Watching at a Distance

Over Spring Break, I spent several days at our home in the Jericho Valley in Western Massachusetts. The valley consists of the Berkshire Hills to the east and the Taconic Range to the west, at the top of which is the New York-Massachusetts border.

It snowed while we were there, and this gave me an opportunity to try out a new pair of snow shoes I bought on sale at the end of the season last year. A real Yankee never buys anything that is not on sale. I wanted to hike part way up the western side of Brodie Mountain directly across the road from our house, so I set off in the general direction of the mountain confident that I could pick up a trail in the woods once I got across the hay field that borders the road.

When I got to the tree line, I discovered that my plan was flawed. I encountered a classic forest-and-trees problem that wasn't metaphorical. I could see the slope of the mountain before me, but the dense new growth forest obscured any sign of a trail – a trail that I knew from neighbors' assurances was right there in front of me somewhere.

I trudged back and forth in two feet of snow vainly looking for the trail that I knew was there. Now, snow shoes help a little in deep snow, but it's still quite a workout, and growing more and more tired, I eventually gave up and walked back to the house.

The next day, I put on my snow shoes again and headed west up on to the Taconic Range. At one point while resting, I turned around and looked back across the valley to where I had been the day before, and there it was – the trail – clearly visible by the contrast of a path of snow and the surrounding grey tree trunks. It could not have been more than a few yards away from where I had trudged in frustration the day before.

There are times when it makes sense to look at things up close, and there are times when it is best to take the view from a distance to get a clear and comprehensive picture of the lay of the land and its contours. The day before, I had made the mistake of setting out to find a detail – the trail – without understanding the bigger picture.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I think the seeing broad sweep of the biblical story, beginning with Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem, his Passover supper with his friends, his arrest, mock trial, execution, and glorious resurrection, is necessary before we take on the details of those events and their meaning in our lives, especially the biggest detail of all – the raising of Jesus from the dead. We first need to stand back and see the whole picture, lest we go through the next seven days overwhelmed by the details that will captivate and enthrall us but also confuse and bewilder us if we do not see their connection with one another.

This is why it is best to think of tonight's liturgy of the palms and the reading of the passion as all of a piece with all the liturgies and Bible lessons of Holy Week and Easter. These are not separate services of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, but a single liturgy over a week's time telling a whole seamless story of God's total and complete identification with us whom he loves.

The details of the story we rehearse and celebrate tonight and in the next seven days are perhaps too intense, too emotional, too jarring, even too unbelievable to take in one by one or to view up close. If we try, we may become disoriented or numb or depressed or angry, and before we know it, it will be Easter Monday and we won't know what hit us.

Perhaps this is why Luke in the gospel we just heard says right near the end (23:49), "But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things."

So perhaps we should do that too - stand at a distance and watch these things. We will notice that not even Jesus seems to be in charge of the unfolding events as he has been for most of the preceding story. Now it seems he is an actor along with Herod and Pilate, with Mary and Peter. Now God our Creator – Jesus' father in heaven – sets the stage and directs the action.

Here is a young man who, we have come to see by his words and his works, is the one God has promised to send to us to get us re-connected with God. And so he is, in a way, welcomed into the City of Peace as a conquering hero and a king. But what sort of king's noble steed is a donkey? A donkey is not exactly the warhorse of a conquering hero.

Later in the week he has a Passover meal with his friends – a supper that commemorates the liberation of Israel from Egypt. He invites his friends into an intimacy with him when he breaks bread and says to them, "Take, eat. This is my body given for you. Take, drink. This is my blood poured out for you." Then he gives them an example of how to be leaders of the community he has established by washing their feet. What kind of a leader is this who acts like a servant or a slave?

Then he is arrested. One friend betrays him and one of his closest friends denies he even knows him. And all the others abandon him. When given an opportunity to explain himself he says almost nothing in his own defense. As a result of these events evil men, Herod and Pilate, become friends, or at least allies, and the crowd asks for a dangerous criminal to be released instead of this gentle man who has taught them to love others and has healed their bodies and their souls.

Why is he letting this happen? Why doesn't he do something? Heroes aren't supposed to act like this! Kings don’t do things like this.

He is tortured and killed. All our hope is gone. All we had set our hearts on vanishes. He who seemed to be bigger than life is dead, and death seems to have won the day. Why should we not despair? God seems to have let us down and abandoned us.

Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt that nothing good could possibly come out of the situation you find yourself in? Have you ever felt that light has gone out of the world and there’s no way it's coming back, that God has let you down and maybe even abandoned you?

If you have – or if you ever do – you have here God the Creator in the person of Jesus sharing these depths with you. You have Emmanuel – God with us – suffering as you suffer, weeping as you weep, dying as surely as you will die.

And then, in the midst of the deep darkness, a flicker of light. It's just a flicker at first, but soon it catches something, and the flicker becomes a flame, and the flame grows and gives off light. And the light spreads and becomes new lights, and those lights are picked up by others.

And somehow, by God's action in the world, light has come back to the world, and we see clearly that we had never been left alone, we had never really been abandoned. The God-become-human has suffered and died and has triumphed and by doing so promises that we too will triumph.

But how would we know truly that such a triumph awaits us, if we had not seen the suffering followed by the victory? How in our frail lives could we feel the connection with God that is available to us if God had not become one of us and lived and died as one of us first?

As we stand at a distance with Peter and John and Mary Magdalene and Jesus' mother Mary, we will see his life as the essence of our lives. Or maybe it's the other way around – that our lives are becoming the essence of his life. By standing at a distance, we can see the connections between the drama of Jesus and the drama of our own lives. We can see that this is God our Creator showing us through this story that our lives are fleeting and full of suffering yet destined for a glorious victory over every suffering and every death.

So tonight and in the week ahead let us stand silently at a distance watching in awe as this drama of Jesus that is our own unfolds. And let us give thanks and praise to God for redeeming our lives through Jesus.

Amen.