by CCW | 1 April 2012 18:00
Mary’s word in response to God’s word to her through the angel Gabriel provides the interpretative principle for our Holy Week pilgrimage. At Evening Prayer on Palm Sunday, the lesson from Isaiah (Is. 52.13-53 end) presents us with the picture of the suffering servant. At once, Israel, in the discovery of her vocation “to be a light to lighten the gentiles”, a vocation to be God’s chosen people for all people precisely through the experience of suffering, the image of the suffering servant is understandably transferred to Christ in his passion. Jesus, we might say, is the suffering servant. And in Luke’s memorable phrase, “all the people hung upon his words” (Lk. 19.48). There is something captivating and compelling about the spectacle of Christ’s passion. It has precisely to do with the way in which the images of the Jewish Passover are transformed into something new and strange.
Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, with the accounts of Matthew and Luke about Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the growing sense of foreboding and unease about what this will mean. The Passover is the great Jewish celebration of the liberation of the children of the Hebrews from Pharaoh’s oppressive yoke in Egypt. At Morning Prayer on Palm Sunday, we are reminded of the Passover of the first-born, that striking illustration of the divine power that discerns the first-born of man and beast, passing over only the first-born of the Hebrews, “that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel” (Exodus 11. 7). This week will challenge us about ourselves, about our inmost selves, about the commitments and principles that define us and defeat us. “A sword shall pierce through your own soul, also”, Simeon had said to Mary upon the occasion of Christ’s Presentation in the Temple, “that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Lk. 2.35). The intention of Holy Week is to reveal the thoughts of our hearts to us.
“The Lord looks on the heart”, it is famously said, “man looks on the outward appearance” (1 Sam. 16.6). Holy Week shows us what is within our hearts, the heart that God sees, the God “unto whom all hearts [are] open” (BCP, p.67). It is not always a pretty picture. But how can we learn what is within our hearts? Only by hanging upon the words of Christ, quite literally hanging upon the Scriptures that are read and understood through the critical matrix of Christ’s Passion in this week which we call Holy Week. Somehow our hearts can be revealed to us in all of their darkness and disarray without us being completely destroyed by what we see and hear. Or rather, perhaps, by our being destroyed and then recreated, by our dying and rising in the one who hangs upon the Cross and whose words convict our hearts and minds of our sinfulness and whose words convince us of his triumph of love and goodness over ourselves, over sin and evil.
Palm Sunday begins with the joy of the Passover celebration of divine liberation from Egyptian slavery. Easter ends with the greater joy of the redemption of our humanity in Christ’s Resurrection. In between lies the pageant of the Passion in which we behold the one who is pierced for us and find, perhaps, that a sword has pierced through our own souls too, revealing the thoughts of our hearts, and even more, revealing the heart of God in whom alone we may find our peace and joy. But only if we hang upon the words of Christ’s Passion. And only if we like Mary can say and pray, “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Fr. David Curry
Palm Sunday, Evening Prayer, 2012
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/04/01/sermon-for-palm-sunday-evening-prayer/
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