Sermon for Palm Sunday

It isn’t usual to give a sermon on Palm Sunday, and you can see why. There are two possible responses to someone getting up to talk after the reading of the Passion: either “We have just heard the most tragic and mind-blowing narrative there is, and I am shattered: and YOU think you can add anything to it? Shut up and sit down.” Or” “We have already had to endure an endless reading, and are we to have to endure a sermon as well? Shut up and sit down.” I think that is fairly conclusive, don’t you? There can in my opinion be no other possible response. If you have entered into the reading of the Passion and it has entered into you, anything added can only be a best irritating and at worst crashingly insensitive and painful. if you have not, if even the Passion has not moved you, then a sermon certainly won’t. But I just want to reflect briefly on something peripheral to the Passion, or possibly peripheral to its reading.

It used to be the norm to stand for the reading of the Passion There was no special reason for that: we always stand for the reading of the Gospel. I was told by the good nuns who taught me that if you stand without moving for the whole of the Passion, you will get a soul out of Purgatory. Now, this is no more or less than superstition. In fact, God is so pleased with us whenever we do anything out of love that it is quite possible that he would indeed free a soul from Purgatory if we asked for it I that way; but not because there is any virtue in the act itself. You’d be much better off wriggling and shifting a bit and concentrating on what the reading has to say to you than standing stock-still meditating on the twinges in your lower back and wondering whether blinking counts. I do think that God looks a little sadly on some of our observances, customs and usages, which make life even more burdensome and annoying than it is anyway. Maybe that is more true nowadays of the religious life, since lay Christianity has shed a great deal of that sort of thing. Most of these customs and usages – and I’d say many of the observances and ways of doing things within the church – are neutral in themselves, or can even be positively bad if the correct motivation is not there. It is perfectly true that whatever one does out of Charity is pleasing to God. But the fact that the Jongleur de Dieu pleased God by standing on his head and turning cartwheels does not mean that we should now found a new Religious Order of Tumblers or introduce handsprings into the offertory procession. The action itself is neutral; only the lve that is put into it gives it worth. I think it is true to say that the very Passion of Christ would have had no value if – to imagine the impossible – it had not been done out of love.

I think it is a pity we do not stand for the Passion for a different reason: standing as a mark of respect is just about the only naturally meaningful symbol we have left in our service; partly because the service has changed but partly also because we have changed. We no longer kneel or even genuflect in normal life; even the curtsy to the Queen has, I believe, been abolished. We do not bow – which is, incidentally, the reason why the small bow at the name of Jesus has gone: the present generation can’t understand why the Name should provoke a nod – that’s all it is to them and so cannot possibly take hold. Holy water? Most of us no longer know what it is like to have a bath or wash because we are genuinely dirty and need cleansing. The sign of peace? It is a very mixed-up piece of symbolism. Originally it did signify making peace (see its Gospel origin) and the handshake will just about pass for that. But now it is (wrongly) understood as a sign of fellowship, and a handshake is the last way we would express that; it is reserved for the most distant and formal greetings. And so on. But we do still stand as a mark of respect: when someone comes into the room, or even when, at a theatre or concert hall, an artist surpasses himself. Yes, that’s partly enthusiasm, but the two are linked.

The Jews have it right when, at the Passover meal, they ask a series of questions about what distinguishes this night from all other nights. We need reminded. The fact that by standing we treat the Gospel differently from all other readings is of great significance” we could perhaps ask the reluctant, or our squirming children (who squirm, incidentally, at least as much when they are seated): “What distinguishes this reading from all other readings?” and let them think about it. Why is this reading more worthy of respect than any other? The answer of course is that the Gospel not only speaks of the life of Jesus Christ but it symbolises him. He is as truly present in the Gospel, though in a different way, as he is in the bread and wine we receive at Communion. Would we sit to receive Communion? I don’t stand to hear the Passion because it is a salutary asceticism, or even in order to magic a soul out of Purgatory. I stand out of respect for the Lord present in the Gospel, and if it so happens that it is a Gospel passage that takes ten minutes (or whatever it is) to read, so what?

I have been rambling. But you take my point. Of course the service is boring if we reduce it to a series of meaningless actions and words. And it is of no help whatever to think up new meanings if the real ones have been lost. They will not be true, will not feel true, and will not have the effect that only the truth can have. The truth is frightening because it is too big for us; and as so often, we shy away from the very thing we should face. We attend the eucharist, we hear the Passion read and we are scared. We retreat from its reality, from its true meaning, and find – naturally – the superficial level boring. We shield ourselves from the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, the presence of God and the act of our salvation through history – and there is nothing left. We have lost the soul of the thing. It is essential that we search for that soul ceaselessly, like the woman with the drachma, until it is found. And I think that this is a good time to do it, now when the historical events which are the core of the eucharist and are re-presented in it are about to be enacted before our eyes. Maybe after the events of Maundy Thursday – and if you can’t remember them, it would be no bad thing to supplement the liturgy by reading them for yourselves – the reading of the Passion of Good Friday, and the Vigil Mass on Easter Sunday, might feel a little different from those same things today. If so, thank God for it and take that to the eucharist with you from now on. Never mind the rite, the denomination, the translation, the version, the vagaries of the priest or minister; remember what you are doing, at what you are assisting, and hold fast to what is good – and true.