Sometime within the last 15 or 20 years a shift took place in the church. What was forever Palm Sunday, focusing on Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem the week before his death, became Passion Sunday. The reason for the shift is sad really. Realizing that most people won’t go to church on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, the people who put together the church year decided to take the themes from those days and move them back into Palm Sunday.

It’s not an entirely bad move. Without it, we go from the celebration of Palm Sunday to the celebration of Easter, completely missing the point – that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried.

In fact some churches won’t even have a sermon today. Instead they take the long passages that tell the story and print them out with different people reading different parts – the congregation being the crowd – and letting the story itself serve as the sermon. It can be rather powerful, and something I’d like to do some time.

The point is that after hearing a story as profound as the Passion Narrative, more words would seem almost like an intrusion. Even our shorter reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday turns us from the triumphal entry of Jesus into the holy city Jerusalem, and calls us to face the grim reality of Holy Week ahead.

Easter is out there, at the end of this week’s journey. But until then, the church enters into a time of confusion, a place of suffering, and a context of betrayal, fear, and pain. If we were on an airplane journey, our flight crew would caution us to fasten our seat belts, as turbulence – not just some “bumpy air,” but real turbulence – lies ahead.

And the turbulent journey we’ll make is a dark and difficult one. A journey which commemorates what happened as we celebrate the divine revelation of God’s love through it. This year in particular as we make our way through the Apostles Creed, Thursday is an important step in the journey to the resurrection – Jesus descended to the dead.

And we make this journey not because we suffer as Christ did, but because we participate in the ongoing story of God’s redeeming work, of salvation history itself. The world has been redeemed – once and for all – and each and every one of us has already been saved through the grace of Jesus Christ.

And this entire saving mystery is before our eyes each day. Our worship, our commemorations, our enactment of Holy Week serve to manifest but one part of that great mystery more concretely. We celebrate Holy Week as we observe all of Lent – not as if we had never been redeemed, but as having the stamp of the cross upon us, seeking to be better conformed to the death of Christ, so that the resurrection may be more and more clearly shown through us.

The redemptive love of God reaches its height in the sacrifice of the cross, and the church issues forth in glory from the resurrection that follows. But the church does not die again this Good Friday, nor rise again this Easter. Rather, the church remembers these ancient events, and through this remembering participates more fully in the plan of salvation.

The mystery of the church’s year is a whole, of one piece. The birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is really one event. And the path that we take from sin to salvation through Jesus is one continuous action.

And so, we set our face on Jerusalem, that heavenly city where Christ has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. We fasten our spiritual seat belts in preparation for the rough ride of the coming week. And we look ahead in certain hope and joyful anticipation of the fulfillment of all Scripture, the coming of the kingdom of God, the return of Christ in glorious majesty.

But until that time, we have a mission – an assignment of sorts: to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so, to assist us in that most daunting task, the church provides this yearly remembrance so that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find the way of life and peace.

All of this is a mysterious paradox. Begun today in triumph, with people waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna” as Jesus enters Jerusalem, it quickly shifts into that dark time of suffering, crucifixion, death and burial.

The great omnipotent God who created the universe, who has existed since before time, and will continue to exist after everything we hold dear has come to ruin, who sees all and knows all, who became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ:
this same God is now hanging nailed to a cross in the mid-day heat.

The God who caused floods, who spoke through earthquakes, wind, and fire:
this same God now chooses to submit to agony of the most extreme severity.

The God who led the people of Israel out of captivity, stayed with them as they wandered in the desert, and guided them to the Promised Land:
this same God now gives himself up to death.

It may seem odd at first that an all-powerful God would choose to go through such an ordeal, that the highest power of all would choose not to act, not to rescue, not to save.

Yet for us as Christians, we know what’s coming – Easter is immanent, already on the horizon. We know that just a week from today we will be singing out in joy again.

But for those first-century Palestinians, the future was far less certain. They had no idea that the tomb would be empty on Easter morning. No, they would have cried with Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

For us, this is a powerful reminder that miracles happen in God’s time, not ours.

So often, we can be like the ancient Israelites, taunting God to demonstrate mighty power at our command. They said things like: “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

For most of us, the words sound something like this: “If you really are God, take away the cancer now,” or “If you love me, God, lift this burden from me,” or “You who are so powerful, why won’t you just give me a little help?”

We become like those chief priests, scribes, and elders who said, “Let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him.”

Our bargaining typically sounds like this: “If you will just heal this disease, I will believe in you,” or “Deliver me from this horrific situation, and I will be faithful.”

But God rarely responds with a quick fix for our problems. And God does not make bargains with us. God’s saving help does come to us when we really need it – but not necessarily when we think we need it. Miracles do happen, but in God’s time, not ours.

Sometimes, we need to experience the depth of our iniquity before we can appreciate the joy of our many blessings. In the Twelve Step movement, they speak of needing to “hit bottom” before recovery is possible. In our Christian vocabulary, we affirm that we need to suffer death before resurrection can occur.

This is part of the pilgrim journey for us this Holy Week. Like Jesus, we give ourselves up to death, so that we, too, can be resurrected. We die to sin, to selfish ways, to all that has held us captive.
We let go of our need to control, of our anger and our envy, of our love of power, status, and wealth.

And we give in to the love that will not let us go, to the power that will indeed come to our aid when we truly need it, and to the sure and certain hope that God is already doing more for us than we can ask or imagine.

So once again we muster the courage to look into the face of death this Holy Week – to follow Jesus through his suffering, crucifixion, death and burial, and even beyond that to the place of the dead. Knowing all the while that the only way out is to trust in God alone. And – I say this every year – knowing that we do not make the journey alone but together as the church, the body of Christ.

And so let’s join our voices with Christians around the world in the words of the Creed.

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy catholic Church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body; and life everlasting. Amen.

And that, my friends, is what Christians get to believe. Amen