PALMS OR PASSION?

Isaiah 50:4-9 and Luke 19:28-40

Preached at University Worship, SMU, April 4, 2004

 

Every year in October my spouse Deb and I make a pilgrimage to El Santuario de Chimayo.  It is a little church nestled in the village of Chimayo, New Mexico about 30 miles north of Santa Fe.  According to legend a man by the name of Bernardo Abeyto was in the nearby hills doing penance during Holy Week in 1810 when he suddenly noticed a strange light several hills away.  He went to see the light and saw that it came from the ground, so he started to dig and found a wooden cross with the carved image of the Black Christ of Guatemala.

 

Twice, Don Bernardo, along with a priest and other pilgrims formed a procession and took the cross to a near by village in Santa Cruz.  Each time the cross mysteriously returned to the hills and after its third return they decided the cross wanted to stay at the place of its origin which is Chimayo.  So Don Bernardo Abeyto built the santuario in 1813 to house the miracle.

 

To this day people make pilgrimage during Holy Week, walking barefoot for miles to El Santuario’s doors to ask for healing.  The original cross is still in the main church and there is a prayer room off to the side of the chapel with the sacred pit where Don Bernardo first found the crucifix.  The pit is a low-ceilinged room with a hole in the stone floor.  In the hole is holy dirt known for its healing powers.  People kneel and pray there and are allowed to take some of the dirt. There is a sign that reads, ‘Limit, one bag of holy dirt per family.’ The prayer room is filled with crutches and braces left behind by the healed and there are hand-written notes of testimony to the power of this holy place.  Several years ago Deb and I brought some dirt back for a friend who was critically injured.  Today our friend is healed and whole.

 

One year Deb and I took a back road to get to the santuario and we entered the grounds of the church through part of the pilgrimage route.  There is a chain link fence that runs along a bridge from the parking lot to the church and on it—even in October—were little crosses.  Crosses made of sticks, grass and palm leaves woven into the chain link of the fence.

 

Today is Palm Sunday and on this day we wave our palms in order to remember Jesus’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem the last days of his life.  Some of the Palms of this day will be dried and burned to create ‘Holy Dirt’--the Ashes for next year’s Lent--and some of the Palms will be fashioned into little crosses, like this one, to remind us how quickly our cries of “hosanna” turn into “crucify him.”

 

Today is also the first day of Holy Week and churches who follow the liturgical calendar decide every year what kind of emphasis to give to this day.  In my experience as a pastor, the first question the worship planning team always asks as we approach this week of the Christian year is, “Palms or Passion?”

 

Originally this day was called The Sunday of the Passion and it began with a procession and palms which were only a dramatic prelude to the day.  The real focus was on the reading of the passion which would then be read again on Good Friday.

 

Over the years the Palms have been separated from the Passion.  We find ourselves, as one writer has said, ‘seduced by the Palms.’  I wonder why?  Is it because that’s just too much scripture to read in church on a Sunday?  I think it has more to do with our ‘passion threshold.’  We know Good Friday is right around the corner, so we hold off as long as we can, because it is an unpleasant experience.  We don’t want to go there.

 

Well, Mel Gibson has helped us go there this year.  I must confess, I have not seen the movie, but I’ve read enough reviews and heard enough commentary to know that it is a compelling film.  It presents in graphic detail the passion of the Christ.

 

Whether we like the movie or not, Mel Gibson has tapped into a centuries-long fascination with the passion.  Christians particularly in the West have been drawn to the passion, evidenced by Passion Plays, Stations of the Cross, and the pilgrims of Chimayo.

 

I believe there are two basic ways to experience the passion of the Christ:  outside it and inside it.  As a spectator or as a participant.  To understand the Passion as Jesus payment for our sins is to observe Christ’s sacrifice as a spectator.  Those outside the event, looking on, are moved by such extreme sacrifice.  And amazed at the grace offered there.

 

But there is also an ancient tradition that invites Christians to enter into the event.  A desire to be somehow inside the process of dying so that they might be brought to new life with Christ.  It is a tradition that understands the passion to be God’s radical identification with the suffering of the world. 

