SERMONS

Morgan Reed 4/20/25 Morgan Reed 4/20/25

Great Vigil of Easter: Hesitant Joy about What is Next

TranscriptioN

Oh, what a joy. I love this service, this opportunity to worship with you at the Easter Vigil. Well, good evening, my dear friends. It is good to be with you.

Tonight we heard God's story of salvation throughout the Scripture. We witnessed a death and a resurrection tonight in baptism, and we remembered the death and resurrection that we've experienced in Christ in our own baptism. Tonight's gospel passage in Matthew chapter 28 brings us to the women who discover that Jesus has risen from the dead.

They encounter resurrection life with joy, but a hesitant joy, and I think hesitant joy is something that feels close to home for us. We walk through each day in small acts of faithfulness to Jesus, discovering these glimpses of new creation and resurrection amidst all of our daily moments of fearful hesitancy and hope-filled joy as we bring the of the new life of the resurrection to bear on a broken world, a world that's been broken by sin and is bound to death. And the encouragement to us tonight is the same encouragement given to the women in this text.

Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. It was on the first day of the week that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had gone to see the tomb.

Mary Magdalene is often called the apostola, apostolorum in Latin, or the apostle to the apostles, as she and the other women become the first to bring the gospel of the resurrected Christ to the other followers of Jesus. And as they went to the tomb, there was a great earthquake as an angel came and rolled the stone away and sat on it. The angel tells them, Jesus is risen.

He's not here. And the guards see the angel and their terrified. They tremble. They fall to the ground. The women are equally terrified in that moment. These aren't angelic cherubs like you see on Christmas cards.

The angels in the Bible are in fact terrified. And so they are rightly terrified when they see this angel, but the angel addresses them and says, do not fear. The angel invites them then to walk into the tomb and to look in on this empty tomb.

So they're the first ones to walk in and to see death defeated. But I would imagine that as they stand there and they're looking in the void of where death had once been, that they're fearfully and somewhat hopefully teasing out all of the implications of what this might now mean. The angel tells them to go to Galilee, where Jesus is going ahead of them, to meet the disciples and share this good news about Jesus's resurrection with them.

They leave the tomb quickly and the text says, with fear and with great joy. Joy for what God's done, but fear about what's next. And so while the angel tells them not to fear, I do wonder what that conversation looked like on the road.

What in their lives now needed to stay the same or change? Rome hadn't actually been overthrown, so what did God's kingdom actually look like that Jesus had promised? Jesus had conquered death, but what does that mean for everybody else who is still alive and fearing death? There are so many unanswered questions for the women and in their anxious excitement and in their unanswered questions, Jesus comes and he meets them along the way. Jesus meets them with a greeting and they come to him and they hold on to his feet and they bow down and they worship him. Like the women, I think that it is in God's kindness, in Jesus's kindness, that he meets us in places of hesitant joy, where we experience this kind of hesitancy and delight on the road of obedience.

He offers us the comfort of his presence and a glimpse of his resurrection to sustain us along the path. He tells the women, like the angel did, do not be afraid. Then he says, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me.

As we walk in faithfulness, in the little daily obedience that Jesus has for us, he often meets us with these glimpses, however small, of new life and resurrection that sustain us along the way. Maybe he comforts us in a time of prayer, speaks through his scripture to us, gives us joy through the smile of a child, reminds us of his goodness through the kind words or the kind actions of a dear friend, restores a relationship to us that might have been broken, or something else that reminds us that the kingdom of darkness and the power of death no longer have the final power over us, who are in Christ Jesus. To search for Jesus and his kingdom is to invest in the life of the resurrection that outshines the darkness of sin and death.

His reminder to the women is a reminder for us that he has risen, he is with us, he goes before us as we walk with him in hesitant joy, so do not fear. We live in an anxious world that is longing to escape death, nervously seeking reprieve from its slavery to death and sin in all sorts of insufficient ways, denying the reality of death, numbing our pains with addictions, other escapisms, turning towards disordered loves and appetites, looking for saviors where there are no saviors, believing false narratives to avoid addressing what's actually broken inside. But having died to this world and risen with Christ, the Spirit has made us in our baptism an unanxious sacramental presence of Christ-like new creation for the life of the world.

