Passion Sunday – Sunday 26th March 2023 (Year A) – St Anne’s, Wrenthorpe
Eucharist / Sermon
Today is Passion Sunday….
The long road towards Jerusalem is drawing to a close.
I wonder how your Lenten journey has been for you.
I wonder what has helped you….. Bible, prayer, others people, new experiences perhaps … or maybe some other reading or something on the telly…
The Holy Spirit finds us when we are ready.
Lent can be a time of insights and openness to God, but it isn’t always obvious, is it?
And what about you, Simon – I hear you cry!
Well…. I am glad you asked….!
I am still struggling, daily, with the giving up – the abstaining from that which distracts me and uses up my energies…
I failed miserably with my planned reading…. I started to read Thomas Merton’s “Seven Storey Mountain”… but couldn’t find the right time of day, or the comfiest chair, or whatever else it is I think I need to concentrate! I shall persevere.
I have an appalling memory and this affects my attempts to rebuild a discipline with new and fresh approaches to prayer and meditation.
Like you, I don’t find this easy…..
Some days good…. Some days not so much!
I don’t know if you are familiar with Barcelona, and the Sagrada Familia. Marlene and I visited it last week, on a short city-break.
It is hoped that Gaudi’s masterpiece of religious architecture will be completed in the next ten years. It’s been a work-in-progess of more than 140 years!
For now, if you get the chance, go and experience a sacred space that rises from the cityscape more like a natural occurrence than a cathedral; an active building-site inhabited by thousands of pilgrims and visitors… looking up… alway looking up… in wonder.
Outside – all around the building – you see God’s creation, and the life and death of Jesus, depicted in stone.
And we went up the Passion Tower – with narrow stairs and views past the cranes and over the city.
Inside…. Well, inside is filled with colour and light and a sense of the organic in the columns and roof, as if they were actually alive.
Cold stone into a living, breathing place of transformation – to which four and half million people visited in the year prior to Covid lockdowns – numbers which are now returning to that normality.
This is a place of hope-filled faith.
Now that inspired me, this Lent…. In ways I had not imagined….
The Spirit moves… and God finds us.
Today’s readings are full of hope and full of life… quite literally!
From the Old Testament, we might have heard the prophet Ezekiel and the Desert of Dry Bones – God breathes life into the scattered House of Israel, resurrecting the broken and dry bones into a vast multitude. Powerful stuff!
And then Paul reminds the Romans not to live only “in the flesh” – that state of being we all inhabit so often, when we focus only on our physical wants and needs – when we pay no heed for what God wants of us.
And then John….
It is said of John’s Gospel that it is shallow enough for a child to wade in, yet deep enough for an elephant to swim in.
There is a lot going on in this passage, most of which is quite familiar.
We have action, inaction, sorrow and joy; we encounter Jesus in a different way, and see the transformation from death to life. And we glimpse the foretaste, of both the immediate future of Jesus, and the hopes for us all in His Resurrection.
It would be foolhardy to try and unpack this whole passage, so I won’t.
I would like to focus, for a few moments, on the way that Jesus moves though the narrative – His responses to what is happening.
Jesus receives distressing news.
He doesn’t ignore the unfortunate situation unfolding in Bethany;
He is not lacking in empathy and understanding….
He is waiting on God, and praying….
Praying for Lazarus and Mary and Martha, and for His friends alongside Him that they might understand…
Praying for Himself, and for what He is trying to do… to reveal the power of God over death….
Jesus knows that going to Bethany will bring them all closer to danger and persecution.
Jesus knows that a delay will mean Lazarus has died;
Yet He waits…. And eventually proceeds to Bethany…. to the sadness that awaits them.
Resurrection was a widely accepted doctrine in Jewish teaching.
The belief that all their ancestors would live again, in a fresh new creation without suffering. Think of Ezekiel and the Desert of Dry Bones….
Jesus speaks of Himself as The Resurrection – not an idea, but a person.
He invites a faith in Him as Messiah – Son of God – The light coming into the world of darkness and pain.
And Martha does believe.
In the preparation for this, I read that more recent New Testament studies point to variances in the texts – of different scrolls and written accounts – that underpinned the version of John’s Gospel that we have received.
In some of those texts, Martha is not present and maybe Mary was meant to be the central character in this encounter with Jesus.
He is asking for her…. Martha goes to get her….
It is the same Mary who then anoints Jesus for His Passion and death, in Chapter 12;
And it is the same Mary who is also the first Apostle, encountering the Risen Lord at the Tomb.
I found this interesting. The author of John’s Gospel brings much that is unknown to the narrative.
It is indeed quite a situation that all these people find themselves in…. A drama? A sad tale of the bereaved? A miracle to prove a point?
There seems to be something absent – missing – from this encounter.
We have a hope and a faith in the Christ that banishes darkness and death;
The power of God, for which Jesus gives thanks as he releases Lazarus from the tomb.
There is a scene of mourning….
And Martha, despite her belief, has admonished Jesus: “if you had been here…..”
So what is missing?
To me, it seems that Compassion is missing …. the human soul is raw with feeling…
Can Jesus pass through this story, central to its meaning, and yet so disconnected?
And then, in verse 35, this changes. Though small in word-count, the meaning is profound:
“Jesus began to weep”.
He was greatly moved, we are told.
The overwhelming emotion of this moment. – the time and place….
The way that such feeling is shared amongst mourners, those affected by loss or hurt.
Compassion for his friends and loved ones – was perhaps not absent, just waiting for the right moment.
And Jesus is not alone in His response…. It is God that weeps here – right here amongst us!
God is always with us, sharing our sadness….
What follows brings joy and amazement… and they believed in Him.
And that’s what love does… doesn’t it? It changes the outcome, transforms the world and creates new people out of us all.
Life transcends death, through the Christ that weeps with us and knows us;
As light transforms darkness, and we are changed forever.
And what of our responses to this?
The concept of Resurrection will continue to be a matter of faith.
We will wrestle with Resurrection – central to the Creed that we will say in a few moments.
As we come closer to the Cross, in these days to come, will we hang on to the hope of new life?
Perhaps resurrection is not so much a miracle as it is an enduring relationship.
Less of something to argue about – belief or disbelief – but an invitation to look deeper at what is always happening in the life process itself – our lives, every life…
With God there will always be mystery, but as the darkness is diminished with light, so love will reveal His glory, and we shall be transformed.
Thanks be to God.
References
Hammond, C. (2023) “Graces human and divine” (Sunday Readings) in Church Times (p.17) 24/03/23, CHP
Podcast: “Elizabeth Schrader on Preaching John 11” – featured on dianabutlerbass.substack.com 20/03/23
Ezekiel 37:1-14 / Romans 8:6-11 / John 11:1-45
Image: Raising Lazarus by Wayne Forte