Palm Sunday C                R Lundquist                           4/1/07

Is 45:21-25        http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42441652

Ps 22                http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42441679

Phil 2:5-11         http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42441723

Lk 22:39 – 23:56            http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42441754

In Oberammergau, Germany, this is a Passion Play.  Every 10 years.  It began in 1633 immediately after a devastating plague.  Throughout the tragedy the people felt the abiding presence of Christ, suffering with them.  In gratitude they dramatized the story of the Passion, inviting people from the surrounding villages.  Now it is held every 10 years.  It is beautiful and moving, as much for the centuries of dedication as for the power of the story itself.

            Mere kilometers away is Berchtesgaden, once Hitler’s command center in Bavaria. 

            “If there is any hope for this world of bombing raids and human hostility; if there is to be peace in our time; if love shall ever preside over the homes of our congregation; if reconciliation between the races shall every occur in this noble city; it will be because a man rode into Jerusalem one day, not to set himself upon a throne, but to enthrone his cross of sacrificial love in the hearts of each of us.”                  George Thompson

            The sacrificial love of Jesus is why we’re here today.  We re-enact the painful story of costly compassion, and try to make sense of it.  It’s a brutal, violent and ugly story.  And yet it is somehow redeemed in our embracing of it.  Not lessened, not diluted – but as we hold it close to our hearts we can hear, we can feel a deeper heartbeat, the Divine rhythm.

            Holding this Passion story close to our hearts changes us, makes our hearts more sensitive to the world and to the people of the world.  As we are rightly horrified by the proximity of the Oberammergau play to the headquarters of the Nazi war machine, so too are we assaulted by the genocide in and around Darfur, Sudan.  Hundreds of thousands have been slain by government-supported militias.  More than 2.5 million have been displaced.  Jesus is suffering in western Sudan.

            Whether it is in Rwanda or Cambodia or the Balkans, whether it is called ethnic cleansing or genocide, Jesus continues to suffer horribly.

            I feel hope when I look upon our Church working and praying to end extreme poverty in our world.  We are responding to the suffering Christ when we help alleviate hunger, illiteracy, disease and infant mortality in the poorest parts of God’s world.  We are embracing the Passion of Jesus, holding that brokenness close to our heart, crying out and releasing it all to God. 

            Redemption.  Jesus redeems each of us and all of us in his Passion.  We cannot fully understand it, how passionately God loves us.  Ultimately we can only tell, and hear, and live the story.

            Oscar Wilde wrote a beautiful short story entitled “The Selfish Giant.”  The giant lived near a town in a castle surrounded by a wonderful garden.  The children would sneak in and play.  But the grouchy giant would run them off.  He built a high wall around his garden.  When spring came to the rest of the world, the giant’s garden remained in winter.  The Hail & the Frost & the Snow came to live in the selfish giant’s garden.  And he didn’t know why. 

            One day he heard a bird sing.  “I believe Spring has come at last,” he exclaimed.  He looked out his window and saw that there was a hole in the wall.  Children had climbed through, and there was one in every tree, each of which had bloomed.  Then the giant saw a small boy weeping, trying to climb into a snow-covered tree, but he was too small.  The giant’s heart melted, and he rushed out to place the child in the braches.  The boy reached out and kissed the giant.  He was deeply moved, and immediately began knocking down the wall.

            The children returned, but never the little boy.  The giant grew old & enjoyed all the children, but missed the boy who had kissed him.  One wonderful day he saw the boy in his garden.  The giant rushed over to him, but stopped short.  “Who hath dared to wound thee?”  For there were the nail prints in the child’s hands & feet.  “Who hath dared to wound thee? Tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.” 

            “Nay,” said the child, “but these are the wounds of love.”

            “Who art thou?”

            “You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

            The wounds of love.  These we hold to our hearts, and by them we are saved.  The wounds of love.  “If there is any hope for this world… it will be because a man rode into Jerusalem one day…”

                        Amen.