Jesus is alive and he's conquered death and we get to join him in that victory. I don't know if you know this, but in the Anglican liturgy the funeral pall that covers a Christian casket is an echo back to the white garments that are given to the newly baptized. It's this defiant declaration that death is defeated and our baptism is now complete and we await the glory of the resurrection to come because Jesus has defeated death.

Jesus is alive and we will ultimately be made like him. I've been really encouraged lately by reading the biography of the late great pastor Eugene Peterson and I want to read a bit of the book to you this evening, a bit that I found really encouraging as I was thinking about the resurrection of Jesus. It says this, ““Dad didn't know what state he was in,” Eric, Eugene's son reflected, “didn't know what year of the Lord it was, didn't know his dad built the house that he was sitting in, didn't know who the president was, but he knew in the depths of his soul the unshakable reality of God's presence.”

And Eugene out of that confused disoriented state maintained a holy awareness residing at his core in an interior place completely intact untouched by dementia. “That life of prayer grooved itself deep inside my dad and he had full access to that until the day that he died. I think in those last moments dad was simply descending deeper into that interior world that he built with God his entire life, only we could not access it with him.”

The last light was fading. During Eugene's final weekend, Leif and Eric and Amy and Elizabeth kept vigil at the lake. Eric and Leif kept the lantern on the dock burning 24 hours, light flickering over the dark water. Eugene took to his bed declining visibly.

Jan, his wife, held his hand as he drifted in and out of consciousness, walking that precarious threshold between our two ways of being and then unhurried and gentle, Eugene went at 630 a.m. on Monday, October 22nd, 2018. The lantern on the dock went dark. Eric placed his hand on his dad's head and passed the blessing. “Together we are witnesses to this glad fact that in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, I declare the baptism of Eugene Hoyland Peterson is now complete. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, says the Spirit, that they rest from their labors and their works follow them.””

So this Easter season, let's be an unhurried and gentle people who look to the day where our labor here is done and the beloved around us can speak over us that our baptism is complete. Build that type of interior life, that interior resurrection life that gets brighter when the light of the world fades so that others will learn to praise God for the works that you have done in their midst. The kind of interior presence where Jesus's presence is enough to meet the doubts of today. Christ is risen and we have died and we have been raised with him.

Carry the good news of death's defeat in you into this broken world that's bound to the kingdom of darkness and that's longing for its redemption. Do not fear. Jesus is alive and he is with us in our hesitant joy.

Let me pray for us. Almighty God, who through your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life, grant that we who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection may by your life-giving Spirit be delivered from sin and raised from death through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Morgan Reed 4/19/25 Morgan Reed 4/19/25

Good Friday: Behold the Lamb of God

TranscriptioN

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is the Passover Lamb whose blood, whose suffering, and death is the beginning of the supreme exodus event. The exodus that frees not just the chosen people, but the whole of humanity, frees all of us who are enslaved by the dark powers which inhabit our governments, our economic systems, and indeed even the cultures that shape our minds and our way of life. Please pray with me.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. I want to share three affirmations.

First, the exodus of the Jews from Egypt is the great historical event that shapes the purpose and way of life of the people of God. Second, the exodus event begins with the Passover when God took the initiative to set the exodus event in motion. Third, Jesus' death and resurrection is the ultimate exodus event.

Jesus' death and resurrection is God's initiative to radically change the course of history and to bring to completion his plan for the fulfillment of human life now and in the world to come. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. First affirmation, the exodus from Egypt is the great historical event that shapes the purpose and the way of life of the people of God.

The exodus event echoes through all the biblical texts and the whole of human history. Passover is the great annual pilgrim feast in which all the people of Israel who were able came to Jerusalem for the sacrifice of the Passover lambs in the great temple. One lamb for each family.

To this day, the Seder is the annual celebration of the exodus for every Jewish family. In the feast of Passover, the act of God for the preservation and emancipation of the nation is remembered and celebrated. It is a corporate act of worship in which all the members of the community or family are expected to participate.

Each person is expected to eat a portion of the body of the Lamb. Jesus deliberately chose the time of the feast of Passover for his final confrontation with the temple authorities. All the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke attest to this fact.

