Incarnation & Passion

Palm Sunday 2013
Fr. Philip Eberhart
March 24, 2013
 

Palm Sunday – Incarnation and Passion

(Audio Sermon File)

  

This morning the scriptures themselves bear the weight of the story.  From the Old Testament in Isaiah 50 and Psalm 31 to the passage on the Kenosis from Paul’s letter to the Phillipian church – to Luke’s telling of the Passion story, we hear the voices and the story of both the incarnation and the passion of Jesus.

It seems like only last week that we were celebrating Jesus’ birth!  But it is very real and appropriate for us to consider his birth and revelation to the world – His Epiphany – in the light of the cross.  Everywhere throughout the scriptures the sense prevails:  FOR THIS HE CAME.

From his ignoble birth in a barn in Bethlehem, escaping death quickly because of a dream his father had, making their way to Egypt and then back to backwater Nazareth.  Jesus grew in obscurity in his father’s carpenter shop, learned that trade most certainly, went to the synagogue and the local rabbi’s school.  We are only told that he grew in stature and in favor with God and with man during those years.

 

INCARNATION 

Jesus, became man, just like us, save for sin.  Like us in every way; he was tired, he ate and drank, he laughed and wept, he prayed and listened to his Father.   But even more than the outward physicality of the incarnation, was the inward identification:

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race to sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature!

Our nature – just a few lines from Psalm 31

I am in trouble, my eye is consumed with sorrow, and also my throat and my belly.

My life is wasted with grief, and my years with sighing, my strength fails me because of afflictioin, and my bones are consumed.
I have become a reproach … a dismay to those of my acquaintance, … they avoid me.
I am forgotten like a dead man … useless as a broken pot.
I have heard the whispering
Fear is all around.  They plot to take my life.

Jesus was familiar with these words and the words of Psalm 22. 

The words of Isaiah 53 describing the Suffering Servant:

“For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” 

Jesus’ eyes were open going into this week.  Just the passages I’ve mentioned would have alerted him that something horrible was ahead of him, something he would want to pray for release from, as he did in the garden.  It’s only human!

And Paul’s opening words in Philippians 2, leading up to the passage that is our reading are compelling, inviting us into to same kind of self-forgetful life of sacrifice and service:

Just listen from The Message:

“If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.”

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus!”

In Jesus we have our perfect example, for all of our life.  That is what all of this is about:   Jesus came to live the life that we were meant to live, by virtue of our creation by God!  And he did so, for the three years of His ministry, we see the embodiment of God in Flesh – Paul tells us in the letter to the Colossian church that what we see is “the image of the invisible God.”

We are told to be imitators of God, and how do we do that:  by looking like Jesus!

Jesus was “equal with God” but did not hang on to that status in selfishness, but emptied himself.  That process of “kenosis” was Jesus choice – there was a submitted obedience because Jesus was, as John the Baptist, observed, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  He was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”  Think of it – God set this in motion before the act of creation, knowing that the creation would turn from Him, God made a way from before the foundation of the world!  And Jesus said, “Yes, Father!”

When Jesus said, “I AM the Way”  he had in mind this conversation that happened millennia before the first fluttering of the Spirit of God over the face of the deep.

 

 

PASSION:

Our gospel this morning tells the story:  The story we are all so familiar with, from years and years of hearing it, of telling it to our families, our children, to others.  The story of the incredible love of God and of His Son for us.

The passion of Jesus is the centerpiece of the table.  Never has such love been on such display.  In the words of The Message again:  “He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and the worst kind of death at that – crucifixion!”

This week we come to relive those days in Jerusalem.  On TV tonight and next Sunday night we will see the details acted out, on Thursday night we will come and celebrate the Last Supper evening and the act of Footwashing – the sacrament of selfless service.  On Friday night – GOOD Friday – we will see and hear the passion in pictures and video and song again- why?

So that in some small way, in our minute grasp of these things; of incarnation and passion, we might experience the majesty of His love for us as He went to the cross and died, and that we might prepare for the utter triumph of Easter.  But we must partake of the utter defeat of the crucifixion, first.  There is no other way.  We must walk the way of the Cross – the Via Dolorosa.

And its more than just a commemorative week this week, as our scriptures indicate.  We are to “let this mind be IN US which was also IN CHRIST JESUS.”  Friends, what we partake of this week and throughout the Christian Year and in the Liturgy is the stuff of BECOMING. 

Our focus is on HIM, Jesus Christ, the Lord.  Jesus Christ, My Lord

So I challenge you – I invite you, once again, in the name of the Church to the observance of a HOLY WEEK.  Let’s turn up the heat.  All that we have been doing in observance of a Holy Lent, needs to be sharpened and enhanced as we observe a HOLY WEEK. 

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and
meditating on God's holy Word.

Remember the words from Ash Wednesday?

Self-examination

 

Repentance

Prayer

 

Fasting and Self-denial

Reading and Meditating on God’s Holy Word.

The ingredients for a Holy Lent are the same ingredients for a HOLY WEEK !!

Let it begin this Passion Sunday, as we have heard once again the story of his death and as we enter again into the contemplation of those Mighty Acts that have won us our freedom from sin and salvation through Jesus Christ. 

Let it begin anew as we take on the mind of Christ, in willing service, available to Him for the needs to others moment by moment and day by day, and finally as we become obedient, as he did, through the things that we suffer.  The way of the Cross is still the Way of the Cross, my friends.  It’s not a magic transformation with pixie dust – it is the blood, sweat and tears of obedient following in the footsteps of Jesus, all the way to Calvary.   As one author put it, “A long obedience in the same direction!”

This is what we are invited into by Jesus and the Apostles.

This is what I invite you into as we observe and live this HOLY WEEK together.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live, has given power and commandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. He pardons and absolves all those who truly
repent, and with sincere hearts believe his holy Gospel.

Therefore we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do in this Holy Week, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.