A Sermon from the First Church…. 

A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough on Sunday, March 16, 2008 (Palm/Passion Sunday).  The principal readings were Mathew 21:1-17 and Matthew 27:11-66. 

“…They shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified” (Matthew 27:23b). 

“Just Dying to Live” 

The central focus of today’s worship is hearing the passion narrative read, from the gospel of Matthew, in all its power and drama.  All the gospels share virtually the same sequence of events indicating that the church fixed this story in its memory very early in its history.   

This Sunday has two names, those of Palm Sunday and the Sunday of the Passion.  Today has two moods.  There is that frenzy of the palms.  This is the mood with which many of us were brought up: something of a rehearsal for the Easter triumph.  There is a second mood as well, and that is the Passion narrative with its account of the death of Jesus.  This is the solemn side of the Sabbath, and it is filled with anguish and pathos.  This is the central story of our faith, not the stories of Christmas, or of the miracles, or of the Parables; but the story of the Passion.  This is the story that the faithful have recounted to one another down through time. 

Two moods, two sentiments, two attitudes encompass a lot of real, human living, past and present.  One of the basic questions of our living, if not the question, is this: “How to face life?” 

Life thrusts that question upon us. Sometimes it has a way of towering above us, screaming, “Cope with it!”  It is not a very helpful command, is it? 

The ministry of Jesus was always concerned with life transformation.  The basic purpose of Jesus was always centered in relating a person more, and more directly with God. 

You and I are believers, adherents, and practitioners of a religion that reckons with a dangerous world and never turns a blind eye to the vicious and violent streak in human nature.  The God who speaks to us about heaven also knows what it is to go through “hell.”  (“Hell” is one short word that covers the other side of the human experience – the pains of body, mind and spirit: the sense of meaninglessness, isolation, and abandonment, the fear of the irrational and the unknown where, some would say, that even God seems to be absent.)  For me the compelling power of Christ is that he has already been there. 

As they reach Holy Week, the gospel writers write, something like this, “We have shown you the kind of person Jesus was; what he said, and what he did.  Now let us show you what they did to him.”  It has never been an easy story to tell or comprehend.  Here is the story of our God who knows the worst that can happen to us, the extremes and powers that threaten the human body, mind and spirit. 

We now return to our opening question: “How to face life?”  Some poke fun at our question.  With a suave certainty, that covers their shaking hands and knees, they advise that religion is a crutch to prop up the weak and fearful.  They scoff at those who ask, “How can we face life?”  If religion is a ‘crutch,’ then give me a pair of sturdy crutches.  I need them. 

Disbelief, too, can be a crutch for the ill-advised, the ill-instructed, and the definitely self-contained.  There is a much deeper level here, much deeper.  It was one of our Puritan forebears, Richard Baxter, who commented that when the preacher rises in the pulpit to preach, it is as a dying person rising to speak with other dying men and women. 

To hear one’s self ask, “How can I face life?” pushes the question beyond the level of intellectual games.  (Now it is a question of life, my life, and the practical issue of my living, with what Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor, called “the tragic triad,” which consists of a human existence encircled by pain, guilt and death.   

The question, “How can I face life?” forces me to admit that I cannot rely upon myself or upon just those around me.  Who will restore my soul?  Who will refresh my faith in others?  Who will serve as my crutch, my support, my savior?  Who? 

There is a profound sense in which this Passion Sunday rephrases our basic question and at the same time begins to shape an answer to it. 

The disciples were shattered by the crucifixion of Jesus.  They were disillusioned, disoriented, battered far beyond anxiety.  They were defeated.  The one upon whom they had leaned was mocked and whipped and spit upon and hoisted up on a cross.  He died dead.  Now, how can they face life?  There is, however, the beginning of an answer, indeed, a most stunning answer. 

Jesus faced all things with his Abba, God.  He faced all things as the faithful servant of God.  He prayed that “this cup” might pass from him; but, if not, he would drink it to the lees.  He drank it.  He was the one who “bore our sins,” said Peter, “in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). 

There is more!  Faith knows that Jesus, early one Sunday morning, slipped back into this world and brought the answer with him.  I find the answer in that memorable scene of the first Easter night, when the risen Christ meets his disciples and says, “Why are you troubled, and why do questions rise in your hearts?  See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see” (Luke 24:38-39a). 

Jesus wanted his disciples to be satisfied in the most basic way possible, touching his risen self that it was really he who stood before them, still bearing all the signs of his passion.  Even so he wants to lead us into faith in the reality of his death and resurrection.  In his death and resurrection we find the clearest answer to our question, an answer so familiar that we often miss it because we think we are hearing a cliché. 

The answer to the question, how to face life, is this: Face it with God!

You do not have to go it alone.  Face it with God who shows up right where we are, and lives through everything and more that we live through; who is abandoned and forsaken and crucified, and dies a death that all die – only heavier because it is all tied up with the moral and spiritual failures of your life and mind and all of humanity down through time.  It is all tied up with our God-blindness and our neighbor blindness and our self-blindness to the things that make for our own peace and the peace of the world. 

The record of Christ’s passion and death is the Gospel writers’ way of affirming that God’s presence is known in Christ’s suffering with us and for us.  This is where we affirm the loving mercy, the saving presence of God in our lives.  Christ wants to lead us into faith in his saving death and resurrection, that his mystery and power and joy might help us to face life and death.   

You and I were purchased once and for all time, at a full, high and dear price.  Jesus Christ died dead for us.  We dare not go on living by only counting our loose change.  Those who are willing are able to discern the particular and personal cost in their individual lives. 

God’s love is the only thing that makes sense out of human suffering, conflict, and tragedy.  Jesus did not die in order to spare us the indignities and dangers of living in a wounded world.  He died that we might see those wounds as our own.  He died that we might yet live, and live fully and hopefully, and not in some fantastic, never-never land, but in the ambiguous reality of here and now.  Look at the cross and the suffering, bleeding Savior.  God’s love is the thing that makes it possible to bear life, to see life, to share life, to understand life, and to pass through life in faith.  That is the truth of the gospel and that is the essence of the Passion.  Beyond the tragedy is truth.  Look and live!