 

This Sunday is an invitation to cross over into Holy Week. Today is the first day of Holy Week, not Maundy Thursday.  This Sunday, regardless of what you call it, is an invitation to enter into the Passion.  It is a threshold experience that offers opportunity for transformation—ours and the world’s. 

 

The way we enter into the passion is to enter into the mystery of pain and brokenness—our own and the world’s to discover we are not alone.  Entering into the passion does not mean stoically bearing the burdens of life.  It means identifying so completely with others who struggle, just like you, that you voluntarily take on their pain.  You are so with them in their pain and struggle that your presence, you solidarity, your being-with, is redemptive.

 

Our Hebrew scripture for today is the third of four Servant Songs in the book of Isaiah.  The Servant’s task as God’s chosen one is to bring justice and redemption.  This third song speaks of the cost of the commitment made by the Servant.  It is from this third Servant Song that we get the concept of a ‘suffering servant.’  On this Sunday of the Passion, the prophet Isaiah invites us to enter into the mystery of redemptive suffering.  The suffering servant declares, “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know I shall not be put to shame, the one who vindicates me is near.  Let us stand up together.  It is the Lord God who helps me.”  This is a mystery that claims God is not the author of suffering, but is with us in our suffering. 

 

Thomas Merton has said that while Christ’s physical body was crucified by Pilate and the Pharisees, Christ’s mystical body is drawn and quartered from age to age by the disunion of our souls through selfishness and sin.  Merton states, “As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a body of Broken Bones.”

 

I have never had a broken bone, but I understand that in order for the break to heal, for the bone to become one piece again, it has to be reset and that is a painful process.  When we are with each other in our suffering out of love, we reset the broken body of Christ.

 

There is an ancient tradition, still alive today, that invites us to enter into the passion.  To somehow be inside the process of Jesus’ dying for the sake of new life.

 

In October of 2000 Deb and I made our usual pilgrimage to Chimayo.  That year we decided to drive further north to Chama.  On the way we witnessed a remarkable sight—an Eagle in mid-flight with its prey.

 

Two weeks later I entered the Passion.  This my journal entry for October 17, 2000:

I have experienced the passion of Christ in my body today.  It began with reading some of St. Teresa’s poetry on the cross.  I sat on the floor in front of my altar in the back bedroom.  I closed my eyes and felt myself flying—like the eagle we saw in Chama.  I was Jesus flying on the cross.  I felt a shift inward.  A pain in my chest.  Even though the cross as the tree of Calvary can be an image of groundedness, I felt the pull of outstretched arms in my chest.  I felt pulled deeper into myself.  I felt a trembling in my body and an invitation to let go to it.  I did.

 

My hands flung up and out from my lap—like limbs of a tree waving wildly in the wind.  My hands and arms moved up and joined together over my head.  I found myself in this position, head bowed low, heaving great tears of sorrow.  I cried so deep that my back hurt, my body wrenched, saliva dripped from my mouth.

 

It was as if I was Jesus tied to a post.  This experienced reminded me of his beating before he was crucified.  But it was not the beating I experienced.  I experienced Christ’s deep sorrow and agony that heals us all.  As I heaved and cried, my eyelids flipped back because of the tears.  My whole interior went black.  It was a deep, interior darkness.  The darkness—the fruitful darkness of Christ’s Passion.  Of sorrow and suffering.  Of compassion.  A darkness that cleanses and leads to release.  An orgasmic darkness.  A deep wet womb of darkness that is the birthing place.

 

I gave myself over to this experience, a little afraid of what might happen to me physically. I remember opening my eyes briefly, because of the discomfort I was feeling.  The shock of the bright light of the carpet brought me up out of the deep place I had gone.  I wonder how deep I would have gone—how much my body could have taken—how far I would have been asked to trust, had I not opened my eyes for that brief second.

 

As I came back to this reality my legs were weak.   I was disoriented. 

 

The verses from Psalm 22 and Isaiah are so real to me.  We are called to union with Christ in all its glory and fullness and joy.  But we are also called to the Passion of Christ that enters the crucible of the world’s suffering, sin and evil.  We are called to bear it and in so doing transform it.

 

Sisters and brothers, fellow pilgrims, today is the first day of Holy Week.  How will you enter it?  Palms or Passion?