And Jesus knew this challenge to the Sanhedrin and the high priest would result in his own death, but this was his intention, to enact the event in history by which the creator of the universe brings together each part of the human community, families, cities, nations, and indeed the whole of human life. Passover is the celebration, Passover is the celebration of a profoundly political event. Second affirmation, the exodus event began when God acted before Moses set the great escape in motion.

God destroyed the lives of the firstborn of both people and animals in all the households of Egypt, but he spared the lives of the children of Israel whose homes had been marked with the blood of slaughtered lambs. In the book of Exodus we read, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am Yahweh, the Lord.

The blood of the lambs shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. While the Egyptians were warned of the impact of the unfolding purpose of God through natural events, famines, and epidemics, the exodus event began with the passing over of the power of death that allowed the chosen people to survive and begin their escape into the desert. In the blood of the Passover lambs, God took the first step to set his people free from slavery in Egypt, his initiative in creating a community that could embody the way of life that he intends for all the people on earth.

This is the character of the great father, the creator of all things, who longs to be involved in the lives of his children and who, like the prodigal father in the story told by Jesus, who runs to meet his wayward children, the children who have finally recognized their own rebellion against their father. This is part of our own personal experience, too, when finally we welcome God's direction into our lives and acknowledge that long before we became aware, he had been at work in our relationships and in our life situations to enable us to come home to him. Third affirmation, Jesus' death and resurrection is the ultimate exodus event.

God's initiative radically to change the course of history and to bring to completion his plan for the fulfillment of human life now and in the world to come. We miss the main point of the good news about Jesus' victory over the dark powers in the historical process. If we think the proclamation of the gospel is only that God's good purpose for us will be realized after we have died, we and all of human life are being created here and now.

We need to begin to enter into the fullness of God's life here and now, and that is God's purpose for his whole creation. But he waits for us to listen and to accept his invitation. He wants us to be partners with him in the process of bringing his creation to completion.

Our father God wants us to engage in things as they are in this world, and at the same time live the way of life that embodies human life as God has designed it to be. Jesus, I am sure, really enjoyed his three-year ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem, and his disciples loved being with him, but eventually he had to face the powers of human rebellion head-on, and so must we. But this confrontation with falsehood and violence must take place, or we surrender to the dark powers that distort and destroy the fullness of life that is God's gift to us.

Jesus' humiliation and excruciating death on the cross is the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the first action in the great exodus event that includes Jesus' resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit of God. These historical events put into motion the next steps in the creation process, God's project to create people who can reflect into the world that he is creating the qualities of his own character. St. Paul calls this process new creation, and so it is, in the sense that we have been given a glimpse in the person of Jesus of the direction of the whole creation process.

And so at the end of the scriptures, in the strange but exciting revelation to John of Patmos, we see this picture of the fulfillment of God's purpose. John wrote, and they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations.

Exodus and the victory of the Messiah come together in this shout of praise, the message of the whole of the scriptures, and of the testimony of the people of God. Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast.

Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. Amen.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Vicar.

Morgan Reed 4/17/25 Morgan Reed 4/17/25

Maundy Thursday: Kingdom Expectations

TranscriptioN

Good evening. Good evening. I'm Alexei Laushkin, a member here.

Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank you for this holy set of services. We ask that you would be with us and help us not to miss the many things that happen in these next several days.

In the name of Jesus, amen. Kingdom expectations. You may, with the uncertainty that many people have faced in the Washington area, or you could think about a time where you've also faced uncertainty, maybe recently or in the past, you may remember the day before an uncertainty began, right? Things seemed normal and fine.

I was recently at a conference, and the conversation centered around 9-11, and we heard from a speaker who was in the White House in the morning, and it was prior to everything that happened on that horrible day, and he had sent an email to another colleague saying, most boring day of the Bush presidency, not knowing what was about to happen. Calamity, uncertainty, expectation, kingdom expectations. We're moving from Palm Sunday into this moment with Jesus and his disciples, the reclining at table, and I want you to get into the disciples' minds as best we can, ask God to be in our hearts and maybe think about what might be on their minds.

They've been with Jesus going on now three years. They've seen him perform miracles. They've seen him stay away from Jerusalem for the most part.

They've seen him recently raise someone who was dead, right? They've seen the crowds in this big festival say, Hosanna, Hosanna. And they think to themselves, this is it. This could be the time.

