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Is it true that most people come to church looking for innocence and purity, sometimes even triumphant majesty, often solace and protection from the muck and mire of a dark and dirty world?
If you are one of those people Palm Sunday is a disappointment to you. The church is the place to find innocence and purity, and triumphant majesty and solace and protection . This is after all a sanctuary; but this sanctuary is built by Sacrifice — which is why church is where one will also find muck and mire. And dark and dirty.
St James has a homemade set of Stations of the Cross, the devotional portraits which depict the scenes which we just read in Luke’s gospel. Images of of our Lord’s passion and death surround us. Like me, you may have walked these stations many times. You may walk them together again this Friday at 7pm with Mary Abrams.
My most memorable walk through the Stations was not long ago in the company of five young children, bright and fair, who had all been born and raised in church. Each of them understood what a good man Jesus is. They were able to articulate what their parents and teachers have faithfully taught them: that Jesus is the Son of God and that God loves everyone especially His Son.
These children understood the love and nurturing of parents, grandparents and church community.
And so it is with a broken heart I tell you that they understood exactly what happened when we came to the station where Jesus dies. Station 12. A shadow covered the rosy face of five-year-old Lyla as she quietly, almost in fearful awe asked me, “Why did they kill Jesus?”
While Lyla doesn’t hold a theological degree, nor has she heard a lifetime of brilliant sermons like this one about the mystery of our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection, she knows enough to feel disappointed: Someone everyone loves died. And he was killed by the people he loved. And his death was approved of, even planned by God. And the shadow on her face made it clear to me that this was a new grim understanding of her otherwise mostly benign world.
As she stared up at the portrait looming far above her head, depicting figures practically the same size as Lyla herself, I could detect the mechanics in her brain trying to reconcile this new understanding with her original understanding: that the reason for everything that happens in these pictures is God’s Love.
Lyla’s loss of innocence broke my heart. And that’s my job, OUR job. To provide a space and place and a time to come to terms with the very bloody, sweaty, work of salvation. We’ve agreed to create a space and place and time to come say prayers for the same source of strife that plagues Syria and Louisville alike. And after praying it’s our job to stand up for a story that includes station 12, the story most adults don’t want to hear, let alone believe. Our Lord’s Passion is troubling. Some say depressing. All agree it is Real.
Lyla and her sisters and her friends get to live in warm loving homes with their stuffed animals and Disney videos where everything works out with justice and fairness when everyone finally learns to get along at the end of every story. But they know, you know, that the world is much larger than a Disney movie. The world we live in is a place where people don’t get along, where justice isn’t fulfilled, where sin ruins everything.
Our job is to show these children, and one another, that God’s salvation can and does heal anything--even the disappointment we feel in the grotesque way God works out our salvation.
Anyone can show Lyla that she lives in a world where people fight one another, people lie, people hurt, people die. WE are the ones to show her she lives in a world where the sacrificial love of God in Christ who lives in us makes us people who fight alongside Christ, people who stand up for the truth of Christ, people who heal in the name of Christ, people who live the life of Christ.
When you walk out those belltower doors show children like Lyla you understand their disappointment. Show yourself.
