Sermon Preached by the Rev. Sam Frazier, Vicar

Saint Andrew=s Episcopal Church, Haw River, NC

April 5, 2009

Palm Sunday, Year B
What a happy day this is!  But there is a chill in the air, a deadly chill, and so the Gospel message makes us stop dead in our tracks.  The Gospel tells us that people change.  People are weak.  Today, people were shouting Hosanna to Jesus as they stood along that dusty road leading into Jerusalem.  Today, you and I are also standing along that dusty road.  If you are very still, you can still hear the echoes of our joyful celebration.  Tomorrow, those same people, and that includes you and me, will be shouting ACrucify him, crucify him!@

How sad it is.  People desert the Lord.  You and I desert the Lord.  We desert one another.  And we do it all the time.  Let something happen at church that we do not like, and we leave, we desert the Lord, and we desert one another.  We all know people who have experienced a tragedy in their lives, and because they could not deal with it, they blamed God and they deserted him.  And what about Peter?  He deserted Jesus not one time, not two times, but three times he deserted Jesus.  Today Jesus is reaching out to you and to me.  He does not want us to desert him.  Rather, he wants us to go with him, to go with him all the way to his cross and resurrection. Saint Paul said it best when he said, ABe imitators of God.@ Jesus wants us to follow him, follow him through the gates of Jerusalem.  Jesus wants us to walk as he walked.  Jesus wants us to do as he did.  Jesus wants us to love as he loved.  Jesus wants us to forgive as he forgave.  Jesus wants us to change.

The Gospel today is calling you and me, calling you and me to change, to radically change.  The story of Jesus= trial and crucifixion is a story of how God has turned the world upside down.  God has made a radical change in our universe.  By giving himself to die for you and for me, he gave us new life.  You see, in Jesus death has become life.  Nothing, nothing in our experience has ever been that radical.

We began our Eucharist today waving our palms and singing as we made a parade and walked into the church.  Once we are seated, what do we do with the palm branches we are holding?  The palms we use to remember Jesus= entrance into Jerusalem and his place of honor in our lives are awkward.  The palms do not fit nicely somewhere and neither does Jesus always fit nicely in the place of honor in our lives.  But then neither did Jesus fit nicely in Jerusalem that day.  And neither does the holy in our lives always fit nicely.  The events of this day bring that lesson home in an unforgettable way.
Thus we begin Holy Week.  We are the same people we were a year ago - and yet we are not.  You have changed, and I have changed.  During the past year our many experiences have left an indelible impression on our lives.  We have created new insights about the world around us, and we bring those new insights to this Holy Week 2009.  As a result, I believe that each one of us is going to discover something new.  We need to be open and be ready to become new and to receive God=s transforming love into our lives.

Two thousand years ago the cross was common.  Crosses were used in every city controlled by the Roman Empire as an instrument by which the government punished criminals and political enemies.  These people were executed on the cross, just as today states have electric chairs, or gas chambers or lethal injection devices to do the same thing.  In those days the cross was a symbol of death.  But God reached into our world, took that cross which was a symbol of death, and made it into the total opposite - a symbol of life.  And it is not just a symbol of any life, the cross is a symbol of your life and a symbol of my life.  Jesus= death on the cross has become our life.

The radical change that has taken place is that death is no longer the end for us.  It no longer has the final word.  Death is no longer an unknown and terrifying blackness and emptiness.  Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, life, life has the final word, not death.  Today the symbols of life are everywhere.  In the spring garden, in the greening grass, in the swelling buds of a fruit tree, in the spring flowers.  But the greatest symbol of life is the cross.

For thousands of years, human kind has observed the annual cycle of spring planting and fall harvesting.  The early people saw the symbols of new life bursting fresh upon them each year, and they strained to find that new life for themselves.  So they invented myths and gods to help them find that new life they so desperately sought, but it was a fruitless effort.  Those gods were lifeless and of no use.  However, now it is no longer a fruitless effort to seek new life for ourselves.  New life is now possible.  But we do not have to strain for that new life, we do not have to create an endless succession of myths and new gods to achieve it.  The good news, the good news is that new life is freely given to us by God in the sending of his son Jesus Christ into this world.  The cross is a symbol of that new life.  The cross is a reflection of the transformation that God can cause in your life and in my life.

At some point, God looked over the fields of history and saw them littered with the failures and transgressions of men and women.  But his creation meant too much to him to overlook the evil that we and our ancestors have done.  God ached to reach out and embrace his people, he ached to surround them with his awesome love, but he could not ignore what he saw littering the fields of history.

In light of all this, how was God to find a way to draw us into his everlasting arms?  How was God to find a way to pour his love into the hearts and souls of his people?  The answer was simple, so simple in fact that at least a thousand years before the coming of Christ, human kind began to perceive the outlines of that simple answer.  Those outlines were found in the Book of Job.  In a very real way, Job was a forerunner of Christ.  He was innocent of any wrongdoing.  He was loyal to God.  He was a loving father and husband, and yet he suffered, he suffered great agony, while all the time he was innocent, totally innocent!  He was not guilty of anything!
My friends, Jesus was innocent too.  He had done no wrong.  He was guilty of nothing, and yet he suffered and died for all that we humans ever did or ever will do.  Now, we expect the guilty to suffer.  That is normal.  That is right.  That is logical.  But the innocent?  No we do not expect the innocent to suffer.  Today, our courts= decisions in many criminal cases are being overturned as a result of DNA tests.  And we are discovering how tragic it is for innocent people to be convicted and punished for crimes they did not commit.

Jesus died on the cross for crimes that he did not commit.  But this is no tragedy.  My friends, this is victory.  This is new life for you and new life for me.  The truly amazing thing is that God did not just send a prophet into the world to turn us from evil to good.  Rather, he sent a Savior whose innocent suffering paid for the past and brought new life to all people.  Because of what God has done, the world is a glorious place.  It is glorious, because sin and failure and death no longer win.  It is glorious because life has won!  It is glorious because God=s love has won!  Thanks be to God!    AMEN.