Oh Messy Life
a sermon by Rev. Claire Phillips-Thoryn
given on Palm Sunday, April 1, 2007
at The First parish in Lincoln
Click here to listen to this sermon
Readings
Luke 19:28-40
[Jesus] went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
| “The Journey” by David Whyte | |
|---|---|
Above the mountains Painting their Sometimes everything so you can find Sometimes it takes | small, bright Sometimes with someone has written You are not leaving
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Welcome to Holy Week…also known as The Clergy Superbowl. On Palm Sunday, we read the story of the triumphal entry, and on Easter, we sing the praises of new beginnings and the rebirth of hope. Two Sundays of triumph and victory and joy. In-between them lie six days, and the valley of betrayal, despair, and loss. Holy week is every week, every year, every lifetime—the highs and the lows, the greatest joys and most cutting hurts, the moments of truth and deception, love and hate, birth and death.
Jesus rides to Jersusalem. It is a triumphal entry—a triumphal entry to near-certain doom. On this day, he is not leaving, he is arriving. We know the story, and he knows the story. The great sky lies before him, and in his heart is a small, bright and indescribable wedge of freedom. He will challenge the authorities, mock their hypocrisy and greed. Was he afraid? I think he probably was. He was human after all. But he got on the donkey anyway, and he rode through his fear and over the cloaks and palm branches spread beneath him, and the songs of Hosanna surrounded and lifted him.
Triumphal entry. Certain doom. The fact is that this story doesn’t work without both. Dag Hammarskjold, the poetic former Secretary-General of the United Nations, wrote about Palm Sunday, “A young man, adamant in his commitment, who walks the road of possibility to the end without self-pity or demand for sympathy, fulfilling the destiny he had chosen . . . still uncertain—but certain—that the answer could only be had by following the road to the end.”1 If the Christian story of Holy Week only had Palm Sunday and Easter, it wouldn’t be much of a story. A religion with only tales of triumph and happiness is no religion at all. No life is spared sorrow and loss. We all have faced the fires and found our life in ashes.
On his journey into Jerusalem, Jesus is praised and blessed. The book of Mark adds leafy branches to Luke’s piles of cloaks. The stony road is smoothed and softened under the coats and palms. Jesus is protected from even the dirt of the road. The cries of the people are so loud, so joyous that Jesus tells the curmudgeonly Pharisees “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” How different a passage it is when Jesus is dragged through that same dust, through those same stones.
Holy week is for everyone. Not just the triumphant. Not just the joyful. Holy week is also for the lost, the broken, the despairing. During this week, in 1941, the novelist Virginia Woolf drowned herself in a river near her home in East Sussex. She had periods of terrible depression her whole life. In 1939, as World War II broke out, she and her husband moved away from London to their country home, in the hopes of finding safety and peace. But their home was under the flight path of the bombers, and the planes flew so close she could see the swastikas on the undersides of the wings. The Writer’s Almanac says:
By March of 1941, she was writing in her diary that she had fallen into "a trough of despair." She wasn't at all satisfied with her most recent book, and she felt as though the war made writing insignificant. She wrote, "It's difficult, I find, to write. No audience. No private stimulus, only this outer roar."
She finally wrote three letters… explaining her reasons for wanting to end her life. In the longest of the three, she wrote to her husband, "I feel certain that I am going mad again. ... I shan't recover this time. ... I can't fight it any longer. ... What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you." Woolf left the letters where her husband would find them, and then, 66 years ago this past Wednesday, she walked a half-mile to a nearby river and put a heavy rock in the pocket of her fur coat before jumping into the water.
One of the last people to see Virginia Woolf in good spirits was the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who visited Woolf just a month before her death. Bowen later wrote of the visit, "I remember [Virginia] kneeling on the floor ... and she sat back on her heels and put her head back in a patch of sun, early spring sun. Then she laughed in this consuming, choking, delightful, hooting way. This is what has remained with me."2
It is Holy Week, and every week is Holy Week. Sometimes we have palms under our feet. Sometimes we have stones in our pockets. Sometimes we are lauded with praise and hosannas. Sometimes even the stones are silent. And--
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone outsomeone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.
