Sunday
March 24
Breath of Life
By Marsh Chapel
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Preface
It is not so long ago that we greeted Jesus at his nativity, humming carols at home and lighting candles of hope in winter windows. It is not so long ago that we witnessed his growth in wisdom and stature, in the knowledge and love of God, while as a teenager he taught in the temple. It is not so long ago that this mighty young man Jesus stooped, fully human, for baptism in the surging river Jordan, the river of death and life. It is not so long ago that we saw him take up his ministry among us, preaching and teaching and healing. It is not so long ago that with Peter and James and John we saw him ascend the Mountain of the Transfiguration. With him, we have hiked this Lent, step by step.
Even beset as we are by climate, Ukraine, Gaza, political chaos and all manner of personal challenge, come Sunday we are delivered from captivity, from the power of fear, in the announcement of the Gospel. It is the word of faith that delivers from enslavement to fear. From separation anxiety, survival anxiety, performance anxiety, anxiety about anxiety. The good news carries us home, to the far side of fear. It breathes into us yet again the breath of life
In New England we do not often enough recall the Boston sages, like Holmes: Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference..
Letter
Life, the breath of life, a passionate thing. With passion, today Paul writes, alone in prison. His own missionary work, as we can overhear from the length of Philippians, is under revision and redirection by others who claim he has failed in certain key areas. His own personal future is more than cloudy, including the possibility of death, and again, his ruminations in Philippians bear this out. He acclaims deliverance for the captives, you and me, a saving drumbeat along the river of life, breathing the breath of life. He has a sight line to the far side of fear.
And, note, he is unafraid, this Apostle to the Gentiles, to quote his opponents.
Philippians 2 sounds like a Gnostic hymn. Paul may have lifted and used it, because his hearers know it and because it suits his message. It is a plundering of the Egyptians, a use of the cultural language of the day to convey great tidings of good news. You need not fear. You need not fear. God has broken in upon our fear, and invaded this life with liberation to live fully and lastingly! God’s beachhead is the cross. The cross is the presence of God in suffering. The cross is the love of God in suffering. The cross is the power of God in suffering, to free the captives—to free every human being—from fear.
I wonder if we can recapture, by the imagination, Paul’s decision to recite for himself and for his correspondents, a hymn to the faithful love of God that carries us over, to the far side of fear. Here is Paul. Here is the outspoken leader of a religious movement charged with atheism, with rejecting the gods of the empire. Here he is alone in prison. Here he affirms what can only be affirmed by faith, the victory of the invisible over the visible, of God beyond the many gods, of Christ the failed messiah over the cross of his failure. He does so in measured, nearly serene tones.
His attention is captured by the servant Christ, here so like the figure in Isaiah. To be a human being, for Paul, is to be captive under the control of malignant powers, to live in a world in which the human being has too often fallen prey to powers that are aligned and arranged against what is truly human. Yet, as one himself immersed in fear, Paul, seized by Christ, is set to singing in his prison cell. Maybe today, given our fears, we may hear something of his happy news. Meditate this Palm Sunday on what in the past has brought you strength, what brings you home, what breathes life, brings the breath of life.
In New England we do not often enough recall the Boston Poets like Whittier:
I know not what the future hath of marvel or surprise
Assured alone that life and death God’s mercy underlies
And so, beside the silent sea
I wait the muffled oar
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care
Gospel
It is not so long ago that we greeting Jesus at his nativity, humming carols at home and lighting candles of hope in winter windows. And now it is time to come down from Galilee and to face Jerusalem, to take the full measure of this Man, the Son of Man, and to have the courage to let Him take our full measure, too. The crisp air and vistas of the north country have fed our souls. But now it is time to head home, and turn our face to Jerusalem.
The road home can tax the traveler. It reminds us of earlier homecomings.
Odysseus walking the last few miles to Thebes. Socrates walking to the center of Athens and the cup of hemlock. Richard the Lionhearted sailing the English Channel, heading home. A prodigal son, scuffling up the last mile of country road toward a dreaded homecoming. You, returning at last to whatever you have long avoided, wandering as you have in the Galilee of the rest of life. For at last, there is the road home.
What was Jesus’ state of mind, what was on his mind and heart, as he entered the Holy City?
It is perilous, even arrogant, at this late date and from this great distance, to try to imagine Jesus’ state of mind as he descends the Mountain and enters the City.
Albert Schweitzer, before he went of to heal the jungle sick, showed convincingly how inevitably errant are all such attempts. For we paint our own inner lives into the life of Jesus, when so we try to see what cannot be seen in Scripture. Still, particularly at this point in his journey, on Palm Sunday, at the entrance into the Holy City, and on the threshold of his own death, we are haunted, (are we not?) by the desire to see what Jesus saw and feel what he felt and sense what he did sense, coming home.
Now Jesus is walking down into the city, down off the mountain, and down into the heart of his destiny. He is going to his grave. He has the breath of life, but only for a moment. Like you and me.
