HOLY WEEK 1998 - LOVE SO AMAZING

Preacher: Father James Murray SSC

PALM SUNDAY - HIGH MASS Standing on Tiptoe in the Crowd

And when he was come into Jerusalem the city was in turmoil, as people asked, who is this?" Matthew xxi. 10.

Today we begin Holy Week. We close our eyes and try to see Jesus. We stand tiptoe in the crowd which throngs the centuries. We have cut down branches from the trees, branches of olive and palm. Olive for peace and palm for victory.

We want Jesus to know that we recognise him, and, when someone in the crowd asks us, "Who is this?" we do not hesitate to tell them, "This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee."

A prophet? A prophet is one who speaks out. Sometimes speaks out of turn. A prophet is one who speaks for God. Every word of the dear Jesus comes from God. We know it. O how we know it! Yet do we obey him? He says to us, "If you love me, keep my commandments."

But this prophet is more than a prophet. That is why his name is 'Jesus', the one who saves. Many who stood in that first crowd probably had the same name. It was common enough. It was as common as Bill or Jack. 'Jeshua' or 'Joshua' were often chosen by families wanting a name for the latest arrival, but Joshua from Nazareth was named for a reason. He was to save his people from their sins.

And where was Nazareth? One who later became one of our dear Lord's disciples, Bartholomew, would even ask contemptuously, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" It was a town of no importance with many of its dwellings just caves scraped out of the hillside. The family of Jesus lived in two mean rooms. The other children in the extended family probably found him precocious, and on one occasion even tried to embarrass him into coming home after he had begun his preaching out in the countryside. They thought he was above himself and was putting on airs. But there was one lovely thing about him : he was obedient to his dear mother, and to Joseph, the just man who fostered him.

And there was a great mystery about this insignificant family: in its simplicity and innate poverty it had all that was necessary for the salvation of the world.

As for delusions of grandeur, even though the dear Jesus knew he was the son of God, he never presumed on it. In fact, he always used the old messianic title, 'son of man' to talk about himself. It was only when the high priest challenged him, "Are you the Christ the son of the living God?" that the dear Jesus affirmed what we all know in our hearts. "I am," he answered honestly, "And you shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." But, during this week into which we have just entered, there was no apparent power, and nothing that we would call 'glory'. Though the seeds were there. The mystery was there.

When I was a boy I always wondered why the temple guards sent to arrest our dear Lord in the garden of Gethsemane fell to the ground each time they asked him who he was? "We are looking for Jesus of Nazareth," they said. "I am he," the scriptures record as his answer. But when I learnt to read the original Greek, I saw that the dear Jesus had said, ego eimi, I am.

In their Jewish memory the temple guards saw the burning bush which confronted Moses on the mountain. They also recalled the voice which reminded Moses that it was his vocation to save his people from slavery, and lead them out in exodus to the promised land. But poor Moses was afraid to go to pharaoh, and had a clever excuse for not going. "I do not know your name," said the reluctant leader. "I cannot tell the pharaoh who sent me." "Tell him, 'I am' sent you." And this name for God, always represented in the Hebrew scriptures as a jumble of unpronounceable letters which we have turned into 'Yahweh' or 'Jehovah', is never uttered by Jews. They say 'adonai', the Lord, when they encounter the divine name.

But Jesus uttered them. "I am," he said. He who was God incarnate. And the arresting party all fell down shocked by the apparent blasphemy.

Of course, you could not really blame them. Here was this rural peasant with a provincial accent claiming he was Messiah, God's messenger. Now he had taken it a step further : he imagined he was God. There is a place for people like that. It is usually an asylum.

But on this day, as the Holy Week of our Lord's passion and privations begins, he does not look like God, not the God most people imagine God to be. Almighty, impressive, majestic, even terrifying, this God is coming in the strangest way possible. It is why we stand tiptoe in the crowd and watch in wonderment, for he comes on a young donkey, a foal not yet broken in.

Some in the crowd knew this was a prediction from the prophet Zechariah, "Look, your king is coming, vindicated and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

No delusions of grandeur there! Not arrogantly above the crowd. Not on a brightly-caparisoned warhorse, a threatening Messiah&emdash; and you have to stand tiptoe to see him because he is almost below eye-level. This is not the Messiah many in the crowd have been expecting. A Messiah bent on vengeance and bloodshed, or even a Messiah who will vindicate us, if we are poor make us rich, if we are sick make us healthy, if we are desperate give us hope.

