Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday - April 5, 2020
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Philippians 2:5-11
Click here for an audio version of this sermon.
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For the moment, humanity is sharing the profoundly felt fragility and precarity of the human experience. This sharing has the potential to bring us closer to ourselves and closer together as One Creation if we let it.
The Covid-19 pandemic forcefully reminds us of several realities that we need to embrace to find our true selves. They are realities we prefer to not think about. And they are realities not so different from what affected Jesus in his passion. Yes, even the Son of God, the Redeemer found out about these unpleasant but basic truths of life. The Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr says five realities need to be embraced to become fully human. In order to tame our ego and find the true self, we need to own the following statements:
1. Life is hard.
2. You are not important.
3. Your life is not about you.
4. You are not in control.
5. You are going to die.
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I argue today that in his passion, Jesus of Nazareth came into owning more deeply these tenets of human experience. And in doing so, the Trinity deepened its compassion for God’s Creation.
First, Life is hard. As a Galilean peasant from a little village and a travelling healer and preacher, Jesus already knew this. Yet in his passion the hardness of life took on an intensity that made him know the deepest suffering of the human condition.
Life is hard. This is true for each one of us at any time, but many of us often have the privilege of not living with our nose on this truth. But nowadays, we feel it more keenly in the medical, social, emotional and economic havoc this Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking on our world. And what’s more, we all feel it together, at the same time.
Second, You are not important. I know, I know, you are thinking “you can’t say that about our Lord and Savior.” But I am asking you to look at Jesus’ experience of his passion as the experience of a human being, not that of a self-assured god. The crowds, the priests and the scribes, the Roman authorities and soldiers were all making the human Jesus feel as scum. In that moment, it must have been difficult to hang on to the superior purpose of his life.
You are not important. Yes, I am talking to you, and me. At times, we can think and act as if we were the center of the universe, as individuals, or more often, as a country. Now, in our physical isolation and social distancing, our networks of work, ministerial, family and friendly relationships are deeply disturbed. And yet, the world continues. Maybe we are not as indispensable as we’d like to think. We are a part of the whole, but the whole is resilient enough to function without my fretful busyness.
Third, Your life is not about you. This part, Jesus seems to have known deep inside himself from a young age. His life was about God and about the all-embracing oneness of the divine. Jesus repeatedly escaped from honor and recognition while it was on offer. This life was not about boosting his ego. There was more to it than Him alone.
Your life is not about you. My life and your life don’t make sense without belonging to the whole of creation. Our life makes sense in relationship to God and one another. Our acquired capacities and knowledge, our unearned privileges are not for our self-satisfaction. We have a duty to use them for the greater good. That is what all these amazing healthcare providers are doing for the moment. God bless them. Catastrophe is striking. And we discover how keenly we need each other. We are not self-sufficient. We are not the sole purpose of all our perceived reality.
Fourth, You are not in control. Here is another truth which can be hard to apply to Jesus if we disregard his deep humanity. When you read Matthew’s account of his passion, you cannot help but see that he does not take control. The son of the Almighty experiences in a frightful manner what it means to be without privilege and power as a human being.
You are not in control. We inhabit the illusion that we do have control on a widening number of spheres in our lives. Most of us spend much of our lives and energy building systems that enable us to exert dominating influence on our living conditions. Modern life has greatly enhanced our technical capacity to do that. I can flick the thermostat up and my room swiftly becomes warmer. But fate cannot yet be controlled from a cell phone app. And in a situation like the current pandemic, whole sides of our lives fall out of our perceived control.
Finally, You are going to die. Jesus dies after crying “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani.” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The human Jesus on the cross, did not seem to know about his coming resurrection. He had referred to eternal life in his ministry. But on the cross, Jesus experienced the complete finitude of human existence as we know it this side of death.
You are going to die. Human knowledge and technologies have made tremendous progress in prolonging our lives. Two centuries ago, the average person was lucky to live into her thirties or forties. Nowadays, we know lots of people who live reasonably comfortable lives well into their eighties. The temptation to forget that we are mortal and vulnerable is understandable but ill-advised. Human life finds heft and meaning in its finitude. Hurry to love because no one knows what tomorrow is made of. Hurry to love because that is the meaning of life.
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As the Apostle Paul puts it in the form of a hymn shared with the Philippians:
... (He) emptied himself,*****
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:7-8)
Can we learn from Jesus’ passion and from the Covid-19 pandemic to gauge the truth of our human experience? I think that is one of the challenges of this Holy Week we are entering and of this pandemic we are in. On the other end of these time periods, we will hopefully emerge more fully ourselves than we knew before.
May you have a blessed Holy Week.
May God keep you and preserve you.
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