Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Theme: From Palm Branches to Passion: What’s the Connection?

Sermons based on the passion history can become exercises of speculation about the people and places where all of these things are taking place as they swirl around the trials and suffering of our Lord. They could sound like we were listening to a man-on-the-street reporter who provides lots of side light color to relieve us from giving serious consideration to what is really taking place. But, we are not at a sporting event where the cameramen swing the cameras over the crowd while the announcers make comments on this and that. Then again we would be remiss if we turned our attention from the reading of St. Matthew’s Passion to a reflection on the suffering, sorrow, grief, and death of Jesus in such a way that our own grief about what He was experiencing would be seen as the significant connection.

Proper preparation for the death to sin and the glorious resurrection from the dead is a training us to see and live in our unity with th crucified One, to suffer our death to sin in companionship with this Sufferer, and to trust this Lamb of God to be the life and joy in us while we suffer as victimized by the sins of others or cause others to be the victims. When the Man of Sorrows joins us, and invites us to cling to him in our baptism, we are not invited to morose wallowing in our misery, rather, we are invited rather to appreciate our union with Him and be led into the surprising and startling saving work of the mercy of God. Salvation, not sentimentalities, is the outcome of partnership with the crucified Jesus. The sorrow caused by our transgression of others and their transgressions of us is to be transformed into joy when our repentant spirits are turned to trust the Suffering Servant who has made us his companions in the cross that saves us.

The Lenten season closes out shouts of Hosanna which form an invitation to be joined to Heavenly Bridegroom and divorced from our sin . . .to suffer the loss of that deadly robust self-love in our hearts and exchange it for a gift of righteousness that will reorder all our loves and priorities. Holy Week presents the invitation to be married to the delivering Victim who returns us to that true Love Who is our life. To repent is to suffer the loss and to receive the gift - to give over to the Lord of Life all our sins and to receive from Him all that makes is whole and acceptable to our maker.

One does not need to be a brilliant observer to see the suffering of humanity; nor does one need over sharp ears to hear the miserable and angry cry of the victims, both oppressed and oppressor. Under the burden of its own sin, humanity suffers from a curvature of the spine. It is bent over and cannot walk uprightly. Luther has emphasized how sin curves all of us in upon ourselves - a narcissistic infatuation that blinds us to the others who are there that we constantly are running into. We have become bend, and we cannot move through life without causing the sorrow and grief that He himself has come to suffer.

As both the oppressors and the oppressed, we suffer a common condition: we are all victims as are all those who fill out the story line in our Lord’s passion. The anguished cry of the one, suffering the ache of the heart in the loss of its life and freedom, may sink into dull despair over its impotence. Or it may rage at the weakness. But if the other, by luck or wit, gains enough power, position, or wealth to stave off the shameful weakness, he is still caught in the arrogance of making victims of others. None, not one, has the grace, the power, or the heart to deliver himself or others from being victims without making others victims. Does the story of the passion of Jesus simply fit as another account of another victim who suffers the loss of freedom and life due to an impotence that simply recycles the same ol’ story?

No, it does not - and no, He is not . . . anyone’s victim. Pilate asks Jesus: Do you not realize that I have authority to release you or authority to crucify you? And Jesus answered him; You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. (John 19:10-11) By the authority of the One above, Jesus receives authority to be both our High Priest and the Lamb of God, enfleshed for us by the express will of the God whose passion it is to have us free and alive in perfect righteousness and union with Himself. Jesus goes to his cross as the willing, humble suffering Servant who tells the angels to stand down, so he can be obedient unto death.

Is there any grief like the grief of our Lord . . . being forgotten by man, held in contempt by man, or rejected by God? Jesus is the Man acquainted with such grief, the Man despised, rejected, and condemned . . . for us. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows, wretched sufferer of arrogant power, who goes meekly and willingly to death--for us. As the perfect sacrifice, he is offered up - and offers up Himself - that He might deliver all victims from the doom of their death, from the anger of their impotence, from the arrogance of their power, and from the forever in their enslavement as victims.

The Pascal Lamb is the mediator between God and men. As receiver of the just judgment of God on us who are the victims of our own sin, he perfectly delivers us into the land of the living by suffering death to death. To trust him in that deliverance liberates us victims to offer our suffering as life. Our Lord invites us into the joy of heaven because his trail of grief and death has led to the righting of bent victims and perpetrators everywhere. The joy is that all things, including all suffering - those endure it and those who cause it - are restored into the righteousness of God. We are invited to believe Him so that both oppressed and oppressor may be stripped of the dominion of death.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.