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March 25,  2007 Passion Sunday, All Souls'  Episcopal Church   

 “I press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

      This Sunday, according to the church’s traditional arrangement, is called Passion Sunday. At every Holy Communion service, we proclaim our Lord’s passion and death as well as his resurrection and ascension. By “passion” we mean suffering, as the word comes from the Latin term meaning to suffer. And so, the liturgical color for this Sunday and for Passiontide is blood red. Before Holy Week begins, we pause and reflect upon our Lord’s passion, his suffering. But, why, on this fifth Sunday in Lent a week before Palm Sunday, do we make his suffering the object of our attention?

     There are a number of events which occur on Palm Sunday which demand our attention: the triumphant entry in to the city of Jerusalem during which our Lord Jesus was proclaimed King and Savior by a people shouting their praises of Hosanna; the waving of Palm branches in procession; the plotting of the religious officials who saw Jesus as a threat to the peace and to their own authority; the cleansing of the temple by our Lord filled with righteous indignation; the betrayal, arrest, and trial of our Lord; the rejection of Jesus by the very people who earlier had proclaimed him King; the condemnation by Pilate; the crucifixion and death of Christ. This Sunday – Passion Sunday – allows us to pause and put all of this into perspective and draw everything into focus. Passion Sunday tells us that all this was not some horrible accident, some terrible but circumstantial turn of events. Passion Sunday tells us that all this was precisely what our Lord came to do. Passion Sunday tells us that our Lord’s suffering had great meaning and great purpose. Jesus told his disciples, “No man takes my life from me. I lay it down.”

     The scriptures proclaim that the nation of Israel, God’s covenant people, is a nation called to the role of suffering servant. The long awaited Messiah, or Christ, would himself personify this suffering. And so, Isaiah writes of this suffering servant that, “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Our Lord’s suffering was a fulfillment of this role. Moreover, his suffering was accomplished for our redemption and salvation. And so, Isaiah continues, “Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Before we come to Holy Week, we must pause and remember that all Christ went through and all that Jesus did was for us and for our salvation. Everything was done by him for you and for me.

      Today, the twenty-fifth day of March is the Feast of the Annunciation. We will observe this Feast with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist tomorrow at 5:30 in the Chapel of St. Mary. On the Feast of the Annunciation we recall the time when the angel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she was to become the mother of the Son of God. This is the feast of his conception in her blessed womb. Exactly nine months from today we will celebrate his birth on the twenty-fifth of December. For nine months he grew and developed in that blessed womb just as we all do. After all, he is one of us. He was born flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. He has a human body and a human soul. After all, he is one of us. He experienced every emotion we experience. He learned to talk as we all do. He learned to walk as we all do. He knew every joy and experienced every sorrow we experience. His body felt the heat of a Middle Eastern summer and the chill of cold dessert winds. He experienced suffering and pain in every nerve ending of his body because, after all, he is one of us. And when he goes to Jerusalem and is arrested without due cause, falsely accused of crimes he didn’t commit, tried unjustly and despite his innocence condemned to death, he suffers all these things as one of us. This is something else we need to clearly know as we make our way to Holy Week.

      There is one thing more we must recall this day. After his resurrection, our Lord Jesus still possessed the wounds received in his sacrificial death. He ascended to Heaven still bearing those wounds. His suffering had great and eternal meaning. His wounds have great and eternal meaning. We must learn to see our own sufferings not as meaningless, but as invested like his with meaning and purpose. This is a deep mystery, for we might not know the reason for our own suffering. And yet, in today’s Epistle reading, St. Paul writes of “the fellowship of his suffering.” You see, all our suffering cries out for the eventual healing of God’s grace, and all our pain speaks of our need for that fullness of life which is our spiritual inheritance, and all our brokenness declares the longing each of us have to be made whole. 

      The Feast of the Annunciation teaches us that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is both God and man. He is fully and completely God and fully and completely human. This very Lord and Savior taught us that we are to look for his face in the faces of one another.

In fact, he tells us to see him particularly in those who suffer. Passion Sunday teaches us something further. It teaches us also to see each other’s wounds. It teaches us to look unflinchingly into the faces of those who are wounded and broken and to see there his wounds, his brokenness, his passion. This is the faith which leads us to Holy Week, and this is the faith and the insight which leads us to the other side of Holy Week and which inspires us to make our song, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

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