All our stories are bound up in Jesus' story.

Palm Sunday 2022

Fr. Tim Nunez

Early in Jesus’ ministry he preached at the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. He read a passage from Isiah which began with these verses:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

    to comfort all who mourn’ (Isaiah 61:1-2)

Jesus said simply, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) He is announcing that the Kingdom of God, the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and through them the world. This is good news indeed. The passage goes on to promise joy, restoration, prosperity, encouragement and justice.

The Gospel goes on to show us examples of these elements coming true in the healings of the blind, deaf, lame and lepers among others. Sinners are forgiven and lives are changed. Strangers and aliens receive the Good News as well. There is provision in the feeding of the 5,000. And in several cases, most notably Lazarus, the dead are raised to new life.

And that really is the point of all of it. In whatever way people are cut off, be it by birth or accident or disease or poverty, possessed by some demon, or by their own sinful nature and sinful ways willfully falling short of the Kingdom of God, Jesus heals, provides and calls them to new life. Whatever the problem is, the gift of new life is available and offered.

(That continues to this day. The Church, the Body of Christ, is actively and continuously enacting Jesus’ work in the world, bringing healing and hope in practical ways along with the spiritual gifts of prayer and deliverance from all manner of demonic assaults that plague God’s people. When we are at our best, God uses us to transform lives even as we are being transformed.)

In almost every instance of Jesus’ ministry (I say almost because I think of the 9 lepers who did not follow Jesus’ instructions after having been healed, or those in the 5,000 who looked to Jesus for the next meal rather than just adoring him) in almost every instance, the sincerity of acceptance, joy and truly transformed lives is clear.

All of those enacted examples illustrate the teaching and example of Jesus himself that is ongoing in the gospels that accompanies them. Jesus is such wonderful, good news. He did such wonderful things. His teaching is literally perfect, beyond doubt and beyond reproach. He shares and indeed is himself the best news the world has ever known. I just love him, don’t you? How can we not!

Yet, there is another theme to his teaching. Our world is drenched in sin. It’s a horrible problem. We see the rampant evil in this world, headlined in places like Ukraine, Afghanistan, the Tigray region of Ethiopia as well as West Africa, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma.) We are blessed to have our international teachers, ask them what evil is afoot in Nigeria, Ghana, India, the Philippines and Jamaica. Oh, they can tell us of conflict and poverty, or corruption, injustice and cruelty.

We know it’s local, too. We have our share of conflict and violence, of corruption, injustice and cruelty. It takes different forms but it’s all here.

And we know these sins and more find a home in us as individuals. Tack on envy, disregard of gluttony in consumerism and indifference. The ways we find it easier to indulge a problem, allowing it to fester and grow rather that shine the light of Christ on it. And, as Paul wrote to the Romans, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) And John wrote, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1John 1:8)

And sin has no place in the Kingdom of God. And thus can have no place in us.

Jesus warns us in the starkest terms of God’s judgment. He shares cataclysmic warnings about the Day of the Lord which echo the apocalyptic warnings of the prophets. Wars, earthquakes, famines and plagues, dreadful portents and persecutions. “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21:26)

Do you see the problem? In order to get to the complete fruition of the Kingdom of God, we not only have to deal with the sins that we so routinely and numbingly commit, we have to deal with our sinful nature. Only we can’t because we are so deeply mired in it, and anyone who manages to raise up to fight is undercut by his or her own weakness because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. ALL.

It is good that we make a special observance of Jesus’ triumphal arrival in Jerusalem. It carries all of those wonderful aspect of the Good News into our worship, our recognition of our need for him and all he offers, his gracious demonstration not only of what the Kingdom is like but how we are to get there by means of repentance and faith in Him.

And it is good that we celebrate his ultimate victory over sin and death on Easter next week, which is the most beautiful moment ever.

And it is literally crucial that we pause and remember, not just on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, the terrible, terrible cost that Jesus paid for our sin. We can’t deal with our own sin. He did. Think of all the horror and hurt in this world, recognizing that it is so vast that none of us can even grasp its depth and scope. Think of the complexities of the ways we are wired and process the information we do get and the ways we interact with God and our neighbor, how easily we fall short of the love he commands.

He took on all of that for you and for me. It’s not just that he endured such terrible physical pain, and the emotional pain of being mocked, and the spiritual pain of even the briefest abandonment by his Father. But, as Paul wrote to the Church at Philippi, he emptied himself in taking on our nature and in going to the cross.

Somehow all that is good and right and true had to be sacrificed so that we could be forgiven and thereby have the means to become children of God, good and right and true, when we never had the capacity to get there on our own.

Remember the cost, the cost he paid for you.

At the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

AMEN