I want you to imagine this could be the time that the Messiah returns, the kingdom is restored. Just think what's about to happen and what verses might go through their minds. What do they think might happen next? Maybe they think about King David, right? If you can think about how King David ascends to the throne, there's a variety of calamities and difficulties and wars and battles, and perhaps they think to themselves, this is the time.

Or they could think about, in the passage we just read, the Exodus, the many motions that it took for deliverance from God's people to finally make it to the promised land. What they're probably not thinking about is betrayal that same night. That's probably not what they're thinking about.

That what would happen next would be an instantaneous collapse. They're probably not thinking about that. And so they're in this moment thinking about what will occur next.

They're in Jerusalem, and Jesus gives them something surprising to think through, and I'll get to that in a moment. But I want to get at some themes as we think about Easter and we think about our time with Easter. I think we have a tendency, and certainly I do, where we'd like the triumph of death over life, the triumph of Jesus over sin.

We'd like, and we have a tendency to think in very kind of binary ways. It's a celebration of good over evil, and in some ways that's very true. It's a celebration of life over death, and in some ways that is also very true.

But it is also a restoration of God being present with his people over a time in a way that the temple itself wasn't really able to do. And Jesus is the holy temple, and I think this gets to a bit of the meaning about the foot washing and why we have the foot washing this particular night. So if you think a little bit about the children of Israel, it's not by accident that in our reading tonight, this is another way to put it, that Judas is present.

It's not by accident that in the epistles, when we're asked to push away evil, that we're also given teachings to judge not least we be judged, or not to, if you know the parables of the wheat and the chaff, not to necessarily pull up that which is evil among us. And I want us to meditate a little bit on this as we're thinking about this new commandment that in many ways is being given in the midst of a betrayal that's going to happen that very night. And I want you to think about this in relation to our Christian life and that process for these next several days of what it looks like to have our inner hearts cleaned and cleansed.

Jesus is doing something wildly unexpected. And I think that when we often think about the Easter story, a story that's so familiar to us, the foot washing also somewhat familiar, the vigil pieces familiar, I want us to invite us to enter into the shock and expectation of the kingdom of God as we start this evening, the wildness of what's about to happen. And the first wild thing, just to repeat it from as I started, is that the disciples don't expect what's going to happen.

There's a shock process that happens. The second thing I think with foot washing, remember we're getting ready for service tonight and someone in my family was like, oh, foot washing, it's kind of, it's a little gross. It's uncomfortable.

But I think for those of us who've done foot washing before, it's also very familiar. So there's this tension of like it's a little bit of a stretch, but it's also a bit uncomfortable, but it's also a bit familiar. And I want to get us back into the shock, the expectation of the evening, the shock of the evening.

So this is from Bishop Barron. He was doing a sermon a few years back, and he was talking about the shock of what it would be like. And I want you to imagine that you've been invited to a very fancy dinner.

If you're a sports person, pretend your favorite sports star is there. If you're someone who likes shows, pretend someone very famous. You know, very fancy house.

It's a home for the sake of conversation. It's in McLean. It's a big home.

Someone, you know, with a nice suit. They've invited you in. The car is taking you out.

It's a table. Let's make it close to what's happening this night. So maybe it's about 15.

You're one of the 15. And your favorite star, and let's pretend we all have shoes that, you know, could be cleaned, takes out shoe polish and decides to go person by person before appetizers are served to polish your shoe. You would find it shocking.

You might even say you don't need to do that. It's a little bit, you know, shoe polishing is something people do, but it's not something people do all the time. And to have someone take off their tuxedo or make it a little easier for them to get at your shoe, it would feel really uncomfortable.

And this is the setting that we have when Jesus is taking out his outer garment. Jesus is taking his place, is putting himself in the position not just of a servant but of one of the lowliest servants. It's not every servant who would do the feat.

It usually was the lowliest servant. And you can see that Peter is just shocked. He says, I don't want this.

This is Peter who has seen Jesus do some pretty incredible things. And Jesus gives him this kind of a bit of a get thee behind me Satan sort of moment. Like this is something you must do to be part of the kingdom of God.

And then Peter says, well, okay, all of me. He says, no, it's okay. We don't need to do all of you.

