RCL Palm
Sunday
29 March
2015
Saint
Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver
BC
Are We ‘There’
Yet?
Chapter
1: Making Christ’s Presence Known
Exactly
sixty-two years ago today my parents and family in England celebrated Palm
Sunday. I was also part of the celebration,
but I was not aware of it. I would
arrive on the scene twenty-nine days later on the 27th of
April. I’m sure that my mother was very
much aware of my presence and my father was probably pondering what it would
mean for him to become a father.
This
year will mark the sixty-first time I have consciously walked this road to the
cross and, beyond it, to the resurrection.
Some of us here today have walked this road more than I and others not
so many times. But I find myself this
year asking a question that I’m sure others have asked over the two thousand
years that women, men and children have been following the pilgrim’s road we
call the Christian faith: Are we ‘there’
yet?
What
I mean by asking, ‘Are we “there” yet?’, is this. Eighty generations of Christians have
travelled this way before us, each one generation hoping that the promise that
God has made known to us in Jesus of Nazareth might come true in its own span
of time. Yet, as we look around us, we
can see all too well the signs that the promise has yet to come in its
fullness. The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees has recently stated that in this century, less than fifteen years old, there
are more refugees than in all of human history.
Christian and other religious communities that have lived in the Middle
East for hundreds if not thousands of years are under persecution and many have
fled, some here to Canada. Wouldn’t this
be a good time for the Messiah to come and to establish God’s reign of justice
and peace for all creation?
So,
after eighty generations of Christian living and teaching, why are we not yet
where our ancestors in the faith hoped we would be? Let give four reasons --- not all today ---
but between today and Easter.
Today
we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, an event that
Hollywood has dressed up in grandiose style, but an event that probably only
drew the attention of a few people and some anxious Jewish and Roman
authorities. Despite the warnings of
friends and supporters, Jesus has chosen to come to Jerusalem after three years
of teaching, preaching and healing in the northern part of what we now know as
Israel and Palestine. He has come at a
politically sensitive time --- the celebration of Passover, the festival that
commemorates the liberation of the Hebrew people from their slavery in
Egypt. As you can well imagine, the
Roman colonial government had its spies and collaborators on the trial of any
hint of sedition and revolution.
Jesus
allows himself to enter the city in a manner that fulfills the words of the
prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O
daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter
Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant
and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a
donkey. He will cut off the chariot from
Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and
he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and
from the River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9.9-10 NRSV) Among the Jewish authorities Jesus’ entrance
leaves no doubt as to his intentions and the meaning of his entry was, no
doubt, quickly shared with the Roman governor.
This obscure rabbi from Galilee has made his presence known.
Why
aren’t we where we want to be yet?
Perhaps we’re not ‘there’ yet, because the presence of Jesus has not yet
been made fully known to all of humanity.
Some Christian traditions are thoroughly committed to making Christ
known to every human being and spend millions if not billions of dollars
sponsoring missionaries to every country --- even ones that have a majority
Christian population! Many of these
groups are motivated by the conviction that any person who dies without confessing
Jesus as Saviour is lost.
I
must be honest with you; I do not share this conviction. But I do share their commitment to making the
presence of Jesus known in every corner of the world. The presence of Jesus that I seek to make
known is the presence that Paul writes of in today’s reading from his letter to
the Christian in Philippi: “though [Christ]
was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, but
emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled
himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.”
(Philippians 2.6-8 NRSV)
For
many people in the world today, even a fair number of those who live within
this neighbourhood, Jesus is not known as one who serves. In many parts of the globe, the Christian
legacy is not one of humility towards those who do not share our
convictions. It’s true that in many
places we built schools and hospitals, but we often did so with an ulterior
motive. Rather than offering education
and health care because ignorance and disease are evils that deface the image
of God at the heart of every human being, we sometimes used these services as
carrots to lure people into nominal membership.
Is it any wonder, given this legacy, that there are countries where
bringing in a Bible is illegal?
Are
we ‘there’ yet? No, we are not ‘there’
yet. The real presence of Christ, the
presence of a community that is committed to humble service after the pattern
of Jesus, has not yet arrived in all those places where that presence is
desperately needed. Some of those places
are prosperous and peaceful, other places poor and violent. But all these places are awaiting the arrival
of the One who comes in the name of the Lord, arriving not in splendour but
simplicity, bringing good news in the form of faithful disciples whose only
purpose is to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbours as
ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the
dignity of every human being. (cf. The Book of Alternative Services 159) When this happens, then, perhaps, we’ll be
able to say, ‘We’re still not “there” yet, but we’re getting closer.’
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