The writer Anais Nin once said: “I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.” Life is all these things. Chaotic, messy, beautiful, terrible, triumphant, oppressive, and glorious. The Psalm associated with Palm Sunday is Psalm 118, a song of victory. The Psalmist sings triumphantly, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The Psalm associated with Good Friday is Psalm 22, a plea for deliverance from suffering and hostility. The Psalmist cries out, in words echoed by Jesus hundreds, perhaps thousands of years after they were first spoken—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Holy Week is only whole when we have both of these Psalms singing, and crying, in our hearts and on our lips.
Rachel Naomi Remen is one of my favorite writers. She is a doctor and a therapist, and she herself has dealt with the chronic illness of Crohn’s disease since she almost died from it at age 16. She has a story about a rabbi and an important journey. Rachel was a young pediatrician, and she had a 12-year-old patient named Shoshana who needed treatment for Hodgkin’s disease, a type of cancer. Shoshana’s father was an Orthodox rabbi, and he followed very strictly the rituals and rules to honor holy days. As it turned out, one of Shoshana’s treatments fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish liturgical year. On Yom Kippur, Orthodox Jews do not handle money, touch leather, use electricity or ride in cars, among other things. The girl was too sick to reach her treatment by walking and her father wished to cancel the appointment. Rachel objected, saying that the timing of these treatments was critical to Shoshana’s recovery. The girl’s father angrily replied that God’s laws superseded any human law, and after arguing with Rachel some more, he left the office, saying he would speak to a higher authority—the rabbi in New York City who headed his sect of Orthodox Judaism. Rachel was heartsick. And yet, she writes:
…On the morning of Yom Kippur, Shoshana was sitting in her usual place in the waiting room, on time. With her were her mother and her father. “I am surprised to see you here, Rabbi,” I said. “What did the rabbi in New York say?” Subdued, he told me that he had written to describe the situation and his Rabbi, the Great Teacher himself, had called him. He had told him to order a taxi to come to his home on the morning of Yom Kippur. When the taxi arrived, Shoshana was to ride to her treatment and he was to accompany her.
When he protested riding in a car on Yom Kippur, his Rabbi had insisted he accompany his daughter. “Why is this?” I asked. In a soft voice he said that his Rabbi, the Great Teacher, had insisted that he accompany his daughter so that she would know that even the most pious and upright man in her life, her father, may ride on the holiest of days for the purpose of preserving life. He said that it was important that Shoshana not feel separated from God by this breaking of the law. Such a feeling might interfere with her healing.3
Sometimes we have to break the rules for the purpose of preserving life. Sometimes we have to set off on a strange journey—in a taxi or on a donkey—and make a great noise. Sometimes we have to ride into town and turn over a few tables in the temple, in order to do what is right. Sometimes we begin in triumph and follow the journey to its end, towards pain, towards suffering, towards healing, towards redemption. The rules are supposed to make life easier. But life doesn’t want to be easy. Oh messy life. This is the day the Lord has made. What are we going to do with it?
And so we come on our donkeys
With horns blaring and brakes screeching,
We enter the city, the holy of holies.
We know what Caesar wants
But we march to a different drummer.
A vagabond crew in a strange land.
Let us be of good cheer.
Let the word go out.
The donkey is mightier than the missile,
And flowers have been known to split a rock.
This week moves inexorably toward Friday.
It is Caesar’s week.
But it is God’s world.4
And so we take heart and rejoice. We are not leaving, not yet. We are arriving. Under our feet, the palms, the coats, the stones. In our hands, we carry our hopes and dreams. In our mouths, hosannas. In our hearts,
a small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
May we use it wisely, and well.
Amen.