis and change so inexpressible began to echo through the cosmos.
The eons-long separation of God and his creation was ended, the gap between Lazarus and the rich man was bridged, mercy became available to all and the Kingdom of God was initiated on the earth.
Dame Julian of Norwich wanted among six things to have the heart of the passion of Christ. She was given an instant of intense darkness and pain that opened into oceans of joy and light: the joy of Christ looking on his sacrifice for us—He swears to her in her vision, “If I could have done more for you I would have done it.”. So let us remember this gift of our Savior to us with solemnity and sadness during this week when we reenact his passion, but let us also be open to his joy and jubilation over us, over US, (incredible as that may feel) the prize, the gift of the Father to him for his act of self-sacrifice. Let us seek to imitate his living in service to others and imitate his dying by giving our whole selves over to the Father in that instant on behalf of all the world.