Yet it must also be said that this modest figure, a peasant from a country town, does not have his eyes fixed upon himself, but on the work ahead, the work of our salvation.

Of course, the world does not believe it needs salvation. All the human race needs is more knowledge, more technological power. Why, we have split the atom, we have reached the moon, we have discovered the DNA. We are at the heart of things. The touchstone for inevitable progress is now in our hands. Our sufferings are nearly at an end because we can detect through genetic ingenuity the destiny of every one of us, if we are rich enough to take advantage of the wonders now open to us. We do not need salvation. We have it within our grasp.

And it is true, there are new miracles, and deep mysteries of medicine uncovered to make our lives much longer. And some of the chronic ailments which bedevil us are in retreat. But none of these marvels really saves us. As the dear Jesus said, "The poor are with you always." Great social evils still darken the world. The new communications bring daily horrors to us as fast as they are happening. We can see death in our living-rooms. Cruelty and anger, selfishness and pride still march through the world like armies.

It is true that we can also sometimes see "the mighty put down from their seat", but still await the time when "the hungry are filled with good things, and the rich are sent empty away". In the power struggle which so often motivates men and women, the very things which might enhance the world are misused to entrench oppression. Scientific discoveries have made warfare more unspeakable. Human beings seem to have the unhappy knack of turning good into evil. The church, puzzled by this sorry bias in our human nature, established the doctrine of original sin, and even said we were a fallen race desperately in need of redemption.

This is why we stand tiptoe on this first day of the holiest week in the year. Can you see Jesus coming? Riding in modesty and perfect love on a donkey not even broken in?

So I hope that you are here because you have discovered that nothing will satisfy the heart like the love of the dear Jesus. And nothing will save you even from yourself except the redeeming love of the dear Jesus. You are here as witnesses to his truth. And you are here vicariously on behalf of a whole city, admitting to God himself that you stand in need of salvation.

And of course, unlike Jerusalem, you do not really stand in a crowd shouting "Hosanna to the king who comes in the name of the Lord." The crowd in Brisbane has other things to do, other things to occupy its collective mind. Sometimes the apparent apathy of our society depresses us. We wish there was a crowd at church. We wish we were a majority rather than a minority. We see a shrinking church, an aging church. We think of good old days when it was all so different. But was it? And anyway we have forgotten the potent promises our Lord has made to us. Here are some of them:

"In the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer&emdash; I have overcome the world".

Or "Take up your cross every day and follow me."

"Anyone who wants to save their lives must lose them."

We are to "lose" ourselves in the wonderful love of God.

There was a young man dying from those opportunistic diseases which the AIDS virus allows free rein. His body was covered with black tumours. He suffered all the indignities, all the anxieties of the constant tests imposed on the very ill. Then he came home to die. But he kept on asking those caring for him to ring the hospital to ask about people they had never heard of. He felt so sorry for them. They were so young, he said. They all had cancer and were dying. He forgot that he was young himself, and while he was still in the hospital he had gone wandering through the oncology ward. The names were the names of all the patients. They were now his daily intercession, though he would not have put it that way. And he forgot himself in the manifest needs of others.

What a lesson it was for the rest of us, complaining over a stubbed toe or a bit of pain in the back, of knees hurting or other ills that overtake us, especially when we get old.

Holy Week will take us out of ourselves if we willingly carry the cross. St Thomas A'Kempis has a lovely saying about the cross. In Latin it says, si libenter crucem portas, portabit te. If you willingly carry the cross, the cross will carry you.

The great apostle Paul puts it succinctly. "Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus : who being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. And for this, God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names; so that all beings in the heavens, on the earth, and in the underworld should bend the knee at the name of Jesus. And that every tongue should acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father."

As we stand tiptoe in the Palm Sunday crowd, our minds are to align themselves with the mind of the dear Jesus Christ, to walk with him in his Holy Week, to defend him against his enemies, to become Simon of Cyrene to him and help to carry his cross, the cross of our salvation, and in the end to share his glory. For that is another promise.

So dear Jesus, whose holy hands reached out to touch and heal, touch us, be at home in us, glorify us, redeem us, purge out of our hearts the lurking grudge, sanctify us, make us holy. Oh make us loving if you can &emdash; you can &emdash; we know you can, and, if we cry, comfort us &emdash; we cry &emdash; out of our desperate need of you, oh you who came without proclamation or promotion, oh you who come silently in the Eucharist, and give yourself into our hands, glorify us, for when all is said and done, we are just instruments of your love, and long to be used &emdash; or we are nothing.

