Homily for Palm Sunday, 2007
I am sure that many of you are struck
by the abrupt change in feeling
as we made our way from the Great Hall to this church.
After singing "Hosanna to the Son of David"
suddenly we are reading from the servant song of Isaiah 50.
The servant song grabs our attention
because it gives us a clue as to how our redemption is won.
The mysterious plan of salvation is delegated to one
who will hear and obey,
disregarding the cost to himself.
We find it hard to believe that God
will allow his obedient chosen one to suffer.
Yet we recognize the truth of the servant song,
because in our time,
innocent, faithful men and women suffer for us:
for the sake of our families and community,
for the sake of our country,
for the sake of telling the truth,
for the sake of speaking and living the Gospel.
The servant song resonates with our sense
that our world is out of joint,
and no quick-fixes are available.
Equally these readings resonate with our deepest sense
that if there is a redeeming God,
that saving God must look like the servant of Isaiah:
that is, not solving the problem at arm's length,
delegating it to someone down the line,
working on other things
while someone else sorts out this mess.
No, this redeeming God has to be fully present,
bearing the load in person,
standing knee deep in history,
living through the poetic vision described by Isaiah.
When we take the poetic vision of the Servant
and weave it into the hymn from Philippians,
we see Jesus as obedient slave -- as a doulos --
weeping on a donkey on his way into Jerusalem,
weeping in the Garden of Gethsemane,
out of anguish, fear, and uncertainty,
ultimately freely accepting torture, humiliation, and death.
It is in this way that God comes to the place
where human experience is at its lowest ebb,
the place where the world's pain is most concentrated.
It is so because Jesus is the Just One, the Innocent One,
the one who knew no sin and yet he is killed as a criminal.
Today it is the equivalent of having him killed by lethal injection.
Jesus takes this pain into himself and drains it.
We have a hard time seeing anybody when we are in pain,
even Jesus who is right next to us.
Pain tends to silo us.
Yet Jesus' gaze is directed toward those around him:
affirming and challenging his disciples,
healing the man with the severed ear,
comforting the women of Jerusalem,
forgiving his executioners,
and saving the repentant criminal.
As we celebrate this beginning of Holy Week,
we are invited once again to ponder the love of God for us,
especially the way that love is made visible in Jesus' suffering and death.
We are invited to look at the suffering of those we love,
the suffering in our own lives,
and in the lives of many people further away,
and reflect on the binding of that suffering to the cross of Jesus.
In our own way, each one of us is a Simon of Cyrene,
bopping along one day, finding ourselves carrying the cross beam behind Jesus.
We are invited to reflect on the obedience of Jesus
and to know the role of obedience in our own lives:
obedience to spouses, to children, to confreres, to abbots.
Always the most difficult obedience
is to do what is required right now.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
April 1, 2007
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