The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this homily for Palm Sunday (8:00 am service).
“We have become a spectacle to the world”
“We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men”, St. Paul tells us (1 Cor.4.9). We have become a spectacle, indeed, but what kind of spectacle?
The question is a constant challenge; one which is critically before us in the events of Holy Week, and one which applies especially to the contemporary institutional church. What kind of spectacle, indeed?
Somehow we are meant to see ourselves in this spectacle of sin and love. Holy Week is the spectacle of sin and love. We contemplate nothing less that spectacle of our betrayals, on the one hand, and the redemptive love of Christ, on the other hand. We are very much on display in these events, caught in the conflicting storms of the emotions of our hearts and in the vain imaginations of our minds. It isn’t a pretty picture. We are not spectators of others so much as we are spectators of ourselves as the betrayers of Christ. This reality of our humanity is strikingly, poignantly and painfully present to us in our liturgy, in the frightening contrasts of this day. We cry “Hosanna to the King,” then cry “Crucify, Crucify Him”! If we have hearts, then we cannot help but be convicted by the terror and the tyranny of our betrayals.
Holy Week is the spectacle of our betrayals. It concentrates for us the forms of betrayal which belong to the disorders of our lives individually and collectively. Somehow it belongs to our good to contemplate the destructive force of human folly and foolishness; only so can we participate in the serious joy of our redemption. In other words the events of this week, liturgically and sacramentally re-enacted, recall us to a joy that is greater than the mood swings of our fickle hearts and the destructive follies of our vanity. We are recalled to a joy that is deep and abiding, holy and true, precisely because there is something beyond ourselves which redeems us from ourselves. Indeed, contemplating our betrayal of the journey actually belongs to the journey.
It belongs to our maturity, to the maturing of our vision and our witness, to contemplate the forms of our betrayal of Christ. We might say that it is built into the very meaning of our Christian identity. It means that we have to be constantly asking ourselves about what kind of spectacle we present, constantly challenging ourselves about our Christian witness, constantly seeking to keep the focus on Christ and not on ourselves, constantly being aware of how easily we make idols of ourselves.
It belongs to the deep mercy of God in Christ that Holy Week lies before us as a corrective to the sorry spectacle of ourselves. Only so can we become a community of grace.
Holy Week recalls us to the spectacle of repentance through the contemplation of our betrayals. We look to Christ in the folly and fickleness of our hearts. But he looks upon us with his eyes of divine compassion. We are at once convicted and convinced, convicted of our betrayals and convinced of his greater love. Then, and only then shall we become a spectacle of the redemptive love of Christ “to the world, to angels and to men.”
Fr. David Curry,
Palm Sunday, 8:00am, 2009