And so it's this command and it's this flipping. And in many ways, it's the cleansing of the temple that we saw happen in Palm Sunday, but we see happen with his disciples, a cleansing of the temple. And I want us to think a little bit about this and a bit about the brokenness that all of this represents and Jesus' hope for this night in ways that are really unexpected.

This is not, again, a narrative the disciples are thinking about or think what would happen. So the temple is a place and just where God's glory is dwelling for Israel. It is the center of the worship life of Israel.

And I'm going to go out of Ezekiel a little bit here just in a moment. But I want you to think about the history of Israel for a moment. The history from the Exodus through Solomon is not necessarily a history where everything's going well.

It's not just a positive, joyful moment. You have enmity. You have sorcery.

I'm just giving you some of the highlights. You've got people who make our current day politics look nice and easy. It's a difficult set of generations in terms of what's happening in Israel.

And through all of that, God is still present with his people and eventually with the temple under Solomon's time. So it's not the case. I think sometimes we get the sense when we're reading the Old Testament where we sort of think, well, they sinned.

They just weren't good enough. God left them. And so then he needed to send his son.

And thank goodness we don't have to deal with all that religion in the way that they had to deal with it. I'm being very simplistic just to get us into that mindset. But what I'm trying to help you think about with the radicalness of Jesus and God's rescue plan for all of us is that God is not— but he's also very patient.

There are things happening in Israel that are really difficult and bad, and his glory hasn't left. He hasn't abandoned his people. There's judgment, but there's not abandonment.

But there is a portion, and I just want to give you a sense of what some would be thinking about around Jesus in Ezekiel 10, where there is a pronunciation that God's judgment, God's presence would leave the temple. So I want you to think about that. We're going to be tying this into foot washing in a moment.

This is Ezekiel 10, 15. Then the cherubim rose upward. There were the living creatures I had seen by the Kibar River.

When the cherubim moved, the wheels behind them moved. Did it pause there? So if you hang around Anglicans long enough, you're going to realize that the angels aren't just like the little creatures— the cherub—they're not just like little babies. It's a very Western picture.

You're going to see a much more complex picture of what angels look like. So if you're wondering what Ezekiel is referring to, he's actually talking about the angelic, not what you might see at Hallmark. When the cherubim stood still, they also stood still.

When the cherubim rose, they rose with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in them. Then the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim. While I watched the cherubim spread their wings and rose from the ground, and as they went, the wheels went with them.

They stopped at the entrance of the east gate of the Lord's house, and the glory of Israel was above them. These were the living creatures I had seen beneath the God of Israel by the Kibar River, and I realized that they were cherubim. Each had four faces and four wings.

And so in this Ezekiel passage, it's heartbreaking. And Ezekiel itself is a bit of a mysterious book of prophetic writings. But it's heartbreaking.

You see the spirit of God leave by the east gate. Now we have something in Ezekiel 43. A little bit further.

This is a prophetic utterance about the future. And in Ezekiel 43, you see, this is verse 3. The vision I saw was like the vision I'd seen when he came to destroy the city, and the vision I'd seen by the Kibar River and fell face down. The glory of the Lord entered the temple through the gate facing east, and the spirit lifted me up.

And so Ezekiel's talking about a time when the glory of the Lord will return. And in our gospel reading for Palm Sunday in Mark, it makes mention that Jesus himself is coming from the east, very intentionally. That the spirit of the Lord will be returning to the temple.

Jesus himself says, I am the temple. Right? And so on this night, where you might expect a plan to, the disciples might expect an eventual plan to reassert temple worship in a new way. I mean, there's lots of ideas about what would it look like for the Messiah to return.

Instead, you get this cleansing element where Jesus himself embodies what is to occur next. That instead of a dynamic where you need to be, and I'm thinking about these unexpected moments, maybe these moments that you've been in. But instead of pushing into, I need to do everything I can to make sure, you know, let's think of American things that we want, right? That there's provision for my children.

That I'm able to have a sustainable job. If you're in a different life circumstance, that I have a good and fulfilling career in future. That I do well by doing right.

That hard work, fair play leads to a good life. All these American isms related to success and how, when we feel uncertain, we want to cling to that success. And here is Jesus in this act of foot washing, actually giving us the opposite example.