Some of the Gospel today, as Jesus heads home, is too true to be good. For He is not at home, not at home, in a world of injustice, abuse, violence, and death. For him, in such a benighted world, there is really no place like home.
Jesus is heading home. As are we all, though, it seems sometimes to be a conspiratorially well-kept secret. We all are walking down the Lenten mountain and into our lasting, our last future. Every one of us is mortal. We are going home. We might want to balance our attention to identity with our awareness of mortality. We might want to balance our attention to identity with our awareness of mortality.
Here are two possible but unverifiable sentiments in Jesus’ heart and mind as he enters the city.
On one hand, it may be, he looks back upon his ministry and feels that he is homeless. He has found no lasting nest on earth, no lasting crib, no lasting domicile. He has found opposition and rejection. He has encountered misunderstanding and criticism. To a harsh world he has brought a gentle manner. To a wolfish world he has brought the labor of love. To a selfish community he has brought the summons to service. To an inconsistent dozen disciples, he has brought the steady presence of peace. He has not found a home, no home for Jesus, descending the Mount of Olives. He has even said of himself, “foxes have their holes, and birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
And those of us who have been shot out of the saddle, riding for a righteous cause, as we dust ourselves off and bind our wounds, we do so in the best of company, in the company of the crucified, for whom, on this green earth, as yet, there is no place like home. Today you may feel shot right out of the saddle. But let me ask you something. What other saddle would have rather ridden? Some losing causes are worth support even in defeat. I would rather be shot out of the right saddle than to canter comfortably all the live long day in the wrong one. So, dust off, bind the wound, and get ready to ride again.
On the other hand, it may be, Jesus looks forward to his passion and feels that he is going home. He is not yet home, but going home. He has the breath of life, yet, briefly. He has come and now he must go. He tarries for a while, but he is going home. There is something else alive in this homeless homecoming. Frederick Buechner compares the feeling of faith to the feeling homesickness, that longing for the feeling of home. Faith is a heartfelt longing for the comforts of home.
Only the greatest of the Gospels, that of John, fully and resoundingly displays this sentiment. But it is present, muted, in Mark as well. Jesus must endure the cross, just as we inevitably must endure tragedy, accident, betrayal, injustice, failure and death. We have the finest of company, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, when we endure life’s damaging darkness.
Some have lost loved ones to death, this past year. Some of lost beloved institutions to death, this past year. Some have lost beloved dreams to death, this past year. Jesus walks beside you. Jesus walks beside you. In fact, this is his peculiarly chosen path, his way, his way of the cross. All of the passion, all of the passion music of Lent, all of it, all the way to the cross itself, acclaims, in passion, the compassion of God in Christ our Lord. God has a passion for compassion. God has a passion for compassion. So Jesus looks forward—does he not?—to the completion of his mission, to the last word in the soliloquy, to the transition to glory. Again, only John has fully held this diamond. Only he sees the cross as glory, without remainder. Only he has Jesus say, on the cross, “it is completed”. But Mark too senses Jesus’ homesickness at his homeless homecoming. His longing for God. And we sense it too, because we feel it, too.
Jesus on Palm Sunday, both homeless and going home.
Some of the Gospel today, as Jesus heads home, seems too good to be true. This greatest of passionate tragedies, the cross of Christ our Lord, is the passageway, strangely, wonderfully, to our heavenly home. He dies as we die. And we die with Him. We all die. We are not even temporarily immortal. Yet, attendant upon this road down the mountain and into the city, there resounds, softly at first, a carol of grace, a carol of love, a carol for all, like we, who are going home. And we are. Going home. As my friend said, ‘we may tarry here awhile, but we are going home’
This homesickness, this spirited sense that home is over the next street, up the winding trail to the cross, this hunger for home, this is what Paul meant elsewhere: this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
Coda
So let us lift up our hearts. While we have breath, breath by breath, let us praise God with the very breath of life.
To the question of evil let us live our answer by choosing the cruciform path of faith.
Let us meet evil with honesty, grief with grace, failure with faith, and death with dignity. (Let us carry ourselves in belief).
Let us affirm the faith of Christ which empowers us to withstand what we cannot understand.
Let us remember that it is not the passion of Christ that defines the Person of Christ, but the Person that defines the passion.
Let us remember that it is not suffering that bears meaning, but a sense of meaning that bears up under suffering.
Let us remember that it is not the cross that carries the love but the love that carries the cross.
Let us remember that it is not crucifixion that encompasses salvation, but salvation that encompasses even the tragedy of crucifixion.
Let us remember that it is not the long sentence of Holy week, with all its phrases, dependent clauses and semi‐colons that completes the gospel, but it is the punctuation to come in seven days, the last mark of the week to come in 168 hours, whether it be the exclamation point of Peter, the full stop period of Paul or the question mark of Mary—Easter defines Holy Week, and not the other way around. The resurrection follows but does not replace the cross. The cross precedes but does not overshadow the resurrection. It is Life, the Breath of Life, that has the last word and there is a God to whom we may pray, in the assurance of being heard: “Deliver us from evil”
