To Be 'Great' Has Everything to do with Love

 

20 years ago, in the Palm Sunday sermon I asked: What does it mean to be great?

We considered Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. It was said that if humans had planned it, it would have been a grander and more spectacular hero entrance; picture the Lone Ranger on a white horse, swashbuckling sword in hand, with strong accompanying music. Along side this image we dared to explore the nature of God, learning that to be “great” has everything to do with love. We learned that it is here, through the donkey ride into Jerusalem, the journey of Holy Week, the day on the cross, that God meets us. Here God becomes present...hidden in weakness, vulnerable, suffering, forsaken, dying. In the abyss of despair in the deepest darkness God comes. In the painful reality of our mortality, our ultimate loneliness, our weakness, God encounters us. This is what it means to be great.

 

20 years ago, Palm Sunday fell on April 9^th, which is the day Lutherans commemorate Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The discussion of ‘greatness’ was applied to the actions and writings of Bonhoeffer. For those unaware, Bonhoeffer was executed as WWII drew to a close. He openly participated in actions to overthrow the Nazi regime, took a segment of the church underground, and wrote about Christ being present in community and the cost of discipleship. Bonhoeffer is considered a martyr.

While we may or may not face martyrdom, I preached that Sunday, that God has holy jobs for all of us. Jobs that have been chosen for each of us alone. There are special unique times and circumstances that you alone are the one called to be love.

 

This past week was a commemoration of another person exemplifying God’s view of ‘greatness.’ 46 years ago, in March, Archbishop Oscar Romero was martyred while presiding at Holy Communion. He was shot while standing at the altar. El Salvador was in turmoil, the Salvadorian Civil War was raging, injustice was prevalent, government harassed priests to silence them, and the regime publicly removed dissenters. Oscar Romero was a growing voice for the poor, a voice denouncing social injustice and violence. He spoke openly, giving power to the poor and marginalized, reimagining land reform, social transformation, inclusiveness, and workers’ rights. The liberating power of the gospel and its application was front and centre.

 

But this ‘greatness’ was not how Romero began. When appointed to archbishop he was considered a social conversative. He presided at worship, did baptisms and confirmations, shook hands with the church’s rich donors and catered to their needs. He did not ruffle feathers and did not speak out against the government or the growing violence. But one day everything changed!

Romero had a friend, Rutilio Grande, who was a fellow priest. Rutilio was part of a Jesuit evangelization mission team focused on liberation theology, working and walking with the poor and marginalized. For them living the gospel was central, its application meant speaking out on social and political issues.

Rutilio was removed by the regime for living the gospel. Martyred. His death profoundly affected Romero.

At the funeral in Rutilio’s hometown of El Paisnal, as he was interred under the altar, people chanted:

“Rutilio’s walk with El Paisnal is like Christ’s journey with the cross.”

 

What does it mean to be great?

Before us once again is the nature of God, lived out in the lives of follows, who with their very lives show us that to be “great” has everything to do with love.

I learned something about palm branches this week. In the ancient world, Levantine and Mediterranean peoples, associated palm branches with victory, triumph, peace, and eternal life. Christian artists, shortly after Jesus’ death, marked graves of martyrs with a drawing of a palm branch. Paintings of martyrs through the centuries have in their hands a martyr palm. There are depictions of Oscar Romero holding a palm branch. The palm branch represents the victory of spirit over flesh. God’s nature over human nature. Romero expressed the living of this as: Aspire not to have more, but to be more.

 

Every year, Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, has the streets crowed with palm branch bearing pilgrims. Organized processions journey from the Mount of Olives through the Old City of Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, translated as the ‘Way of Suffering.’ The route represents Jesus’ journey to the cross. Along the route are the 14 stations of the cross, where people pause to pray. But not this year. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has cancelled the procession due to security reasons – due to war.

The Easter letter from the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem begins:

In the weeks leading up to this year’s commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection, a new and devastating regional war has once again plunged the Holy Lond and the wider Middle East into turmoil. Each passing day has brought increasingly fierce escalations – a relentless cycle of death, destruction, and frightful suffering that now ripples across the globe in rising economic hardship. From the blackened smoke of this expanding wreckage, a deep darkness has engulfed our region, as stifling as the air inside the sealed tomb of the crucified Christ. Hope itself appears to have abandoned us.

 

Yet as Scripture teaches and our faith reveals, the desolation of the tomb was not the end of the story. Death did not have the final word … but this week we do not jump ahead to Easter, rather we allow ourselves time to be sad. We allow ourselves to grieve for the world, to cry with the suffering, to lament injustice, to weep at the human need to have more, to ache for a peace that the world cannot give, and to mourn all that is broken and not whole. This is our prayer.

 

This Palm Sunday and Holy Week we are invited to reflect on what it means to be great. What it is to be more. What is greatness in a world where from the blackened smoke of this expanding wreckage, a deep darkness has engulfed [the world], as stifling as the air inside the sealed tomb of the crucified Christ?

 

Greatness - to be more – is to walk with love following Christ’s journey with the cross.

The heads of churches in Jerusalem bid the faithful and all those of goodwill to work and pray ceaselessly for the relief of the countless multitudes throughout the Middle East and beyond who are suffering severely from the ravages of this war. … advocate and interceded for an immediate end to the bloodshed and for justice and peace to finally prevail…

 

Romero, in troubled times, encouraged El Salvadorians:

Each one of you has to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always exist as long as there is someone who has been baptized…Where is your baptism: you are baptized in your professions, in the fields of workers, in the market. Wherever there is someone who has been baptized, that is where the church is. There is a prophet there. Let us not hide the talent that God gave us on the day of our baptism and let us truly live the beauty and responsibility of being a prophetic people.

 

And 20 years ago the blessing for the confirmands, is true for this community and each of us: We believe that the Holy Spirit will become ever more alive in our life, that our faith will grow, that we will be guided, empowered in serving God. We believe that today we are ordained for ministry. God is reaching out and embracing each of us; calling us … to greatness.