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Sunday March 20, 2005 - Palm Sunday, Year A

There are some hymns that seem above all others
to capture the essence of our faith, especially on the big festivals.
We come to church, and there are certain things that we just expect to be able to sing.

What would Christmas be without Silent Night?
Or Easter without Jesus Christ is risen today?

And Holy Week, what hymn better tells the story
than number 458, "My song is Love unknown"?

It's hard to believe it was written three hundred and forty years ago, by an English vicar called Samuel Crossman. It was a poem then, published as part of his collection, The Young Man's Meditation, or Some Few Sacred Poems upon Select Subjects, and Scriptures, and it wasn't until something like two hundred and fifty years later than John Ireland wrote the hymn tune we all know, and the hymn became one of those essential hymns for Holy Week , when we remember the final days of Christ's earthly life.

And it begins, not with the wonderful excitement of Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey and welcomed by people waving branches and throwing their cloaks onto the road to make a kind of impromptu red carpet, it begins not there, but with the thing that undergirds it all,
the deep seated overwhelming
love of God.

My song is love unknown,
my Savior's love to me,
love to the loveless shown
that they might lovely be.
O who am I
that for my sake
my Lord should take
frail flesh and die?

We don't talk a lot about love in the church. We're better at talking about belief
and faith,
but love . . .well it's kind of awkward. I don't mean the sort of love that you find in romance novels or movies,
but the idea of loving God and God loving us.
We refer to it in passing,
but most of the time we don't go any further than that,
because we don't really know what to say.
It's kind of hard to imagine being loved by someone
who we can't see, being loved by someone
we can't touch,
and yet that's really at the heart of the Christian faith, the idea that God loves us,
that Christ loves us,
so much, that he is willing to give up everything
for us.
Not for what he gets out of it — because what he gets out of it
is death —
but for what we get out of it.
Life, freedom, forgiveness.
Or to use the words that Samuel Crossman wrote,
our Savior's love
is love to the loveless shown
that we might lovely be.

I don't know about you, but I don't always feel worthy of being loved, especially not by God. It's one of those things that happens when you grow up. As a child most of us were surrounded by love — it was natural. But as we grow up
we realize that love isn't the only way people relate. And we begin to doubt ourselves, we begin to believe that we have to earn love, we begin feel like somehow there will always be a barrier to being truly loved.

But Christ loves us. Loves us regardless of who we are, loves us
whether we think we deserve it or not.

I'm reminded of another song, this one more recent, by Isaye Maria Barnwell of the group "Sweet Honey in the Rock."

There were no mirrors in my Nana's house,
no mirrors in my Nana's house

And the beauty that I saw in everything,
the beauty in everything
was in her eyes.

I never knew that my skin was too Black
I never knew that my nose was too flat
I never knew that my clothes didn't fit
And I never knew there were things that I missed
And the beauty in everything
was in her eyes.

The world outside was a magical place
I only knew love, I didn't know hate
And the beauty in everything
Was in her eyes.

Christ loves us,
and reflected in his loving eyes,
we are beautiful.

"He came from his blest throne
salvation to bestow,
but men made strange, and none
the longed-for Christ would know.
But O my friend,
my friend indeed,
who at my need,
his life did spend."

We are beautiful
in Christ's eyes; we are loved;
we are his friends.

Remember how Jesus said, that long night of darkness
before the day he died,
he said
"No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends..."

Christ spent his life
for the sake of his friends;
and we are his friends. We are the ones
that he loves.

And Christ is our friend. It's kind of hard to imagine,
A friend. Someone you would want to share a meal with, take to a baseball game, or just hang out with.
It's not the way we normally think of him. And yet he invites us, he invites us
to call him friend.

"Sometimes they strew his way,
and his strong praises sing,
resounding all the day
hosannas to their King.
Then "Crucify!"
is all their breath,
and for his death
they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
he gave the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
themselves displease,
and 'gainst him rise.

They rise, and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
a murderer they save,
the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet steadfast he
to suffering goes,
that he his foes
from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was His home;
But mine the tomb wherein He lay."

Palm Sunday. It's such a celebration. Here comes Jesus, riding into town,
in great triumph, people rushing to clear his way. We can imagine ourselves among them, welcoming
our friend and savior.

But the same people who welcome him into the city, into their lives,
turn against him, just five days later.
It's hard to believe such betrayal,
except that we know how easy it is.
Remember Peter, that great apostle. He vowed he would follow Christ to his death,
and then in the early hours of Good Friday,
before the cock crowed,
denied him three times.
It was safer that way.

It's easy to think
that we wouldn't have been like Peter, we wouldn't have betrayed him.
But traveling with someone to their death
is not something we rush to do.
It's the sort of thing we avoid. Even to the extent
of skipping straight from the celebrations of Palm Sunday
to the celebrations of Easter, without stopping to remember
stopping to journey with our Lord
through the quietness of the last supper on Maundy Thursday,
the agony of the cross on Good Friday,
the silence of Holy Saturday.
We skip straight over it,
leaving our friend
to journey it alone.

"Here might I stay and sing,
no story so divine:
never was love, dear King,
never was grief like thine.
This is my friend,
in whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend."

And so we find our way back to the beginning,
to the Christ who loves us, to Christ our friend
who looks at us and sees beauty in us,
who loves us so much that he is willing to give up everything — even his life — for our sake.

I invite you this week
to share the time with him, to walk beside him
as you would walk beside any friend in crisis.
Journey with Christ
as we share his final meal once again on Maundy Thursday
as we stand at the foot of the cross on Good Friday
and finally,
as we celebrate beside the open tomb
at Easter!
And receive
the wonderful grace
of his friendship,
Christ the first
who always loves us
and will never leave us.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005