Lent

I don’t believe I can tell you adequately how appreciative I am of the opportunity to participate in this Lenten series, and yet at the same time how that sense of appreciation is dogged by an equally vivid sense of CHALLENGE. Lenten preaching is the somberest of all preaching, I think—NOT morbid, now...I don’t mean that. I don’t mean gloomy, or black-edged.

For some reason, I keep coming back to that donkey, that little, humble beast of burden that carried Jesus into town that day. At the center of the parade that marked His entrance into Jerusalem for the final week of His life, and at the center of our liturgical worship now 2000 years later on this day we call Palm Sunday, is that little donkey. Somehow, I keep coming back to that.

In a sense AMBIGUITY is the appropriate word for today, I think....or maybe AMBIVALENCE, which is very close kin, or PARADOX. There’s a tug, a pull in more than one direction.

Here it is....finally....at long last, after all this time... the moment He knew was coming. Here was the sign He was expecting, anticipating, looking for, and dreading... the sign He knew He couldn’t evade. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.... Now my soul is troubled.”

Someone has called the Gospel of Mark a Lenten Gospel, and the designation is strikingly apt. Not only does Mark devote a full 40% of his material to the events of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life---one scholar describes it as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction”---he establishes the clear direction of the story from the start---AT LEAST FOR THE READER.

This is not an Easter Sermon---not yet, not quite---though from the title you might almost suspect it. We’re still in the Old Testament, still on the far side of Calvary, still moving along the Lenten road. The great breakthrough, the Easter miracle that turned everything, everything in history on its ear is still before us.

Gripe, gripe, gripe! That’s all you hear out of people in Exodus as they wander through the Wilderness. Talk about non-stop belly-aching. Frankly, I don’t know how Moses took it.

Where does the road to Calvary begin? Does it begin with the Via Dolorosa, the tearstained way of Roman Catholic liturgy, the traditional route from Judgment Hall to Golgotha, over which Jesus limped painfully, dragging His Cross of execution?

Less than 15 minutes after beginning work on this sermon, I knew I had bitten off more than I could chew. Too much material here, an absolute surfeit of preaching themes. The Bible is full of passages like that, of course, and Matthew, I think, has more than his share of them.

If there is anything in the world that strikes me as ludicrous, it’s to hear somebody say that the Bible is out of touch with reality. People do say that occasionally...people who obviously don’t know it very well.

In the first place, I’m not sure “play” is exactly the right word. You can see the title---THE NEED FOR PLAY.  I’m not sure “play” is quite the word I want. Maybe a better word would be humor, or laughter, or “joke” even, or comedy. Dante, after all, called his masterpiece “The Divine Comedy”, didn’t he, by which he meant, I think, the opposite of tragedy, so there’s good precedent for that. Maybe comedy would be the better word.

It’s a long passage, I know, much longer Scripture reading than usual. The incident in its entirety takes up almost the whole chapter. John must have considered it important part of his story, or else he wouldn’t have given it such prominence, wouldn’t have spent so much time on it. The conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well is the longest recorded conversation between Jesus and anybody in the entire New Testament.

The word for today is ambiguity---there’s a tug, a pull in more than one direction....You hardly know what to do with Palm Sunday. You hardly know how to handle it. It’s a tough day, frankly, for a preacher.... Is it a happy day, or a sad day?

WHO WAS chiefly responsible for the Crucifixion, humanly speaking? Who was it on whom we can put the finger and say, There, he’s the one, he’s the chief culprit, he’s the person on whom we can lay the primary blame.... He’s the one we can hold accountable for that terrible, cruel act, that inhuman treatment of the kindest, most gracious person who ever walked on the face of the earth? IS THERE ANY ONE PERSON ABOUT WHOM WE CAN SAY THAT?

Two stories, if I may, to begin our consideration of HOPE. Great Words of Lent and Life is the theme for this special season of the Church year.....great words of the New Testament that are so rich and vibrant when we take them out and polish them up....

The place to begin, I think, is precisely where we left off last time. A couple of weeks have elapsed, I know, since we began this series. I hope the interim hasn’t destroyed the continuity completely. Do you remember the theme? The bulletin is a good place to look for a clue....