Sunday of the Passion 2009                                                      Christ Church , York

It has been a long five weeks but now we finally arrive at the beginning of Holy Week, the holiest of weeks in this Year of Our Lord 2009. It is a holy week, the holiest of weeks for during these coming days we will celebrate and remember those events which are central in our life of faith. But this holy week begins with a contradiction - for this is day of Palms as well as of Passion, a day of glory but also a day of impending tragedy. The scene is set as Jesus makes His triumphant journey from Bethany to Jerusalem , to that place where He would start the final act of this great drama. Here He would put into motion those events which would bring all things together through His coming passion and eventual death by crucifixion, hung high like a common criminal upon a cross. The sight of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey with people waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna” and acclaiming Him as the conquering King, must have made the visiting crowds who were gathered for the festival, stop and look in amazement. Little did they know that the rejoicing would quickly be swept aside! Little did they grasp how quickly the triumph would turn to tragedy! Little did they comprehend just how soon those palm branches would take the shape of a cross and those hosannas would become jeers and calls for His death!

Holy Week is the most sacred time of the Church year; it is the holiest of all weeks. For into this week are wrapped all the sacred mysteries of our faith, all the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the love and promises made to us by God through Jesus His Son. This is the holiest of weeks because for us as Christians it confronts us with both the fullness of God’s love for us and, at the same time, it confronts us with the enormity of our sin-filled lives.

This week begins today with the glory of that entry into the city. But it ends with the tragedy of the Passion story in which we hear not only about the last events in the life of Jesus but the blinding reality that this was the price He paid for our sin and that His death was for our life. Betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and abandoned by all, Jesus in His loneliness reaches out for the companionship and support of the Father. But even there He would find little comfort and His words become a cry of abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Now we prepare to enter into this holiest of weeks, a journey that begins in glory but leads us, as it did Our Lord inexorably toward the tragedy of the cross. For in this holiest of weeks we are invited to join in Christ’s suffering and death in order that we might share in His glory. For the road to eternal life does not by-pass the hill of Calvary. Rather our victory, our glory, can like Christ’s only come through the cross.

As we prepare to enter this holy week therefore, let us open our hearts and minds to Christ Our Lord so that we may learn to walk with Him from the glory to the tragedy without fear, confident that He walks with us. Walk that journey during this coming week by attend one or more of this week’s services which will speak to the last agonizing moments of Our Savior’s life. Listen to the passion story as it will be read again on Good Friday in a spirit of prayer and embrace its message of the Cross in your lives. And bow your head and heart before God acknowledging that each of us have had a hand in the death of Christ, for the face of God is marred by our sins, our sin against God Himself and our sins against our neighbor. It may have been Peter, Judas and Pilate who had the direct hand; but their actions only give us pause to reflect on the treachery and the evil that sleeps within all of us. But in the midst of this tragedy, we do not forget the glory of the Good News, for no one can follow Jesus through the liturgy of Holy Week without the truth dawning anew in our hearts, the truth that God loves us all completely and freely, even if that love cost Him His life through death on the cross. This is a day of glory and tragedy if ever there was one. But what tragedy and o my, what glory there is yet to come. Amen