St. Andrew’s Pictou, March 20^th 2005 Palm/Passion Sunday

 

Power and Passion

 

Isaiah 50: 4-9a

Psalm 31:9-16

Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 26:14-27:66  (26:36-56)

 

Real estate agents are always being encouraged to take motivational courses. Since you only make a commission on sales made, either you sell houses, or you starve. If time passes and you don’t sell any houses, you have to change careers, because you are out of business. The cream rises to the top. One woman in my office in Toronto made one million dollars a year: she just went around selling one high priced property after another, year after year.

 

There was one motivational course I took from a former Toronto fireman by the name of Bob Proctor and what he taught me has stayed with me ever since. One of the first things he taught us was to explain how the way we think directly influences our lives. Our entire lives are determined by what we think. That is why the Bible asks for our faithfulness, because having faith in God, ourselves, and those we love will determine the health and wealth of our living.

 

This sermon is about the consequences of faith: the topic today is about power!

 

What Bob taught us in this course is that we don’t receive power, we give off power!

 

Power is not something that we get somewhere and we later use as needed need like a battery, but we human beings are the power source; we give off power. Have you ever noticed that when you think you are drained, a need arises and from somewhere this surge of power comes to help you with that task?

 

Now I realize that what I have said may not be all that popular. One minister told me recently that her ministry was to “empower” people; big difference.

 

I am not here to empower you people for the simple reason that God has already done that by giving you life and the ability to choose. God has already empowered you; I not the empowerer, just the messenger.

 

Before you start to wonder where I am going with all of this, consider that this Sunday, known as either Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday, has very strong images of power and what might appear to be power loss.

 

Palm Sunday has the image of the triumphant Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to the cheers of the crowd shouting and praising: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” This is an image of Jesus crowned in glory with a triumphant jubilant expression at the end of a successful ministry.

 

Passion Sunday has this week portrayed as the time of Jesus’ Passion: the time of his betrayal, a time of pain and suffering, of false imprisonment, of fake justice, and brutal humiliation and a savage murder of the healer and teacher who preached love and forgiveness.

 

The events of Passion week might be seen to portray this time as a loss of power, not a celebration of triumph: the last supper we commemorate on Holy Thursday, the crucifixion we commemorate on Good Friday. Whatever way you want to look at it, this week is all about “Power and Passion.”

 

The story of Christ’s Passion as outlined in Matthew chapters 26 and 27 involves a litany of characters and a rogues gallery of human foibles; a feast of sermon topics for the clergy. But there seems to be one over-riding issue: if Jesus was the Son of God and Saviour of the world, how and why could he be so powerless in all of this betrayal and suffering?

 

Where is Jesus’ power? (Or better still, what is the nature of his power in the Passion narrative?)

 

We have an amazing list of people and scenarios to consider as the story unfolds:

 

-the betrayal and treachery by Judas at the high priest’s house,

 

-the intimacy of Jesus with his 12 disciples at the Last Supper, and the power of communal love in that select group,

 

-the denial of Peter at the foot of the mountain, and his self-delusions about who he was and his importance,

 

-three of his highest ranking disciples who just couldn’t stay awake with him in the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus’ immense vulnerability there,

 

-the scene at that high priest’s house with the inquisition about who Jesus was and as to his source of power,

 

-the political inquiry at Pilate’s hall, and the interplay of politics in this religious issue; the reality of professional and political expediency,

 

-the place of execution: the cross; the place of suffering, self-sacrifice, ultimate betrayal and death, the desertion of the men and the ongoing presence of the women with their faithful vigil; Mary his mother, and Mary of Magdala,

 

-the place of burial, the tomb, the faithful discipleship of Joseph of Arimathea, the grave representing the assumption of total failure.

 

The passion of Christ seems to obliterate the power of Christ and implicate that human nature has assisted in the murder of the Son of God.

 

Where is the power and what is the power issue here?

 

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” (This is my Story 1937)

 

Do you think that Jesus felt inferior when he faced the guards when they arrested him, when Peter denied him, before Pilate and the High Priest when they examined him, when the soldiers mocked him, or when he was nailed to the cross?

 

My sense is that Jesus did not feel inferior. When “the high priest said to him, ‘I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him,

‘You have said so. But I tell you,

From now on you will see the Son of Man

Seated at the right hand of Power

And coming on the clouds of heaven.’”

 

This does not sound like a man who feels inferior to those who are questioning him.

 

You and I have to ask ourselves just what kind of power it is that is not intimidated by the loss and betrayal of most of his closest friends, in addition to religious and political judgment leading to execution. He knew that to say he was the Son of God was considered blasphemy and would lead to his execution.

 

What kind of power did he have?

 

Jesus Christ knew who he was and what he was about to the exclusion of the opinions of any other man or woman on earth. Jesus Christ was not hostage to anyone’s opinion, because the foundation of who he was, his very life was a reflection of the will of God.

 

The power that Jesus had was his connection with God the Father.

 

No matter how bad life is for us or how difficult the going goes, we know that we have an advocate with Jesus Christ the righteous one who has been where ever we go. He knows both how we feel and he knows how not to be intimidated by oppression.

 

Over the last several days, we have been privy to five amazingly courageous women who have found their power and refused to be fearful or intimidated by anyone.

 

On January 31^st of this year a 33 year old Catholic man, Robert McCartney was brutally murdered by the IRA outside a pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His sisters, Gemma, Paula, Donna, Catherine, Claire, and his fiancée Bridgeen Hagans have refused to follow the IRA party line for Roman Catholics, namely silence.

 

After murdering their brother, the thugs removed the pub security video and advised the 70 patrons of the bar to forget what they saw. The women have refused to be silent and have become internationally know for their fight for justice over their brother’s death. When the IRA volunteered to have the murderers put to death, they declined and said that they want them charged in court, that they are not interested in vengeance, rather they want justice.

 

When an IRA commander showed up at sister Donna’s house wearing a balaclava and demanding her car to use to deliver a bomb to a hotel, she told him off. The language she used is not usual for a sermon, but ask yourself if you could do that. Could we look the devil in the eye and demand he return form whence he came? (Her car was found later covered with acid and unusable.)

 

Power and Passion in Northern Ireland: The US President has even snubbed the IRA and invited the Sisters to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day and disinvited Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. Fund raising for Sinn Fein in the USA is now banned.

National Post March 15^th 2005.

 

We all need this power that Jesus had, to stand for what we believe in the face of evil, today for ourselves and each other, in Northern Ireland, in Pictou County, and all of Canada. Each one of us needs our power and to access our passion.

 

There are all kinds of occasions where we need our power, whether it is against one who seeks to intimidate us or a government official who wants to take away the ferry service that would strangle our economy. We must claim the power and passion for which we stand.

 

It is the only way to be alive and stay alive.

 

AMEN                 Rev. Alan Stewart