Paradox Sunday
Saint Paul's Cathedral, San Diego
April 1, 2007; The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, Year C
Scott Richardson +
Paradox Sunday
Gracious God,
Let these words be more than words and give us the spirit of Jesus.
Amen.
The official name of this day in the church calendar is "The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday". That's a mouthful so I propose something simpler – Paradox Sunday.
This is not an easy day of worship. We compress two biblical images – the triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the horror of the cross – that depict disparate scenes. To hold these two together gracefully, one must appreciate paradox. Our story is complex; beautiful and grotesque, light and heavy, playful and morose, full of celebration and laden with lamentation. Most people prefer, at least initially, to lean toward the festive at the expense of the horrific. We'd much rather laugh in the street than cry in the sanctuary. That's not possible today – we bravely look at both sides of our story this morning and hold the incongruous together in a spirit of communal prayer.
Please don't think for a moment that this is normal behavior. The larger culture doesn't share our preference, our predilection, for paradox. Anything that doesn't immediately enhance self-regard is disdained or ignored. We flatten reality by insisting that only beauty, lightness and celebration count. We're taught that everything should revolve around us and the fulfillment of our needs. The "secret" is to imagine ourselves fully sated and then construct a life that allows for this, invites it.
And sometimes even the church reinforces this notion. In a Harper's Magazine article entitled, "The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong", we learn of a mega-church with a drive-through latte stand and sermons that focus on achieving professional goals, investment advice, and debt reduction. Children play with Xboxes the church distributes and members come back during the week for an aerobics course called Firm Believers.
Bill Mc Kibben, the author of the article, questions this trend. He's not against any of the items just mentioned but he does wonder if the hard edge of the gospel has now been dulled beyond all utility. It's like hearing the first part of today's readings, the glorious entrance into the holy city, and neglecting to rehearse what happens next.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor martyred by the Nazis, decried this sort of soft theology. He held that there's a marked difference between cheap and costly grace. You can guess which he commended. He wrote, "Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices… Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate… Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."
Mc Kibben, our Harper's author, concurs with Bonhoeffer. He suggests that we're now given over to a form of the faith that is anything but costly, believing that we're generally pretty good at loving the neighbor who sits next to us in the pew but not quite as deft when it comes to caring for the neighbor we rarely see. He notes, for instance, our unremitting claim to be a "Christian nation" and our easy support of war, our neglect of the global poor, and our high rate of incarceration, execution, divorce, infant mortality, and childhood malnutrition, when compared to other rich nations. All of these, he believes, are precisely the types of issues that Jesus paid particular attention to in his earthly ministry.
So this too is paradoxical, isn't it? Authentic Christian faith, the heart of the gospel, the call to love God above all else and one's neighbor as oneself, has gotten lost in a blurry world of apocalyptic fantasy, pietistic minutiae, and "me-first" spirituality. But what does any of that have to do with the One who entered the great city to bear witness to the universal call to radical love, and who was immediately, mercilessly crushed for his efforts, and who, three days later, rose vindicated and victorious?
Nothing – that's the answer Kathleen Kennedy Townsend gave this week when she came by to talk about her new book, Failing America's Faithful. Kathleen is a liberal Catholic laywoman, the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and the oldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy. She's clear that many in the church – both lay and clergy – have lost their way by forsaking the path of neighbor love. She's also quite hopeful that this love will be immediately rekindled the moment we return to first principles.
She says, "I'm struck by how He (Jesus) makes a point of saying the second commandment is 'like' the first… To love our neighbor is to love the God in whose image he was created… Likewise, to deny our obligation to love our neighbor, no matter how different from us he or she may seem, is to deny our obligation to love God. Indeed, it is to deny God Himself, because we are denying the spark of divinity that imbues every person, binding us to one another and to our Creator."
Our readings today are both festive and sobering; taken together they call us back to first principles and open us to the full gospel - the dark path that leads to light. Without a gospel that includes death, we can't have a gospel that promises life. Without embracing sacrifice, we will not be fulfilled. Without dying to self, we can never live for God or neighbor.
Saint Paul, our patron, framed this complex truth perfectly last week when he declared his personal aspiration and highest ambition in his letter to the Philippians: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus."
The ultimate paradox of Christian faith is this – we are here to serve God's purposes, not our own. As we do this, as we put self aside in honor of God and neighbor, we discover a hope and a depth and a joy that transcend anything our culture can offer or suggest. So we read both stories today – joy and sorrow, exaltation and humiliation, fanfare and abandonment, knowing that our best and only hope lies with the One who sanctified both states. May we, Spirit-filled, follow faithfully.
Amen.
Scott Richardson +
April 1, 2007; The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, Year C