Holy Week is a week for contemplation. This is a time when followers of Jesus reimmerse ourselves in the story of the salvation of the world. This week, we spend more time in prayer, more time at church, more time fasting so that we are more ready to receive the joys of Easter. If you’ve never done a full Holy Week, I invite and urge you to do as much as you can this year. We have liturgies every day this week, and, to be clear, we don’t have to. We could do just Maundy Thursday, one Good Friday liturgy, and go right to Easter Sunday.
A lot of churches will do
just that. But the reason why the Altar Guild gives themselves to so much extra
setup and clean up this week, the reason why the choir is working hard to prepare
additional music, the reason why Stephen is practicing extra organ pieces, the
reason why we use a month’s worth of acolytes in one week, the reason why
Caroline produces so many bulletins, the reason why I write nine sermons for this
week is that we have come and seen the gift of contemplating the grace, mercy,
and love of Holy Week. Holy Week demands our attention and when we focus on the
story of this week, we are assured of a peace that passes all understanding, of
a forgiveness that covers all of our sins, of a love that is making all things well.
This Holy Week, come, see, and contemplate.
This is exactly what St. Paul
commends to us in the reading from Philippians when he writes “Let the same
mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” He is not telling us what to do, or
how to pray, or even what to believe. Instead, he is telling us what to think
about – let our minds be aligned with Christ in his holy pattern of being
emptied, humbled, and crucified. Contemplate these things because this is the
beating heart of Holy Week.
The passage we heard from
Philippians is widely considered to be a creed or a hymn of the very early
church. We think the letter to the Philippians was written in the year 60, so
this hymn is even older. It gives us an insight into what followers of Jesus
thought and proclaimed in the decades after his Death, Resurrection, and
Ascension. As is clear from this hymn, the cross was seen as a central part of
the story of Jesus and the cross was something that the early Church spent a
lot of time contemplating. The cross shows us the depths of God’s love, the foundation
of our hope, the grain of the universe. Following this example, the sermons
this week are all going to be contemplations on the cross of Christ.
It begins with Palm
Sunday, which is a full day both Scripturally and liturgically, so I’ll be brief.
When I, and many others, say that the cross is the grain of the universe, I mean
that it shows us the direction and orientation of God’s plan for creation, it
shows us the essence of what life is truly all about, and it gives us a
direction to go in. And what we see in both this Christ hymn from Philippians
and throughout the readings today is that the grain of the cross is one of
humility.
Humility might be the
most confusing of all the virtues because in trying to pursue humility, we
become less humble. As one person has said, humility is not thinking less of
yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is not something that we can
cultivate, rather it is a byproduct of something else. And that something else
is nearness to God.
The word “humility” comes
from a word meaning “earth.” The layer of nutrient-rich and dark soil is called
humus. It’s down low, fueled by the death and decomposition of organic matter,
and is the best soil for things to grow in. Again, this is why the cross is the
grain of the universe, these truths are baked into the very nature of reality. Humility
is not thinking that we aren’t special or having an “aw, shucks” response to a
compliment. No, humility is about remembering the truth that we began Lent with
– we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Humility is knowing and embracing
the limits of our humanity instead of trying to fight against them. Humility is
trusting that we were created through the love of God and that love will be our
final rest. Humility is about being with the lowly and the overlooked, not in
the sense that we think we can save them, but rather that, in the scheme of all
things, we are also lowly and we need a Savior. Humility is never something
that we achieve or obtain, rather it comes when we follow the example of the
cross of Christ – we empty ourselves so that we might be filled by God’s
glorious grace.
We see Jesus’ pattern of
emptying and humility throughout Palm Sunday. He enters the city not on a war
horse, not flanked by warriors in armor, not in a royal procession, but rather
on a donkey in a makeshift parade with the sorts of societal rejects Jesus has
spent his life with as they throw their cloaks and branches on the road. They
shout out not royal victory propaganda, but Psalm 118. Jesus enters the holy
city of Jerusalem not as a warrior, but as one who will be mocked, beaten, and
executed by the end of the week. As the Philippian hymn suggests, this was no
accident – he chose to empty himself in this way because he is showing us that God’s
ways are not our ways. Or, as Isaiah describes it, Jesus has sent his face like
flint because his confidence is that God’s power of love is stronger than
anything else he will face this week.
Jesus’ parade has a destination.
We heard that he goes to the temple and provokes a crisis. While he is there,
he heals the lowly – the blind and the lame. And it was not the adults, not those
who were the experts, not those with authority who recognized that the salvation
of God was unfolding before their eyes, it was the children who sang “Hosanna
to the Son of the David.” The truths of God are so hard to see from the top
floor condos, from the luxury suites, from the top step of the medal podium.
Jesus spent his time in humility with the lowly, which signals to us where we
will find him in our lives. Jesus is not most readily found on our résumés, account
balances, or accomplishments, but in our places of brokenness, neediness, and
uncertainty. But if we avoid going to those places, well, we might find that we
are the ones shouting “crucify” because we’d rather be on the up and up than places
of humility.
On Palm Sunday, we have
an extra reading – the short version of the Passion is read as we head into
Holy Week. It puts the cross at the very center to guide our contemplation this
week. I’ll have much more to say about this on Good Friday, but for today, we
can see that same throughline of humility and lowliness. Who could have ever imagined
that God’s salvation would come like this? As inconceivable as it is that the
creator of all time and space took and flesh and was born of a woman, how much even
more absurd is it that God in the flesh would be rejected and give himself to
being spat upon, mocked, scourged, and crucified as a criminal! Being itself is
poured out and emptied in Jesus. And if that image of Jesus on the cross is the
depiction of what love and salvation look like, it calls into question everything
else about how we categorize and prioritize things.
The cross of Jesus is
about the radical shifting of everything we assume and take for granted in
terms of strength, authority, and power. The cross is about trusting God, which
means that we do not put our trust in the might of horses, our works, or the vigor
of our belief. The cross is about Jesus’ pattern of humility and emptying so that
there is room to be filled with God’s abundant, amazing, and redeeming grace. This
Holy Week, keep your eye on the cross for it is the way of life and peace.