We don't have to be held captive by the sin that so easily entangles our lives. We don't have to be focused on any other reality besides the temple and the spirit living in us through Christ. This night, before he is betrayed in just a few hours as we go through it, he is not coming with an army.

He is not coming with a political agenda. He's not coming with, here are the 30 ways that we're going to chase the Romans out of Jerusalem. All these things could have been on the disciples' minds.

I'm not saying they all were. But this is a way that God had reinstituted his kingdom in the past. Instead, he's coming to turn our very desire to put ourselves in the center of our lives and say, no, I who could say that's what we should all be doing, instead I'm going to humble myself.

The God of the universe is going to humble himself and wash his disciples' feet and say, go and do likewise. He's going to be ultimately emptying himself out completely and totally. And in those words of communion that are also related to this evening, that's what we have week after week, this emptying of self, this turning and cleansing of the temple.

But it's not the sort of turning and cleansing that says, well, all the evil, out the door. All that is wrong, be gone. In many ways, it is a seedling that will grow and outgrow the sin that's in the world.

But the difficulties, the Judas's of our life are still present at this same table. And so as we enter into this Easter season and we start thinking to ourselves, I'm not yet, Lord, the sort of person I ought to be in Christ, which is sometimes maybe this can come up for you. I'm not yet where I wanted to be this Easter.

If you're like some of the folks I interact with day to day or week to week and pray with, I had a terrible Lent. I did nothing for you, Lord. Very Anglican problem.

However you enter into this evening, know that this is not the table or the process for the very, very good and those who try very, very hard. Instead, it is the grace to enter into your life as it is right now. It's the unexpected presence of God in our vulnerability, in our difficulties, in the moments that don't seem to add up.

And yet the glory and the grace of the Lord is present with us tonight. And as we move into the foot washing in a moment, I know it is it is a vulnerable act. It is uncomfortable at times, but however you enter in, whether you come up or you sit and pray, let the Lord touch you and know that this is the way he wants to serve you.

Let the foot washing be an example of the of the way that God is ultimately serving your greatest need in this moment. Because at this night of greatest importance, in this time that is commemorated for all time, our Lord Jesus Christ takes the path of humility and the path of service and commands us to do likewise. Let us pray.

“Gracious Father, we thank you for this evening and we thank you for this holy time. We ask that you would meet us whatever has happened in our weeks and in our days and wherever we are with our walks with you so that we might have Easter be born in our hearts into everlasting life. Amen.”

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Vicar.

Morgan Reed 4/13/25 Morgan Reed 4/13/25

Palm Sunday: New Life and the Next Step of Obedience

TranscriptioN

Well, welcome to this Holy Week at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. It is always striking to me how fast everything shifts. We hear in one moment the crowds who are shouting with joy for the King who's coming, and we get to celebrate with them, deliver us, Hosanna.

And then we hear how the rest of the week goes in the same service. Jesus is arrested. He's brought up on false charges. He's rejected by the people. He's hung on a cross among thieves. And this week, we're going to walk the way of the cross together.

And why do we do this? Our New Testament reading told us, Philippians 2, where St. Paul says we're supposed to take on the mind of Christ. And then he walks through what that means, how Jesus considered equality with God something not to be held on to, but he took the form of a slave and being made in the likeness of humankind, he was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So to walk the way of the cross, the way that paves the way for the resurrection, is to learn the mind of Christ, which we need to take up.

People had wanted a king to overthrow their empire through violence, to establish a new order through the sword, to be victorious. This isn't the mind of Christ. Through death on the cross, Jesus would defeat the kingdom of darkness that had bound the world to sin and to death.

And Palm Sunday reminds us that God wants to bring new life to his people, new life with himself, and that the road to get there involves this everyday obedience, through both these moments of celebration and through the times of suffering, where we feel like there are forces that are warring and oppressing against our souls. And it's in that obedience that we discover, in this everyday obedience, the mind of Christ as we walk with him on the way to the cross. And it's in doing that that we find the cross to be the way of life and peace, as our collect prayed for us.

