The Reverend Ronald J. Kolanowski
April 5, 2009
Palm Sunday, Year B

Immediately after St. Patrick’s Day you see Easter eggs and bunnies in the stores.  You see lilies, and flowers and signs of spring all around.  And yet, almost nowhere will you see signs that remind you about the story we just heard.  To the majority of the world, Lent doesn’t exist.

The story of the suffering and death of Jesus is the foundation upon which Christianity is built.  Yet we tend to focus on the resurrection.  We see people going to church on Easter and not on Good Friday.  Yet the heart of the Christian message is the suffering and death of Jesus that leads to resurrection.

The call of Lent is to go deep inside ourselves to examine places where we are vulnerable; to reflect on how our actions and thoughts have separated us from God and our neighbors; to sit in the middle of the deserts of our lives and touch our brokenness.  Yet, it is absent in our culture at large.  In the early days of Lent we quickly surround ourselves with colorful eggs and flowers and images of spring.  Something in us cannot stand to contemplate the brokenness in us and the brokenness in the world around us.

We are uncomfortable looking at our own sinfulness and failings.  We do whatever we can to cover or hide that part of the reality of our human condition.  We do not like things broken.  We do not like things messy.  We don’t want to see the blood.  We don’t want to acknowledge the pain.  It’s too much for us to bear.  If we look too closely at the blood and suffering of Jesus, it forces each of us to touch our own suffering and our own immanent death.

For many of us, particularly those who are younger, we wonder what death will be like.  Will we suffer?  Will we feel pain?  Will our dying linger on?  Will it be quick?  How and when will it happen?  Will God abandon me in that moment of my death?  I’m afraid to look at Jesus’ death for what it is, because I am afraid to look at my own death.

Yet, my dear friends, it is in this very act of dying that God comes closest to us, not to bring fear, not to reinforce feelings of abandonment; rather, in the death of Jesus we are given hope.  We are given the promise that in spite of what may look like the absence of God at the moment of death…God is most fully present in a way that is astounding.  And, I believe many of our older members understand this in a way that those who are younger have yet to learn.

When I was a chaplain at Asbury Methodist retirement village, I had the privilege of being with several people at the moments of their death.  I have had people die in my arms.  And every time it happened…at that moment when the person took his or her last breath it was not painful; it was not filled with suffering or abandonment.  Rather, each person touched something that freed them in a way that I cannot explain in words.  What I have witnessed was not abandonment, but fulfillment.   I have said on more than one of these occasions I felt more like a midwife at the beginning of life than someone present at the end of life.

The reality of this world and our own lives cannot be ignored or pushed aside in favor of a Happy Easter.  There is no Happy Easter without the suffering and death of the cross.  It is at the moment when Jesus cries out Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachtani; it is at that moment when Jesus feels utterly separated from his Father that all of history comes together.  It is in that moment that God’s power is most fully manifested.  It is in that moment that all reality as we know it is affirmed and united for all time with a God who through his Son calls all creation to himself.  And our faith teaches us that it is in that moment of our death that we too will experience the fullness of God’s love and presence for ourselves.

As Mother Barbara did last week, I invite all of us, as we enter the Holiest of Weeks, to ponder the mystery of the story we have just heard.  Let us not be too quick to rush to the joy of Easter…we cannot get there without first contemplating the journey to Calvary.  I invite each of us this week to attend the services that re-live the drama of our faith, and to set aside at least one half hour a day to reflect on Jesus’ journey from the joy of Palm Sunday, to the Passover meal with his friends, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the trial before Pilate, to carrying the cross, and to his suffering and ultimate death.  In doing so, may we ponder our own journey to Calvary…reflecting on those places in our lives where we have felt utterly abandoned, like Jesus.  Be willing this week to empty yourself in moments of reflection and contemplation…and in doing so to prepare a place for a new message a week from today when we celebrate the cross of pain transformed into the cross of triumph.  May we not be too quick to rush toward Easter…it comes only after we get through Good Friday.  Jesus is asking each of us this week, “Will you take the journey with me from Gethsemane to Calvary?”  Amen.

Copyright © 2009 by The Reverend Ronald J. Kolanowski