A New Language - a Meditation for Palm Sunday

A Meditation for Palm Sunday (RCL B) 4-1-2012

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Mark 11:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Mark 14:1-15:47

Themes:         the experiences of holy week

Title:               A New Language

Speaking with remarkable insight, the great teacher and founder of the Sufi tradition, the 13^th century mystic named Rumi, once gave this advice:

“Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.”  

My dear brothers and sisters: that is exactly what this remarkable and Holy Week is all about – learning to speak a new language so that we might renew our world!

The events which we remember and re-live this week are given to us so that we can create a new language, a new means by which we can interpret and understand the circumstances of our lives.

So much of life depends upon our perspective, upon the lens through which we view reality.

This week, we are invited to create a new perspective, a new lens. Not the one handed down to us by the power-hungry in Washington. Not the one sold to us by the money-hungry in the media.

But the lens of the God-hungry, the simple people who long for truth and beauty and hope and love.  

By walking through this Week with Jesus, we are invited to see our lives in a new way through these events. We are invited to speak a new language.

This week,

We are entering the city in a joyous procession, singing Hosanna in the highest.

Then, we are anointing the Lord’s head in preparation for what is to come.

We are eating the Passover meal with the Lord.

We are breaking bread together.

We are washing one another’s feet.

We are watching with the Lord is Gethsemane, and we are falling asleep as our eyes grow heavy.

We are betraying a friend with a kiss.

We are denying our friend three times, cursing all the while.

We are watching the innocent suffer at the hands of the powerful.

We are caught up in the frenzy of the crowd.

We are watching the crown of thorns forced onto his head.

We are carrying the cross, we are bearing the Passion.

We are standing with Mary at the foot of the cross.

We are listening to the crowd as they mock him and taunt him.

We are watching him breath his last.

We are watching as his body is placed in the tomb.

We are waiting through the quiet nothingness of Saturday.

Finally, in the darkness of Saturday evening, we light a new fire, because we know that the Son rises out of the darkness of night.

This is our journey in this Holy Week. You are invited to walk in it, to walk through it.

You are invited to “Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.” 

For this is indeed the faith of the Church: this week marks the turning point of human history.

And when we gather here once again at the beginning of next week, we will be standing on the other side, having passed with Christ through death and into a brand new world where nothing will ever, ever be the same. Amen.