So I want to look together at Luke chapter 19 that we read outside. Jesus is entering into Jerusalem. Jesus is leading a group of pilgrims from Jericho up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. And as they make their way from Jericho, they're going from 840-some-odd feet below sea level, up a long, hot, dusty, mountainous road under the beating sun towards the city of Jerusalem. It's a really long trek. And as they make their way up, they get to the towns of Bethany and Bethpage near Jerusalem.

And they're just across the Kidron Valley. After that long journey, they're at the place where they get their first glimpse of Jerusalem off in the distance. And as they near the town, Jesus asks two of his disciples to go into the village to find a cult that's never been ridden before and to untie it and bring it to him.

The disciples don't know the larger picture of what's going on. They don't ask him why he wants them to do that. They just do it. Jesus is setting events in motion that they don't yet understand. And I'm not sure their hearts could even handle it, to be honest. But it's this ordinary faithfulness and the simple things Jesus is commanding, the next right thing to do that brings about God's plan in a way that they can't begin to comprehend.

And Palm Sunday then reminds us that God brings these new creation realities. He orchestrates things to bring about his cosmic renewal along a road of ordinary daily faithfulness. And so in those moments, we're usually not given the larger picture of what God's doing.

We just do the next right thing that he asks us to do. And Palm Sunday reminds us that the larger picture is our redemption that God's bringing about for us. It is life with God. It's new creation where Jesus is king. But God, I think in his kindness, only gives us the next right thing to do, the next right thing to desire, because the larger picture of how to get there is often too much for our hearts to bear. So the disciples do what Jesus asks.

They bring him a colt. And those who are following Jesus, they place their clothes onto this donkey as a makeshift attempt at a saddle for Jesus. The image of Jesus riding in on a donkey into the city is one of hope. It's one of longing that the people have. And it would have certainly stirred up their imaginations for this Old Testament passage in Zechariah 9:9, where the prophet says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem. Lo, your king is coming to you. Triumphant and victorious is he. Humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

This is in the back of everyone's imagination. And the people are seeing this Davidic ruler come in on this donkey into Jerusalem. And they put their clothes down in front of them. They put palm branches in front of him, in front of him, rolling out the red carpet for their king who is coming. And this king would drive out the evil empire that was over them, so they thought. He would destroy their enemies.

He would overturn injustice. He would bring them back to God, this physical liberation, the spiritual renewal. All their hopes are in this king who is riding on a donkey.

Last week I had mentioned Psalm 118, which is a really important psalm peppered throughout St. Luke's Gospel at key points. And last week it was a reminder to the chief priests and scribes, as Jesus is already in Jerusalem, we're actually going back in time this week, that the cornerstone that the builders rejected would become the chief cornerstone. That's Psalm 118.

It was a rebuke to the unfaithful leaders in Israel. This week, Psalm 118 is used again, leading up to Jesus's entry into Jerusalem. And it's a psalm about explaining Jesus's kingship. The people here believe that Jesus is the anointed king. And St. Luke makes that clear as he quotes Psalm 118 and alludes to it. And he does so by calling him the king who is coming.

And St. Luke's Gospel doesn't mention the hosannas. Interestingly, the other gospels do. But the hosannas are actually part of this original psalm, Psalm 118. Hosanna is just a transliterated word in English. Originally it was transliterated into Greek, but it comes from Hebrew. It's a phrase, actually. It's a prayer. Hoshiana, which means like, “deliver us”. It's a command.

Lord, deliver us. Hoshiana (הושׁיע נא). And so it's this prayer that we actually pray, hoshiana (הושׁיע נא), every single week when we celebrate the Eucharist.

It's a reminder that Jesus alone can deliver. Jesus alone can save. From the various things that war against our soul, that war against the image of God in us, us becoming fully alive in him.

And so adults and children, in the passage this morning, joined in these chants for this royal procession. Hosanna, blessed is the king who's coming. People were singing songs of praise for a victory that went much deeper than any of them actually understood.

At the same time, there was this group of religious leaders, the Pharisees, who were not the same as the Sadducees. These ones were sowing seeds of doubt that were more insidious than they were probably aware of. They were the group that helped implement faithfulness to the Torah, that's a good thing, for a people that were dispersed.

And as such, they had a certain authority among the people to adjudicate the meaning of scripture, to make decisions about how to apply law to life. And what makes them nervous is that if Jesus really is the king, then their power is gone. They have to hand it over to him as Lord.

