“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Palm Sunday is a day of striking contrasts conveyed through conflicting words. Our words are in contradiction with our hearts. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the most intense and disturbing spectacle, dare I say, that we shall ever see, all the world’s holocausts, genocides, slaughters, and wickednesses notwithstanding. You see, Palm Sunday is for us, in all of the confusions and contradictions of the western democratic societies which we inhabit, the most alarming counter-cultural spectacle that we shall ever face. It is not new, of course. Sadly, it has been cheapened by our familiar customs, perhaps, as if it were a mere cultural phenomenon. As if we are simply going through the motions of ‘we have always done this’ without thinking for half-a-second just what this week we call Holy Week really means.
On the other hand, the willful retreat by so many from the life and witness of the Church to the Gospel of Jesus Christ speaks volumes about a message that you have not received though it has been completely before you. It has nothing to do with the sad and pathetic banalities of our criticisms and complaints about one another, the various and mean defenses and accusations that we hurl at one another to avoid ourselves and the picture of ourselves which Palm Sunday presents and which is revealed more fully in Holy Week which Palm Sunday inaugurates.
No. Holy Week provides the picture, year in and year out, of a very profound truth about ourselves and one which we do everything in our power to avoid. We don’t want to see this picture of ourselves but, truth be spoken, you and I are in utter contradiction with ourselves, you and I in ourselves are hell. And only this week, at least in the meaning of this week, can offer us something more than the hell of ourselves. But, paradoxically, it may seem, only by going through the hell of ourselves in the pageant of Christ’s passion for us. Only through our seeing the forms of hell in ourselves can we begin to understand the joy of human redemption. Holy Week bids us contemplate the contradictions and confusions of our hearts and minds.
For the therapeutic culture, this is a cure too hard to bear for the simple reason that it puts the onus completely on us. It is entirely about each of us in our relation to the words which are spoken and heard, words proclaimed so as to be received. Will we be like Mary and say, “be it unto me according to thy word”? For that is, in a way, the peculiar challenge and joy of Holy Week, to let the words we hear be felt in us. To feel the words. To find ourselves in the story, in the spectacle of this week both for good and for ill. Therein lies the challenge.
There is a wonderful paradox. Mary says, “be it unto me according to thy word.” And yet, so many of the words of Holy Week are our words, our words in confusion and disarray, our words against God and against one another, our words of betrayal and deceit, of sorrow and despair. Today we say, “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”. But then we turn around and say “Crucify, Crucify,” crucify Christ, crucify our Lord! Put God to death. Annihilate God from the horizon of our minds. For that is the meaning of Christ’s crucifixion. And, yet, these are our words, our words that are in complete contradiction with ourselves. What does it mean for us, then, to say, “be it unto me according to thy word”?
In a way, it is the challenge of this week. The challenge is to see our words of hope and hatred, our words of complaint and criticism, our words of delusion and insight, our words of violence and destruction, our words of treachery and betrayal as embraced and comprehended in the words of divine compassion which are both seen and heard on the Cross of Good Friday. Only then will be begin to understand the full and true import of Mary’s “be it unto me according to thy word.”
It means to contemplate and begin to feel every word in this week of words, this week of actions extreme and unspeakable, and, yet, words which must be spoken and actions that must be done, if ever we will learn. This week of Christ’s passion is where the whole sorry truth of our humanity is completely and exhaustively on display, when we contemplate the hell of ourselves without which there can be no heaven, no good.
Mary’s ‘yes’ to God commits us to the discipline of this week. It commits us to be with him who wills to be with us in all of the confusions and contradictions of our messed up souls and lives. Something begins this day which we cannot ignore. Something begins this day which finds its completion at Easter which itself is utterly meaningless, except in the most superficial way of flowers, bunnies and bonnets, apart from the heart-rending, soul-agonizing spectacles of this week; if we have hearts and souls, that is to say. And perhaps, that is the question for our world and day, and for our church and parish.
It belongs to great literature and to the truths of the great religions that they not only teach us how to think and how to act but also how to feel. Holy Week concentrates such lessons for us on how to feel in the most intense manner imaginable. In our Anglican tradition we confront the Passion of Christ in all of its fullness, if we are willing to embrace the discipline of this week in the proclamation of the Passion from all four Evangelists. It begins today. There is something emotionally, intellectually and spiritually intense about this week.
It all comes down to the weight of Mary’s response to the angelic messenger, “be it unto me according to thy word.” Are we willing to confront the spectacle of our own confusions as embraced by God’s grace? Only so will we begin to learn what it means to live “according to thy word.” To feel the words of this week is to enter into Christ’s passion for us. We are in this story. It is our story and God’s. The challenge of Holy Week is to know ourselves in our hopes and our despairs, in our follies and our desires, but above all else to know the love of God that alone can heal and restore. Only so can the hell of ourselves become the heaven of God in us.
“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Rev’d David Curry,
Palm Sunday, 2012