The Sunday of the Passion (Palm Sunday), Year C

"AWESOME, PREMEDIATED LOVE"
A sermon by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, March 28, 2010.
Luke 19:29-40; Isaiah 45:21-25; Psalm 22:1-11; Philppians 2:5-11; Luke 22:39-23:49

Awesome, premeditated love.

That would be a very fine and apt description of the events of this Holy Week, events that most people (even nonbelievers) know very well.

So, rather than look at the details of the Lord’s Triumphal Entry on this Palm Sunday, or on the institution of the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, or the Lord’s Passion and death on Good Friday, or His victory over death on Easter Sunday morning, let’s look at this entire week from the perspective of divine love.

We do so from this unique perspective: The God who is all-knowing (omniscient), is also a God who is all-present from the perspective of time.

Or, as a friend of mine put it very well: The God who is everywhere is the God who is everywhen.

To understand this point a bit better, it’s important to remember that god dwells within time as we know it, but also outside of time as we know it.

Put another way, God – the creator of all that is – is also the creator of time, earthly time, or chronos (a Greek word) time.

But God, who knows all things, also therefore knows the ending of all things, the beginning of all things, and everything in between. God knows in advance the events that will transpire throughout the full sweep of history.

Sometimes, this timeless-time-of-God is described by another Greek word, kairos time.

Now, let’s return to the events of this Holy Week, and see them from God’s perspective, insofar as time and intent are concerned.

The first conclusion we might draw from God’s all-knowing nature is that He knew, from the very beginning of all time and eternity, what would happen in Jerusalem in advance of the great feast of the Passover that year.

God knew from the very beginning that the Jesus who came along side us as the babe in Bethlehem would also come to suffer and die at the hands of an angry mob and their wicked leaders, who bullied the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate, into the execution of Jesus of Nazareth.

But God came among us, anyway.

God shows Himself to be a God who doesn’t shirk the “tough stuff.”

God shows Himself to be a God who is in the consistent habit of saving people.

Down through history, God intervened, time and again, to save the people He loved. He did it with the Ark in Noah’s day. He did it by sweeping aside the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could pass through in Moses’ time. He did it again and again by sending the prophets to bring people back to God’s ways and God’s wisdom. Those prophets included Samuel, Elijah, Joel, Amos, and Hosea. They included Ezekiel and Daniel. And in the fullness of time, the line ended with John the Baptist.

And now, with the suffering and death of Jesus, God saves His people again, and for all time.

Fully immersing Himself in our human life and experience, God assumes our humanity in order to save humanity.

No depth is too low for Him to enter and to sanctify. At least that’s what I make of the line from our reading from Philippians, heard today. Hear it again, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

You see, death on a cross is the lowest point of earthly existence, for in such a death, one loses their pride, their dignity, their friends, their possessions, and eventually, even their life.

But it was to endure such a death that God sent His son. To endure such a death that God knew – fully well and in advance – would be the culmination of Jesus’ mission.

God doesn’t shirk the tough stuff.

He loves us enough to face death squarely, knowing in advance the nature of that death.

And He does so, out of awesome, premeditated love for you and me.

Thanks be to God.

AMEN.