Homily @ Lent: "Oh My God!"

 

Year C / Holy Week / Palm Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 50.4-7 / Psalm 21.8-9, 17-18a,19-20, 23-24 (R/v 2a) / Philippians 2.6-11 / Luke 22.14-23, 56

Sisters and brothers, what will you say after today’s Palm Sunday celebration?

Will it be: "Too long"? "The same old, same old"? or "I was moved by the Passion story"? I wonder if it would be "Oh my God!"

Yes, "Oh my God!" because of all that our readings tell us today.

We see how the crowds welcomed Jesus as King. Though they didn’t know then, what we know now, Jesus came to give them what God treasures most, Himself as God’s son, his very self, his whole life, for our salvation. They greeted him by waving palms. Even more, they threw down their own cloaks onto the ground and wasted them.

Cloaks that must have been expensive for these poor people to own. Cloaks that they needed to protect themselves in their poverty and vulnerability. Yes, they took off their precious cloaks and laid down them to welcome Jesus. Welcome they did, even as they knew their cloaks would be utterly ruined —  trampled upon by the colt carrying Jesus and the crowds that came after.  This is why I would cry out "Oh my God!" Yet they chose to sacrifice their cloaks for Jesus – expensive not just because of money but expensive because these symbolised their wellbeing, their dignity, their whole selves. 

What else can this action of the poor teach us but a genuine self-giving?  This is why I am challenged, even disturbed, by their sacrifice. I wonder if you are too. I find myself asking,  "What about me? What cloak have I sacrificed, offered this Lent to welcome Jesus?"  Maybe you do too.

Looking back on Lent, I’ve to confess that as much as I have tried my best to fast, to pray and to share, I could have done better. I could have because the honest truth is that I selfishly held back a part of myself, wrapping it up in the self-centred, self-assured and self-serving folds of my cloak. Maybe this is how you also feel. But there’s time this Holy Week to still lay down our cloaks. Will we?

In Holy Week, we will accompany Jesus to the Cross on Good Friday and into the joy of the Resurrection on Easter morning. The liturgies and readings of Holy Week encourage us to move forward and do this with Jesus and each other, never alone. But we cannot do this unless we imitate the self-emptying way of the poor who laid down their cloaks. For each step forward we take, each decision to stay the course to the Cross, each choice to do as God commands is really our "yes" to participate in Jesus’ own self-emptying as He prepares to totally give Himself over to do God’s will — in ultimate self-emptying he makes on the Cross. There, he lays down his life selflessly to save us. Love alone empowers Jesus to do this – His love of God and His love for us. Holy Week invites us to do the same. To keep emptying ourselves of all that will prevent us from standing at the foot of the Cross, even more, to enter into the joy of the Resurrection. Empty ourselves we must if we wish to receive all that God wishes to give us this week, especially on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Moreover, it is only by emptying ourselves can we let Jesus be God on the Cross – laying Himself down to love us as we are, even more, to love us into becoming what his death and resurrection remakes us to be – His beloved new creation.

Listen again to how God emptied himself to love, save and promised us eternal life in Jesus as St Paul declared the Philippians, and today to us:

His state was divine,
yet Christ Jesus did not cling
to his equality with God
but emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave
and became as men are;
and being as all men are,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.

If God does this for us, what cloaks do you and I still have to lay down before Jesus? Not as sacrifice but as our promise to walk with him to the Cross. Could these cloaks be threaded with our pride and arrogance? Or, beaded with our self-righteousness and hard-heartedness? Or, even woven with our selfishness and refusal to forgive?

As we enter into Holy Week, let’s humble ourselves and ask for love and humility, faith and courage so that we can accompany Jesus through his passion, death and resurrection. When we do this, we’ll open ourselves to experiencing even more the mercy and love of God shining through the battered, scarred and disfigured face of Jesus looking down on us. Let us return God’s gaze by looking up to Jesus hanging on the Cross. 

Then, in the quiet of this moment, may we hear Jesus forgive us as he did the crowds calling for his crucifixion saying, ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do’. And promise us and the repentant thief that we’ll all be with Him as he says,  ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise!’  Even more, assure us that we matter greatly to Him who thirsts for our salvation and everyone else’s.  

This then is when we’ll know how God loves us to redeem us – completely, selflessly, sacrificially – and how much – truly, madly, totally.  As the poor wasted their cloaks to welcome Jesus, God wastes His love to save us. Indeed, the only right and human exclamation we can make in the face of this amazing love of God is simply to utter honestly - "Oh my God!"

Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart art: 'palm sunday' by evans yegnonizer yegon