Palm Sunday B
April 1, 2012
Is.45:21-25
Ps. 22:1-11
Phil. 2:5-11 St.
Mark’s Passion Gospel
I believe in
the sun even when it is not shining. I
believe in love even when feeling it not.
I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining. I believe
in love even when feeling it not.
I believe in God even
when God is silent. I believe in the
silence.
This text in the anthem we have just sung was found on a basement wall
in Cologne, Germany. It had been written
by someone hiding from the Gestapo.
The experience of God being perceived as silent occurs when we
experience no apparent activity of God on our behalf to save us from events
that stretch from being merely inconvenient to unpleasant to downright
horrifying.
Passion Sunday is a day when we stop to acknowledge a moment of
brokenness within the Holy Trinity: The human aspect of God as it was known in
Jesus experienced the deafening silence of God the Father and God the Spirit in
the cry of Jesus: My God why have you forsaken me? My God why are you silent? My God, why are you not acting on my behalf
for my well being?
The irony of the double observances of this day is that God’s voice
seems very loud in the Hosannas of the Palm parade, a Jerusalem ticker tape
parade for the populist King of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth. Yet how quickly the loud voice of the
Hosannas turn into the loud shouts, “Crucify Him!” And then the voice of God apparently is
totally silent in the death of Jesus on the cross.
What is the silence that we can believe in when it appears that God’s voice
is not heard and when it seems apparent that God’s active resistance to
injustice is not evident?
The events of terrifying loss seem to have the power to stop time. They seem to have the power to end “life as
we know it.” The stoppage of time is
only apparent, but not actual. The
silence of God is only apparent, but not actual.
The one tree that was killed to make the cross on which Jesus was
crucified did not negate all of the other trees in the world that lived on to
beautify life. God’s sustaining activity
is forgotten in the moment of loss. When
I experience loss, the rest of the world does not stop and take notice; life
goes on in many other lives of people completely oblivious to my event of
loss. Even though God might seem to be
silent, the deafening loudness of God’s sustaining of all of life continues to
go on. The continuous sustaining of the
Plentitude of life is the silence of God that we can continue to believe in
even when our own experience is characterized by significant events of loss and
sorrow.
What we observe on Passion Sunday and on Good Friday, is the solidarity
of God in Christ with the human experience of loss and death when the silence
of God seems deafening. As Christians we
believe that such profound solidarity of God with human experience is what
truly makes God worshipful. It helps us
to believe that God does have empathy with us and so our prayers arise to
understanding ears.
The profound silence of God’s sustaining of life is also an experience
of a profound freedom that is permitted within the Plentitude of God. A degree of genuine freedom spills to every
order of creation and this profound freedom is the condition for both the
agonies and ecstasies of life and everything in between. Fortunate things can happen to people when
they are behaving justly or unjustly.
Bad things can happen to people when they are behaving justly or unjustly. These are but the effects of genuine freedom.
And this should not make us fatalistic; this should inspire us to use
our genuine freedom toward loving care for people and for our world. It should inspire us to resist in the ways in
which we can, injustice wherever we find it.
I believe in God, even when God is silent. I believe in the silence. Let us embrace the conditions of silence, a
profound permissive freedom that is abroad in our world, and let us work in
freedom to overcome the moments of injustice with resurrection justice, as
befitting the excellence to which God is calling us.
As the Cross of Jesus was later to be recreated by a subsequent event,
let us maintain our hope today that injustice will be recreated by future
events of profoundly free actions of justice.
If the resurrection of Christ has the last word over the death of Jesus,
let the success of justice have the last word over injustice as we freely serve
a vision of love and justice. Amen.