And it's like they're saying, it's fine to have someone overthrow secular authorities like Rome, we are all about that, as long as I get to keep my little fiefdom. I don't want to give up control. But the problem is, Jesus is king.

And if he's king, then he is Lord of all. And that's really hard for us sometimes, just like the Pharisees. It's often easier to cling to what's familiar, what we feel like we have control over, some nostalgic memory, no matter how broken it is, than to risk going into the unknown, where we trust that Jesus is Lord, and where the things that feel really hard might actually be redemptive for us.

And so this movement from the triumphal entry into the passion narrative invites us to look at our own desires, what faithfulness looks like when expectations go unmet, when we're really disappointed at how things have turned out, and what trust looks like when brokenness and nostalgia feel safer for us than stepping into what's unknown for the sake of experiencing new creation in the resurrection. It's fun and exciting to get whipped up into the frenzy of the crowd, to lay down your palms and to join the celebration when things are good, but what are we going to do when things don't turn out as we hoped they would? And so the Pharisees look like they want people to follow God, but at the end of the day, they'd rather have a broken fiefdom where they are Lord, than the kingdom of God, which is unknown to them, where Jesus is Lord of all. And the kingship of Jesus is won, as we've said at several points today, through the road to the cross.

His throne was a cross. And those who are going to take up the mind of Christ, that are called to follow Jesus in his sufferings, trusting what feels terrifying and unknown, are still going to be filled with the presence of Christ as we go into those places. What feels like shame can be acknowledged, and it will eventually be redeemed.

What is an upset or unmet expectation, a small death of sorts, is actually the road to life with God, and it is not an accidental blip along the way. Are we going to be those who follow Jesus only when we feel like it, when it's exciting, when we're swept up with the emotion of the crowd? Are we going to walk with him when it is difficult on the way to the cross? Will we hold so tightly onto the parts of our life, people in our life, those little moments of nostalgia, no matter how broken but comfortable? Or are we going to recognize Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords and entrust ourselves to him, even though it feels costly to walk into what's unknown? This is the question posed to us on Palm Sunday. If God were to give us a glimpse of the totality of our story and our journey of our lives, we probably couldn't handle the load of it.

It would be too much. If you're talking to a five or a six-year-old, it would be completely inappropriate as you enter some sort of scenario with them to enumerate all the ways it could go wrong and all the ways that they might suffer as they grow up and move into years and years ahead. It's too much for their little hearts to handle.

So what do we do? We fill their hearts with truth. The truth of what is true around them, whether or not they feel it. And we tell them what is next.

We tell them a little bit of what to anticipate, but not the greater narrative of what could be. We remind them of what they can do, what might feel new, what might feel scary, and we help them take the next step forward. We don't need to give them more to be fearful about in the future.

Some kids are good enough at figuring that out themselves, and many of us are too. And so we help them hold on to what's true and good and just take the next right step forward. And Poem Sunday reminds us that the larger picture is our redemption and it's our life with God.

But God in his kindness doesn't give us the full glimpse of how we are going to get there because it's too much for our hearts to handle. He just gives us the next right thing to do, the next right thing to desire, because the greater picture might be too much for us. So as we enter Holy Week together, I want to encourage us to consider whether we find ourselves like the crowds or the religious leaders or vacillating between either one on any given day.

How does following Jesus feel difficult, terrifying, or threatening to our sense of control? What do we need to hand over to him, to his control? And will we still follow him into the next step of faithfulness as he leads us into the hard places that we never wanted to go? As we prayed in our collect together, I think that this is the way of the cross where we discover that the cross is the way of life and peace. That phrase has always been challenging and mystifying to me, that the way of the cross would be the way of life and peace. The way of the cross is the place of life and peace because that's where Jesus' presence is found.

We don't always have answers, but we do have his presence. And the cross is the means by which he disarms the kingdom of darkness and the means by which he is Lord of all. And so this Holy Week, I want to invite us to take up the mind of Christ together to discover the love of God in the way of the cross so that we might find it none other than the way of life and peace.

Let me pray for us. “Almighty God, whose son went not up to joy, but first he suffered pain. And entered not into glory before he was crucified. Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Transcribed byTurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.