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. 

Two Different Processions

A Palm Sunday meditation (RCL A) 4-17-2011, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Ps. 31:9-16; Phil. 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

And so we hear once more the entire sweep of this compelling, and amazing, and holy week. Beginning just outside the holy city of Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives, then entering into the city for a time of conflict and struggle, a time of judgment and pain, and ending once more outside of the city, at Golgotha, ending with a sealed stone across the entrance of a tomb.

But there is even more to this story than what we have heard here today. Every year in the springtime, just before the Passover festival was to begin, Pontius Pilate rode from his primary seaside residence in Caesarea up into Jerusalem. He entered the west side of the city sitting on his imperial steed, flanked by rows of Roman soldiers, in a clear show of force, intending to display to all the citizens of the city that Rome was in charge, and who it was they would have to deal with if they caused any trouble for the empire.

But this particular spring, there was another procession entering the city at the same time. This other procession entered into the east side of Jerusalem, coming up from the Kidron Valley, with Jesus of Nazareth sitting upon his royal mount – the humble donkey, flanked by rows of cheering, peasant disciples, in a clear show of spiritual force, intending to display to everyone that Rome was not in charge after all, and who it was that this empire would have to deal with from this time forward.

Do we wonder then why the whole city was in turmoil? Do we wonder then why, since those fateful days, every nation on earth, every human community has been challenged and changed by the message about what this Jesus has done, the truth told about who he is?

Are we ready for how this one – this one killed by the imperial forces and their allies – how he might continue to challenge us and to change our lives, our families, our communities?

This is Holy Week. Walk into it, enter fully into it, with an attentive mind, and an open heart, ready for surprise and wonder, and for powerful, transforming grace. Amen.