We come running, we come standing, we come kneeling, we come seeking, we come! Glory to you who comes to us, glory to your Blessed Mother who said yes for us. Glory to your protector, the just man Joseph; may his fairmindedness live in us. May we protect the beauty of your name.

Glory to you in your childhood, when you knew you had to be about your father's business. Glory to you in your young manhood, when you strode resolute about the hills of Galilee. Glory to you in your homely parables, so many about failure or being lost. Bring us home to you.

Glory to you in your healing, your healing of our hearts. Glory to your spirit who inspires us. Glory to you for the intuitions you give of what we are to do; give us the grace to obey.

Glory to you in your transfiguration, when your majesty was revealed and your humanity confirmed. Glory to you that when you might have turned back from saving us, you kept on faithful to us. Can you believe it? Faithful to us.

Oh glory to you as you stood in the judgment hall, glory to you for your wonderful silence, your astonishing mastery, glory to you in the nails they drove into you, glory to you for your unswerving forgiveness, glory to you for your purity that when they stripped you, they could not shame you. And they stripped you of everything you had, that you might be really poor with nothing of your own&emdash; but us.

Glory to you that you went into the darkness of death and took our sins, our misdemeanours, our faults and failures upon yourself like a robe, and transformed it into a robe of glory, the glory of our salvation.

Glory to you on the third day, when the grim stone of death rolled away and the resurrection dawned. Glory to you that we can follow you through the breach of death into paradise. Glory to you that you have promised to come again.

So we stand tiptoe in the crowd, we strew your path, the path to glory, with branches of palm and olive, for you come to bring victory and peace. And we greet you, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

But why are you calling out, 'Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord'?

Then our answer is from the heart, for we have never seen Jesus, yet we know his coming as intimately as the coming of the light. Our dear Lord once said a very lovely thing about us; he said, 'Blessed are the eyes that have not seen and yet have believed'.

Of course, the world around us thinks us credulous, stupid even absurd, to hold fast to what they think a myth. They will tell us that death and resurrection are frequent themes in religious faith, there is nothing unique about Jesus from Nazareth. In fact he had delusions of grandeur about himself, and, in tones of disbelief, the world says to us that he even thinks he was God.

We stand tiptoe in the crowd for a glimpse of Jesus, the one who comes. Of course, he is always coming to us, though he has his special ways of coming. He comes to us in the intimacy of our prayers, prayers which must begin in silence. He comes to us through the priesthood, which he blesses with his own high priestly power. He comes to us in the sacraments, but most of all the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, and we rightly appropriate the Palm Sunday salutation, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest".

But the coming is nothing without the obedience. The Passion is full of commands : "Go and get the donkey", "Go and prepare the upper room", "Come with me and pray in case you enter into temptation", "Woman, behold your son, son, behold your mother".

And to us, "Be my witnesses, remain the righteous remnant which will uphold the Faith, which will see that the light shines. Be my witnesses this week by joining my other friends whose foreheads show the sign of the cross; meet me at the altar of my sacrifice, for when two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst".

Do not allow the privilege of being a witness to pass you by. Do not let your intention to be here be overwhelmed by other business. Let this Holy Week be holy. It is your responsibility to see that Jesus is held up for all to see, Jesus the silent articulated through you and me, Jesus the saviour reaching out to the lost through you and me, Jesus the healer visiting the sick in you and me, Jesus the compassionate not forgetting the most outcast, the derelict, the prisoners in our gaols, the aborigines, migrants who are not accepted, the persecuted in our society&emdash; Oh yes, there are the persecuted even within the church, and the neglected, the inadequate, the lonely, all of whom need Jesus mediated through you and me. And Holy Week is the time to restore the loving image of the perfect God in the hearts and minds of those we touch each day. Have you ever asked yourself, "How many other lives do I affect each day? Or each week? Or each year?" If we make an assessment, we will be surprised how many lives we touch.

We are in the crowd, touching others. We are awaiting the coming of Jesus Christ. We are standing tiptoe to see him, for he rides modestly and humbly on a donkey not yet broken in, a little like us, not quite knowing where we are going or who he is who rides so firmly upon us. But we are trying to be obedient, to go the right way, the way into the maelstrom of a city, not just the city of Jerusalem, but the city of Brisbane our appointed pastorate.