Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Palm Sunday Sermon
4 April 1993
....And Holy Week is from one end to another a time of tragic confusion.
The Jews meet Christ at the gates of Jerusalem because they expect of
Him a triumphant military leader, and He comes to serve, to wash the
feet of His disciples, to give His life for the people but not to
conquer by force, by power. And the same people who meet Him shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!” in a few days will shout, “Crucify Him,
crucify Him!” because He has betrayed their expectations. They
expected an earthly victory and what they see is a defeated king. They
hate Him for the disappointment of all their hopes.
And this is not so alien to us in our days. How many are those people
who have turn away in hatred from Christ because He has disappointed
one hope or another. I remember a woman who had been a believer for
all her life and whose grandson died, a little boy, and she said to
me, “I don’t believe in God anymore. How could He take my grandson?”
And I said to her, “But you believed in God while thousands and
thousands and millions of people died.” And she looked at me and said,
“Yes, but what did that do to me? I didn’t care, they were not my
children.” This is something that happens to us in a small degree so
often that we waver in our faith and in our faithfulness to God when
something which we expect Him to do for us is not done, when He is not
an obedient servant, when we proclaim our will, He does not say,
“Amen,” and does not do it. So we are not so alien from those who met
Christ at the gates of Jerusalem and then turned away from Him.
But we are entering now in Holy Week. How can we face the events? I
think we must enter into Holy Week not as observers, not reading the
passages of the Gospel which are relevant, we must enter into Holy
Week as though we were participants of the events, indeed read of them
but then mix in the crowd that surrounds Christ and ask ourselves, Who
am I in this crowd? Am I one of those who said, ‘Hosanna to the Son of
David!’? And am I now on the fringe of saying, ‘Crucify him’? Am I one
of the disciples who were faithful until the moments of ultimate
danger came upon them?.. You remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane
three disciples had been singled out for Christ to support Him at the
hour of His supreme agony, and they did not, they were tired, they
were desponded and they fell asleep. Three times He came to them for
support, three times they were away from Him.
We do not meet Christ in the same circumstances but we meet so many
people who are in agony, not only dying physically, and that also
happens to our friends, our relatives, people around us, but are in
agony of terror one way or another. Are we there awake, alive,
attentive to them, ready to help them out, and if we can’t help, to be
with them, to stand by them or do we fall asleep, that is, contract
out, turn away, leave them in their agony, their fear, their misery?
And again I am not speaking of Judas because no-one of us is aware of
betraying Christ in such a way, but don’t we betray Christ when we
turn away from all His commandments? When He says, “I give you an
example for you to follow,” and we shake our heads and say, “No, I
will simply follow the devices of my own heart.” But think of Peter,
apparently the strongest, the one who spoke time and again in the name
of others. When it came to risking not his life, because no-one was
about to kill him, to be rejected simply, he denied Christ three
times.
What do we do when we are challenged in the same way, when we are in
danger of being mocked and ridiculed and put aside by our friends or
our acquaintances who shrug their shoulders and say, “A Christian? And
you believe in that? And you believe that Christ was God, and you
believe in His Gospel, and you are on His side?” How often? O, we
don’t say, “No, we are not,” but do we say, “Yes, it is my glory, and
if you want to crucify Him, if you want to reject Him, reject me too
because I choose to stand by Him, I am His disciple, even if I am to
be rejected, even if you don’t let me into your house anymore.”
And think of the crowd on Calvary. There were people who had been
instrumental in His condemnation, they mocked Him, they had won their
victory, so they thought at least. And then there were the soldiers,
the soldiers who crucified Him. They had crucified innumerable other
people, they were doing their job. It didn’t matter to them whom they
crucified. And yet Christ prayed for them, “Forgive them, Father, they
don’t know what they are doing.” We are not being crucified
physically, but do we say, “Forgive, Father, those who offend us, who
humiliate us, who reject us, those who kill our joy and darken our
life in us.” Do we do that? No, we don’t. So we must recognise
ourselves in them also.
And then there was a crowd of people who had poured out of the city to
see a man die, the fierce curiosity that pushes so many of us to be
curious when suffering, agony comes upon people. You will say, it
doesn’t happen? Ask yourself how you watch television and how eagerly,
hungrily you look at the horrors that befall Somalia, the Sudan,
Bosnia and every other country. Is it with a broken heart? Is it that
you can not endure the horror and turn in prayer to God and then give,
give, give generously all you can give for hunger and misery to be
alleviated? Is it? No, we are the same people who came out on Calvary
to see a man die. Curiosity, interest? Yes, alas.
And then there were those who had come with the hope that He will die
because if He died on the cross, then they were free from this
terrifying, horrible message He had brought that we must love one
another to the point of being ready to die for each other. That
message of the crucified, sacrificial love could be rejected once and
for all if He who preached it died, and it was proved that He was a
false prophet, a liar.
And then there were those who had come in the hope that He will come
down from the cross, and then they could be believers without any
risk, they would have joint the victorious party. Aren’t we like that
so often?
And then there is a point to which we hardly should dare turn our eyes
- the Mother of the Incarnate Son of God, the Mother of Jesus silent,
offering His death for the salvation of mankind, silent and dying with
Him hour after hour, and the disciple who knew in a youthful way how
to love his master, standing by in horror, seeing his Master die and
the Mother in agony. Are we like this when we read the Gospel, are we
like this when we see the agony of men around us?
Let us therefore enter in this Holy Week in order not to be observers
of what happened then, let us enter into it mixed with the crowd and
at every step ask ourselves, who am I in this crowd? Am I the Mother?
Am I the disciple? Am I one of the crucifiers? And so forth. And then
we will be able to meet the day of the Resurrection together with
those to whom it was life and resurrection indeed, when despair had
gone, new hope had come, God had conquered. Amen.
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