by CCW | 25 March 2018 15:00
Which word? “Hosanna” or “crucify”? Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, a week in which we immerse ourselves, especially in the classical Anglican understanding, in all four Gospel accounts of the Passion. These are further complemented by important and intriguing lessons and epistles as well as by the Office Readings of this week. To attend to these readings is to fulfill the Marian definition: “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Today is Palm Sunday but in a kind of providential wonder it is also The Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; though the celebration of that feast is deferred until after Easter on April 10th. As Luther notes, “Mary does not want us to come to her but through her to Jesus.” For over a millennium and a half, March 25th marked the beginning of the year, a year which is constructed entirely around the story of Christ: his coming to us, his going from us; his being with us. Aspects of that sensibility are readily apparent. We call the ninth month of the year, September which actually means the seventh month; the tenth month, October, means the eighth month; the eleventh month, November, means the ninth month; the twelfth month, December, means the ten month. All of this makes sense when you realise the significance of March 25th as The Feast of the Annunciation and therefore as marking the very beginning of the Incarnation of Christ. Nine months from today will be Christmas.
The Angel Gabriel’s salutation to Mary and her active acquiescence to the will of God as the God-bearer, or Theotokos, marks the radical moment of the Incarnation. Her Annunciation is his conception, humanly speaking, in her womb. That it seems to contradict the natural order of things is precisely the point. God is the God of nature but that does not tie him down to nature; in his sovereign freedom he acts in other ways not to destroy nature but to perfect nature. In a way, there is nothing more fitting than the concurrence of Mary’s Annunciation with Palm Sunday and Holy Week.
Through Mary’s ‘yes’ to God at the Annunciation, Christ has “tak[en] to himself our flesh, and by his incarnation [has made] it his own flesh ha[ving] now of his own although from us what to offer unto God for us” (Hooker). Without that understanding, Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection are utterly meaningless, a gruesome tale of cruelty and wickedness but of no redemptive truth or value. In a way, the whole history of the development of the Canon of the Scriptures and the Creeds, the whole history of the Church, arises from pondering on the mystery of Christ’s Passion and seeing in it the utter goodness of God and his will for our humanity.
To be defined “according to thy word” then, is the Lenten project wonderfully concentrated in the heart-breaking accounts of the Passion. Christ’s words, to be sure, are front and centre, but there are also the vast array of our words in all of their confusion and uncertainty, in all of their violence and disarray. We have to attend to all of them but only because Christ is present in all of them although in different ways.
We are in the spectacle of Holy Week, in the events of the Passover journey, in the events that belong to the Way of the Cross. We are in all of the crowds, with all of the actors, but, above all, we are there with Christ. In a way, that will perhaps be the hardest part of Holy Week: to be with Christ as he suffers the madness and the folly of our words and actions unleashed upon him with such violence and fury. We confront ourselves but even more we encounter Christ for us and in us. Yet that will be our comfort, our strength. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
It all seems rather melodramatic, you might be thinking. How does any of the story of Christ really relate to me? Think again. This is nothing in this story that does not relate to you and me in our inner disorders, anxieties, self-presumption, indifference towards others, and to the care of ourselves, let alone our anger, our lusts, our passions and desires which, unleashed or not, wreak such havoc in our souls and lives. There is nothing melodramatic about Holy Week; it is simply the drama of redemption, the drama of the heart and core of the Christian faith. To enter into Holy Week is to participate in the redemption of our humanity accomplished by Christ. It is accomplished by our being with him. That is the great challenge of Holy Week.
We learn more about ourselves and about Christ in his sacrifice for us. What we learn about ourselves is already wonderfully embraced in the liturgies of Palm Sunday. We go from the cries of “Hosanna” to the shouts of “Crucify.” These are our words that reveal our contradictions. This completely counters every aspect of Maritime religion, the religion of sentimentality and self-righteousness, the two sides of the same debased coin of religion. Our hearts are to be moved, yes, even to tears; yes, but in true contrition and confession seeking more and more to be embraced in the redemptive love of Christ. That is not sentimentality; it is not about how we are feeling in our emotions; it is about the truth of Christ’s passion felt in us as truth. This checks the nonsense of any kind of self-righteousness which is nothing more than feeling good about ourselves and superior to others. That is not Holy Week. Nor is it true.
Holy Week confronts us with ourselves in the contradictions of our sins. That, paradoxically, is the good news, if we can learn from what we see and hear in the pageant of Holy Week. If we can, it will be because we are willing to be like Mary and be defined by God’s Word, his Word audible and visible, in Word and Sacrament. Then, and only then, will we begin to be who we are in Christ.
This will the case for all of us but it will have a particular dramatic form for us at Christ Church as Jen and David Appleby proceed through the Passion of Christ towards Easter and their baptisms at Easter, and then confirmation and first communion on The Octave Day of Easter when Archbishop Ron Cutler will be with us. We will be journeying with them in their journeying with Christ and into Christ, into their incorporation into the body of Christ. Baptism and Communion make no sense apart from the drama of Holy Week. It is all about our being in Christ and he in us.
We behold our inconsistencies and contradictions but in the greater spectacle of the constant and all-surpassing love of Christ. Here is the great comfort of the Christian Faith. It is concentrated for us in “the most burning love of the Crucified” (Bonaventure); for in Christ’s suffering we suffer and yet find our truest comfort. Such is the spiritual wisdom of The Comfortable Words in the Literature of Consolation. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” as Paul reminds us. We are those sinners who find their comfort in “Jesus Christ the righteous” who “is the propitiation for our sins,” as John emphasizes. “Come unto me all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” Jesus tells us. Refreshed? Only because “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Christ is God made man through the heart and womb of Mary that he might have of us through her what to offer unto God for us. The intensity of the Passion belongs to the increase of joy in us. Palm Sunday marks the beginning really of one long continuous liturgy that brings us to Easter and to Eastertide. We know the story abstractly, it seems, but to feel it and to be in it, this is the great project of Holy Week. “Draw near with faith.” Embrace it, pray it and feel it!
Fr. David Curry
Palm Sunday, 2018
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