Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday 2010

They began to accuse him.

There is only one God.

The One God is love. The One God is holy. The One God created the universe and all life. The One God created us.

The pattern of our species is the logos. The logos is the rational creative pattern of the universe. He is also the co-eternal Son of God who became a man in Jesus Christ.

God the Father created all things including all of us and each of us as a gift to God the Son, Jesus Christ.

Once before the Son had walked in this world. Once before the pre incarnate Son of God had offered his friendship, his love, his delight to the human race. And once before humanity had rejected the Son and said no.

That “no” forms the ground of our being. That “no” forms the way we think, feel, and make choices.

The Son of God knew this when he came into the world. He had been here before in his radiance and glory. Humanity had rejected him and in that rejection declared the fatal intent for each of us to be our own God.

The essence of sin is separation from God. The motivating principle underlying separation is the desire to be God. All people everywhere are trapped in the illusion of control. That illusion so warps the soul that we are enslaved to fear, self will and pride.

The religious leaders who cursed and condemned Jesus were no different from the greater mass of humanity who rebel against God’s self disclosure of himself in Jesus Christ. They wanted to define God according to their own rational analysis, needs, and desires. They did not want Jesus defining God. For if Jesus really is God in human flesh then he not only defines God, he also defines all that God has created, including each of us. A soul lost in rebellion and separation cannot and will not accept what Jesus brings into the world.

People frequently declare how unfair and exclusive Jesus Christ is to claim to be God. The real question is: is it true? Because if it is true it changes everything.

As with all Biblical teaching, the Holy Spirit invites each of us to test what He revealed to Moses, the prophets and the apostles. He invites us to ask the question: is this true? The answer to the question comes through observation.

How do the masses of people in our society respond or react to Jesus Christ? The Holy Spirit only asks that we wake up, pay attention, observe.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were rebellious, cynical, deceitful and brutally honest about their demand. They simply did not want Jesus Christ to be the Messiah.

For Jesus to be the Messiah meant that everything they had chosen to believe about God was at best incomplete. For Jesus to be the Messiah meant that God was now visiting humanity in person. For Jesus to be the Messiah meant that they were wrong. They believed that in order for Jesus to be right they had to be wrong and if they were wrong they would lose everything they valued. For Jesus to be the Messiah meant that God was not only real he was now personally present.

Most religious people prefer either a distant transcendent deity that works through law or a vague impersonal diffuse deity that makes no demands and places no restrictions. Such a deity is ideal for a lost, broken and rebellious humanity. Such a deity can be molded and shaped and formed to fit our changing moods, needs and desires.

An incarnate deity is dangerous. He is in fact an affront to human pride. He immediately reveals that God is God. God is “I am.” God has his own character, nature and identity whether we agree, accept or approve. We cannot use such a God.

In the end, humanity rejected the co-eternal Son a second time.
Only this time, humanity sought to accomplish what the philosopher Friedrich Neitzsche claimed. God is dead. Long live the human will to power.

Of course, God knew all this. He had created us for love and we had instead used the free will that love embodies to choose power. God had created us for holiness- health- wholeness- happiness- and instead we chose rebellion, self indulgence and separation. God created us for a joyful eternal friendship with the Son by which we would discover endless joy and delight in the love of the Son. Instead, we chose to reject that relationship. The result is that we as a species and each of us as individuals are lost.

We are lost in fear, self will and pride. We are lost in the dark underside of pride which is despair. We are lost in our anger, and recycled pain. We are lost in the confusion of our thoughts. For as much as we might seek to dominate and control life we know we can’t. And so, we blame. We blame other people. We blame institutions, we blame God.

There was and is only one way for God to seek and save the lost. He had to come in person. He had to become fully vulnerable to humanity’s fear and anger. He had to receive the full force of human wrath so he could take it into himself, transform it, purify it, and offer it back as eternal unconditional love.

There is only one God. The One God became a human being in Jesus Christ. The people of that time and all time rejected Jesus, falsely accused him, blamed him for all of their suffering, tortured him and then killed him.

Jesus knew this would happen. He also knew it was the only way to rescue humanity from the folly of our choice to separate from God.

He’s gone now. He returned to heaven. His life, death and resurrection are public record. His experience with a lost, broken and rebellious humanity continues to be written in human history and in current events. Only now, we know the rest of the story.

Now we have the image and reality of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Now we have the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Infinite and Eternal Trinity, in our midst inviting us to ask the same question Pontus Pilate asked: what is truth? What is true?

Ask. Seek. Knock. The co-eternal Son of God stands before us today with that invitation. Test the assertions. Test the conclusions the Bible makes about human nature, the human condition, the human tragedy.

Taste and see whether the Lord Jesus Christ is who he claimed and still claims to be. He is the co-eternal Beloved who has visited this planet twice. He is the plan, the pattern and the purpose for our lives.

Jesus has taken human rebellion and separation and transformed it by his own eternal love into the gift of eternal life. The gift is nothing more and nothing less than the personal relationship Jesus continues to offer all people everywhere.

Have you received the gift? If you haven’t or aren’t sure simply pray: Heavenly Father, I receive the gift of your Son Jesus Christ.

If you have received the gift where are you standing? Are you standing with Holy Mother Mary and the Beloved Apostle John at the foot of the cross, at the empty tomb, in the midst of the Temple?

Are you walking with Jesus and inviting him to walk with you?

Jesus has transformed the accusations of the religious and political leadership into an invitation. That invitation is to receive the gift of his friendship and his love. Jesus is salvation.
Jesus is the fulness of God in person reaching out to all people everywhere, patiently, persistently. He has already borne the arrogance of a species that falsely accused him in person.
He continues to bear the accusations and arrogance of a species that seeks to redefine him and control him.

Jesus is who he is. Jesus is not control. Jesus doesn’t need to impose control. Jesus is the logos, the rational creative defining pattern of the universe. Jesus is the steadfast, holy, unconditional love of God reaching out to all people everywhere.

Test his claims in your own life experience. Wake up. Pay attention to the world as it is. Observe. Then, taste and see the goodness of God in Jesus Christ. Taste and delight in the transforming power of God the Father in God the Son through the indwelling Divine Presence of God the Holy Spirit.