March 29, 2015
Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
Dear Parishioners,
Today we celebrate the liturgy of Palm Sunday, and we are faced with the question: What is truly important about this day? Why is this day unlike all other days in our liturgical calendar? The fact that we name it Palm Sunday already tells you something. The impression we are left with on this Sunday is the importance of the palms. They are blessed and distributed. We take them home and reverence them throughout the year. But this feast is also about donkeys and about cloaks being laid on the road for Jesus to pass over, it’s about people welcoming their hero into the capital city.
The fact is, however, the palms and all these other things are not nearly as important as one central element: The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. His Passion. That, in fact, is the title given to this feast in the Sacramentary; Palm Sunday is just a sub-heading.
So, what is Passion all about? The usual meaning attached to the word is suffering, grief, sorrow, distress. This is a common Christian understanding. Indeed, we hear all that during the reading of the Passion according to Mark. But the more puzzling question is about “passion” with a lowercase “p.” Here we must ask the question: What was Jesus passionate about? What was so important to him that he could literally put his life in jeopardy the way he did. Most people think twice about inciting communities to violent actions such as crucifixion.
I really don’t think we will ever know what drove Jesus, what motivated him. If his own family could not figure out why he wanted to put his life in danger, surely we will not be able to either. But, I think we can get some hints by going back a few years in his life to those early years when his plan was just getting started. You will remember the scene at the Jordan River when he was baptized and when he heard the voice out of the heavens telling him that he was to consider himself God’s specially anointed messenger. I truly believe that Jesus was convinced at that moment that he was called to do something special, something different than any other young man of his time. I don’t think that Jesus’ initial intention was simply to help people “get to heaven.” I think he asked himself: What is out of synch in our world and in our times? How can I help people who have no other resource to justice, food, housing, relief from the powers of the Romans, and the local authorities? When Jesus looked around at the situation that his little world was in, I think he felt God was truly calling him to get busy and do something about it. In short, I think Jesus’ passion was to make the world a better place.
A second thought that tells me Jesus was a passionate person was the time he went to pray in the temple and found all the buyers and sellers making a travesty of the temple and worship. You remember how it went: He made a whip out of cords and drove the merchants out, upset their tables, telling them as they left that this was a house of prayer and not a den of thieves. Scholars today say that this passionate event in Jesus’ life was the one that ultimately brought about his death. From that point on, there was no turning back.
So, the question for us on this Sunday of the Passion is this: What are we passionate about? What drives our life each day? Is there any issue in the world today that makes us angry? If I had to pick one, it would be this: Perhaps one of our great weaknesses is that we are often unable to find anything in the world that incites us enough to change. And that, my friends, is very sad.
Perhaps this year as we carry our palms home again and hang them on our bedroom wall, we might want to remind ourselves today, and throughout the year, that the palms are only symbols of something greater: the passion of a man who was determined that his life was going to mean something.
May God fill you with peace and love this Holy Week, so that you may abound in hope and passion as you live out this Sacred Week. I hope to see you at the Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil Liturgy. Blessings in our Lord Jesus Christ!
Fr. Leonard+