Homily for Palm Sunday 2008
"Why do we keep reading the accounts of the Passion?
Year after year?
Especially since they are so long?
Why don't we just read a piece of it, pick ten verses or so?
How is this vast canvas of narrative connected to us,
twenty centuries later?
One way to think about it is the following.
If we let this account come alive in our imagination,
and roll around in our hearts,
we begin to recognize ourselves in some its characters and their situation.
The narrative is like a vast Rorschach painting.
Like Mary and Jesus we follow in compassion,
identifying with the mistreated and brutalized.
We are willing to suffer and die with them.
We hear Peter in ourselves when we fear
what it might mean to put everything on the line
for God's reign of nonviolent love.
Sometimes we are overwhelmed by denial and confusion
Like Peter, James and John,
we sleep rather than watching with the suffering friend.
Sometimes we are Simon, minding our own business,
and suddenly we are pressed into service,
carrying somebody else's cross.
Or like the chief priests and elders,
we undercut goodness in order to establish our superiority.
Like Pilate we give up when our efforts toward justice meet resistance
and yet we declare our innocence.
This gripping drama of goodness and hatred,
fidelity and betrayal,
courage and self protection,
brutality and sensitive care,
is our story, both as individuals and as community.
Truly, "I am human, nothing human is foreign to me."
Jesus suffers with all who suffer.
He is merciful and kind,
in faithful caregivers and loyal friends.
He knows the anguish of victims of torture, crime, and abuse,
and understands the deep alienation experienced by perpetrators.
Jesus is with us not only in the light,
but in our lives in their darkest moments.
There he cries out with us:
"My God my God, why have you forsaken us?"
God's faithful, humble, divine love in Jesus
embraces each one of us in our goodness and in our sin.
No human experience is beyond the reach of that love.
That's why we keep reading this story, in its fullness.
We need to hear the story -- we can't live without it.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
16 March 2008
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