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March 29, 2009, Passion Sunday, All Souls' Episcopal Church

 Passiontide...

      Last Sunday was “Mothering Sunday,” also known as “Refreshment Sunday.” The overall theme of the readings had to do with the grace of God freely given. It is as if at the half-way mark in Lent, we might become spiritually proud of our own discipline and our own efforts in keeping a holy Lent, and we needed to be reminded that all our hard work and sacrifice and self-discipline, and all we become as we strive for perfection, really is dependent upon God’s sustaining and enabling grace. We don’t get to brag. God will not allow us to be spiritually proud.

      Today is called “Passion Sunday.” We are now in what is called Passiontide. We are on the final leg of the journey with Jesus as he goes to Jerusalem. The word ‘passion’ comes from the Latin word for suffering. Hence, the word ‘compassion’ means to have a deep awareness of the suffering of others and a desire to alleviate it. In our Prayer of Consecration we speak both of our Lord’s death and of his passion, or his suffering. In fact, the Prayer of Consecration speaks of how we receive the remission of sins and “all other benefits of his passion.”

      The scriptures give us a number of ways through which we may understand the meaning of our Lord’s sacrificial death. St. Paul calls Jesus “the new Adam.” (Remember, that Adam simply is a Hebrew word for man.) The old Adam (man) was created on the sixth day of the week, a Friday. In his garden, Adam did what God told him not to do, and his disobedience brought about death and alienation from God. Our Lord Jesus … the new Adam … the new man … also is in a garden on the sixth day of the week where in great agony he prays, “Not my will, but thine be done.” This obedience leads him to his cross and to the eventual conquering of death and to our reconciliation with God.

      Scripture tells us as well that our Lord Jesus is our High Priest. In Genesis 14, we are told that Abraham was blessed by Melchizedek, the King of Salem and the priest of the most high God. He blessed Abraham and offered a sacrifice of bread and wine. Hebrews 7 refers to Melchizedek as having no mother or father or descendents. The thought was that he represents an eternal priesthood. This has to do with the fact that he seems to appear in the Bible from out of nowhere. In any event, Psalm 110 proclaims that the Messiah, or Christ, is to be “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” And so, as our Messiah, or Christ, our Lord Jesus is our eternal priest.

      Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies carrying a bowl of blood drained from a pure sacrificial victim. As he sprinkled this blood which represented the pure life offered in sacrifice, he would intercede on behalf of the people. Scripture tells us that Jesus, a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, entered once and for all, not into the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, but rather into the very presence of God in Heaven. There, Jesus has no bowl of sacrificial blood. Instead, he himself is the perfect offering. He himself is our High Priest. He is both priest and victim. As our High Priest, he intercedes on our behalf, not once a year, but forever.

      So, Jesus is the new Adam; he is our eternal high priest who intercedes for us forever, and he is the “Agnes Dei,” the Lamb of God. Jesus is the lamb without spot or blemish. We, on the other hand, are covered with spots and blemishes. I’m not referring to skin but to character. As one without spot of sin, and with an unblemished record, Jesus was in full possession of his life. He was debt free. He didn’t owe his life to anyone. As one of us he was able to offer himself for us. His sacrifice places us in a new standing and in a new relation to God. This somewhat forensic account of our Lord’s sacrifice is yet one more way in which to understand his death. And yet, we may still ask why he had to suffer for us. That his death on our behalf was a sacrifice is one thing, but why did it involve suffering? Couldn’t he have been executed by being poisoned like Socrates? Couldn’t atonement have been made, and couldn’t all the metaphors and images by which we understand that atonement still apply if instead of being crucified he died after drinking hemlock? Why does he have to suffer? I’ll answer the question this way. While the precise and particular mode of our Lord’s execution might not be essential, it must nevertheless involve suffering, or passion. Jesus’ death, in which he offers himself fully and completely, is accomplished only with passion, or suffering, because God is Love.

      If all we could say about God could be summed up with the simple phrase, “God is,” then the path to union with that God would involve detachment from everything that “is not” God. We would struggle to move beyond this mutable, changeable, unstable, material world. We would seek both to flee the world, and to become unperturbed by it and dispassionate about it. However, if instead we say that “God is love,” then that changes everything. If God is love, and in love, seeks to reconcile the world to him, and commands us to love him, and to love others even now in our imperfection, this of necessity requires suffering.  

      To love anyone or anything that is imperfect or incomplete – bound to fail us on some level – requires suffering. All created things find their perfection and completeness only in God. Loving anything in an incomplete and imperfect state involves suffering. In order to love us – “while we were yet sinners” - Jesus must suffer with us, or be full of compassion. In his passionate love for us, he brings us into a restored relation to God with the promise that, in resurrection, we shall be perfect and complete in God. In God, all suffering and all loss shall find the perfection which it desires. And then, all tears shall be wiped from our eyes.

      If we are to follow our Savior Jesus Christ and take up his cross, we must live lives of compassion. In one of his sermons on the First Epistle of St. John, St. Augustine writes:           

 No one has seen God. He is invisible, and must be looked for not with the eye but with the heart. … If you would see God, here is what you should imagine: God is Love. What sort of face does love have? What shape is it?  What size? What hands and feet does it have? No one can say. And yet, it does have feet – those feet that carry people to church. It does have hands – those hands which reach out to the poor. It has eyes – those through which we consider the needy. 

     There was a man named Simon. He was in Jerusalem late one Friday morning where he was standing with a crowd of onlookers as a tortured, condemned criminal was being taken to be crucified. We call the path that criminal walked – his death row – via Delarosa, the way of suffering. The criminal’s name was Jesus, and Simon was forced to help him bear his cross. This was such a significant honor that to this day we not only remember Simon’s name but the names of his sons as well. They’re all mentioned in the Bible. And yet, if anyone praised Simon for what he did, he would have to recall that he was in fact forced to help Jesus bear his cross. He was compelled. We don’t get to brag. God in his mercy will not allow us to become spiritually proud.

      Think of the phrase, “Bear with me.” It amounts to a request for patience and asks that you suffer alongside someone. Perhaps Jesus said to Simon, “Bear with me.” Maybe Simon looked into the face of Jesus and replied, “Bear with me.” The crowd that lined the streets that day was no honor guard. They were laughing, shouting, and spitting as Jesus carried his cross, and Simon was bearing with him. Do you wish to know how to live compassionately and to best honor our Lord’s own passion? Become like Simon. Help ease the burden of someone upon whom life has placed a great weight, and say: “Bear with me.” Bear with those who feel alone in their grief. Bear with those who fail time and time again. Bear with those who suffer and walk with them, alongside of them, as they carry their own cross of suffering. Love them. Be with them. Help them carry the weight, and say to them, “Bear with me.”

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