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Sermon preached by
the Rt
Rev'd Edward Holland
Palm Sunday, 28th March 2010
Coming into
Palm Sunday is rather like turning a corner and finding that things are
quite different from what they were.
Sunday by Sunday through the year we are
presented in our readings, collects and themes, with Jesus certainly,
but Jesus in relationship, with God the Father, with the Holy Spirit,
with the pharisees and scribes, the disciples and all the
tax-collectors, centurions, the Syro-Phoenician woman and so many
others, and with the crowds generally.
But
now suddenly it is just Jesus, on his own, quite isolated.
The crowds are still there, the authorities,
the disciples, God himself, but it all hangs on Jesus.
It is as though God himself holds his breath
to see what’s going to happen.
Will Jesus see it through to the end or will
he bottle out.
And
it remains like that through to his death on Good Friday, this lonely
man moving through the drama of the week.
During
Lent I gather your preachers have spoken to the theme of “Why be a
Christian?”
I think I have become a Christian because of
Jesus.
I have always believed in God since my
mother taught me to pray at about the age of three, and of course Jesus
has always been part of my belief because my mother was a Christian, I
went to Christian schools and we live in a Christian country.
But
the longer I live the more important Jesus becomes to my belief.
My faith is probably quite weak, but Jesus’s
faith as we see it in the New Testament is absolute.
It is not just that he has faith but his
faith defines him.
My faith is not in my faith but in Jesus’s
faith.
I believe because of the quality of Jesus’s
faith and of the life he lived by that faith.
His
faith takes the shape of knowing that he is the much loved Son of the
Father.
His life is not so much a matter of
following in Father’s footsteps or being a chip off the old block for
the Father has never lived a human life.
Humans live with God’s life. The Father is
the source of life not the receiver of it, as we are.
But in Jesus we see a human being whose
knowledge of God as Father is so profound that he knows himself to be
his Son in such a way that he lives always in the Father’s way.
If God is absent or appeares to be absent as
he does on the cross then Jesus has to continue to live as the Father,
representing the Father, when the Father appears not to be there.
So
on Palm Sunday he goes into the heart of hostile territory.
Of course the crowds cheer him as crowds
will always applaud apparent winners, though some will be cheering
because they sense him to be the answer to their needs.
But
cheers or jeers Jesus simply remains himself, the Son of the Father
driven by the Holy Spirit.
That is all he has, no great plan or
stratagem.
He is vulnerable, open, responsive to the
moment and to the people who present themselves before him, friend or
foe. And
so he makes his way through the week until he reaches death on the cross
where there is no visible support, all have fallen away by the end.
He
has only his faith to sustain him, faith in the unseen Father and the
Holy Spirit whose movement can only be responded to in the light of past
experience.
He faces temptations, possibilities of
easier choices, opportunities of avoiding the final agony, failure and
total loss.
But he remains true, he keeps his integrity,
he lives his Sonship to the very end.
His life and his death is a reflection of
the Father’s love for him and for us all.
The
Son like the Father remains absolutely dependable and unfailing in the
face of all that challenges and might deflect him from the true path as
he gives his life, indeed gives his whole self, in response to the
Father’s gift of himself in love towards the Son and towards the whole
human race.
As
we go through this week that is the faith that can give us faith, the
faith of Jesus in
the unfailing love and goodness of the
Father in the face of everything that seems to contradict it.
© +Edward Holland 2010
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