Palm Sunday, Year C - Sunday, April 14, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Palm Sunday, Year C - Sunday, April 14, 2019

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 22:14-23:56

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

“Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”

In the most recent issue of the magazine Christian Century, the publisher Peter Marty comments on the passage from St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians that is heard each year just before the dramatic reading of the Passion narrative, that awful and awe-filled story of the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Marty quotes from the famous “Christ Hymn” [Philippians 2:6-11] thought by some to be the earliest extant Christian hymn, predating even Paul. The text, so familiar, tells us that Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Marty points out that it has become commonplace for politicians and celebrities when put in a place of  praise or public service, to say that that they are “honored and humbled.” We've all heard it and may even have said it ourselves. But as Marty points out, this is as often as not:  “... a clever method for announcing personal triumph, goodness, or happiness by using modest-sounding language intended to mitigate critique.”

Christ Jesus was humbled. But as Marty points out, no one humbled him. He humbled himself. And that's true of us as well. Others can shame us, disparage us, ostracize us, abuse us, dismiss us, ignore us, misunderstand us or even praise us. But no one can humble us. Not even God, as Marty rightly points out. Rather, as he observes: “Each of us holds the key for unlocking that otherwise invulnerable vault better known as our ego.” That is, that cluster of thoughts and memories, desires and social roles that we identify with and as our truest self and to which we hold fast by tooth and claw. 

Humility or the humbling of self is, like all the virtues, ultimately an inside job. And it's a peculiarly complicated, if essential one. The Rule of St. Benedict devotes long sections to  humility and carefully describes the signs or markers of lowliness of heart. Benedict concludes that if the life of faith and holiness is compared to a ladder, then paradoxically we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility, by lowering ourselves. Writing a century or so later, St. John Climacus in his Ladder of Divine Ascent, a text which is required Lenten reading in Eastern Christian monasteries, acknowledged just how hard it is to be truly humble:

“The sun shines on all alike, and vainglory beams on all activities. For instance I am vainglorious when I fast, and when I relax the fast to be unnoticed, I am again vainglorious by my prudence. When I am well dressed, I am quite overcome by vainglory. When I put on poor clothes, I am vainglorious again. When I talk I am defeated and when I am silent I am again defeated by it. However I throw this prickly thing, a spike stands upright.”

The mind is devious, as the Psalmist says, and our motives and best intentions are always more hidden, more complicated and perhaps more tainted than we either know or would like to admit. What to do?

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the icon that is displayed here. It is admittedly a very disturbing image. It shows Jesus, perhaps during, perhaps after his crucifixion, standing, as it were, in his grave, in his sarcophagus, with the cross of death looming up behind him. It looks to be an image of total and complete defeat. His eyes are closed or cast down, his hands are crossed meekly over the breast not in self defense but in utter surrender. The background is dark, even ominous, like the darkness of the tomb itself. And the title of this icon? In the Greek it is called Extreme Humility a name which itself is stunning. The icon illustrates the lengths to which God has gone—and will go—to bring about reconciliation and restoration, universal salvation and wholeness. Extreme—ultimate, preeminent—humility!

One Orthodox commentator remarks:

“The Humility of Christ is not meant in pietistic, psychological or moral terms. Christ is not humbled to reach moral perfection or for His own benefit. His humility is emptiness, it is the pouring out of Himself and it is understood under existential terms. He [Christ] takes the human nature...and reaches to the edge of death to heal and deify it.”  

Which is to say: to make human nature, make us, like unto God.

But Extreme Humility is not the only name of this icon. It has another title, one more common in the Slavic or Russian tradition and one even more surprising. For if you draw near you will see written here the words: The King of Glory.

Behold our king. This is the hard truth of Holy Week...which is also a deeply liberating truth. And that is that Christ's glory is not separate from, not distinct from his suffering. And nether is ours. Rather the two are one. This week reminds us in the starkest possible terms that Jesus's true glory is located not in power, miracle, grandeur, strength or control. And neither is ours. As important as power and strength can be when used wisely and rightly ordered to good ends, the root of glory and the depth of freedom lay in weakness, obedience, vulnerability, surrender, openness.

And that would be totally crazy were it not simultaneously coupled with the affirmation that God is God...and we are not. Our primal glory is rooted and grounded in the deepest truth about ourselves and our world: that we and it are God's and that in loving, willing obedience to God we find our liberty, our energy, our joy, our selves.

This of course is the paradox of Benedict's ladder. It is the paradox of today and of this whole week. It is the paradox of life. But it is true. And it, brothers and sisters, good news. We are not in control. We don't have to be in control. And yet through our loving obedience and tender submission we can become subjects and agents of liberation and justice and reconciliation and peace. And of a hope and a holiness and a joy that surpasses all human expectation and understanding.

I'll be the first to admit that can't get my head around this nor my heart. How can the man of Extreme Humility also be the King of Glory? How can the Crucified One also be the Glorified One? How can true freedom be found in lowly service? How can my own self-emptying become a doorway to fullness of life? I don't know.

But I do know that this is the work and the message and the mystery of this Sunday of the Passion and of this Holy Week. May God in mercy lead each of us deeper and deeper into this mystery, the mystery of the loving Heart which beats at the center the whole universe. May God bring us all to the joy of a holy Easter, which we taste even now, even today.