wrong place, wrong god

wrong place, wrong god

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S NORTH OAMARU

and St ALBAN’S KUROW

SIXTH SUNDAY OF LENT (14^th April) 2019

READINGS:

Isaiah 50: 4-9a

Psalm 31: 9-16

Philippians 2: 5-11

Luke 19: 28-40

I apologise, firstly that I have not followed the expected routine, and my usual practice, of reading the entire passion on this day. As a visitor I feel a little awkward changing the plans your vicar had made, especially as they match my own normal practice, but in the interests of road safety and the quick bestowal of a few minimalist thoughts from a stranger not immersed in your daily life I felt it would be better to dwell momentarily on one of the central enigmas of our western church year.

I say western, incidentally because, as it was pointed out at a liturgy I attended at your cathedral recently, the Orthodox churches spend less time pretending that we don’t expect the resurrection during our Lenten observances. They permit themselves enough joy to continue pouring out the hallelujahs and rejoicing in resurrection hope throughout the season. I suspect we can, just a little, too. But today I might just put the brakes on anyway, and be thoroughly “western” as we journey through what in my childhood was one of the great feasts of the year, the feast of Palm Sunday, or as I prefer to call it these days, the observance of Getting It Wrong.

Let me explain. There was a scholar a few decades back who theorized that for Luke, as he told the story of Jesus, the whole of history narrowed itself down to an hourglass neck, like a fulcrum on which all history balances, but more emphatically the tiny narrow waist, the centre of time, before which dwelt God’s old dealings with humanity and creation, after which God’s new ways of dealing with humanity and all creation, and in which all cosmic history is given meaning. He (Conzelmann) is probably a bit passe now, but I think he might be right.

The hour glass waist moment in time was the death and resurrection of Jesus. In that moment of surrender all of God’s dealing with humanity and creation is given meaning. Death is conquered, life is as it were “re-blessed,” hope springs eternal. Don’t let us worry about the mechanics, because like the mechanics of a black hole but far more so, they are far, far beyond our comprehension. In the moment of death and resurrection of Jesus all cosmic history is given meaning.

And we celebrate Palm Sunday, but Palm Sunday is before Good Friday and Easter, before meaning is revealed, before creation is redeemed. We celebrate a triumphant entry of a king into God’s holy city. But – though it’s the right bloke, it’s the wrong time and wrong methodology. God in Christ has not yet entered humanity’s and creation’s deepest hellholes. God has not redeemed us, and we’re still awaiting a political, military revolution. We’re looking for a terribly human, politico-historical solution to hellishness and sadness and darkness and death, and that is not God’s solution.

We will not join the Orthodox today. Let’s leave it … though we know that in a week’s time we will be surprised by joy, but let’s leave it with us looking in the wrong place for hope. Jesus will stride on through the wrong place, and head to the right place, the deepest hells of abandonment and death, Syria, post-cyclone Mozambique, or the mosques of our Christchurch neighbours. We will fall away. Yet he will beckon us back even so, and at last and forever the hallelujahs will burst forth. 

Welcome to the journey of Holy Week.