Who Walks in Darkness and Has No Light (Isaiah 50, Palm Sunday)

There is a little gem hidden just after the Old Testament reading for Palm Sunday (Isaiah 50:10):

Who among you fears the Lord

   and obeys the voice of his servant,

who walks in darkness

   and has no light,

yet trusts in the name of the Lord

   and relies upon his God?

As we walk through Holy Week, as the gathering storm becomes ever darker, these are words to cling to. We will soon find that, with the disciples, we scatter and flee; that with Peter we deny him. And yet we will also trust Jesus who walk into the darkness of deepest abandonment for us and for all. Even though he walks into darkness, he who is the Light of the world carries all the light within him that he will ever need.

This Jesus descends into Hell, into the outermost darkness, that we can remember that even should we find ourselves in Hell itself, even there he is still Lord for us. As Psalm 139 reminds us, there is no where we can go to flee from God's searching out love:

 

Where can I go from your spirit?

   Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

   and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

   and the light around me become night’,

even the darkness is not dark to you;

   the night is as bright as the day,

   for darkness is as light to you.

Image: Could Silence Protect Us..., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54131 [retrieved March 25, 2024]. Original source: Piotr.amigo, Flickr Creative Commons.

Palm Sunday is a Rehearsal

 

In all the readings, festivities, and solemnities, many preachers choose not to preach on Palm/Passion Sunday, which is too bad because then we miss how Palm Sunday points both backwards and forwards.

Palm Sunday points backwards to Advent.  "All Glory, Laud, and Honor" is clearly THE hymn for Palm Sunday. So we probably fail to recall that we actually sang a Palm Sunday hymn during Advent.  "Prepare the Royal Highway" is clearly about Palm Sunday in its second verse: 

God’s people, see him coming:
Your own eternal king!
Palm branches strew before him!
Spread garments! Shout and sing!
God’s promise will not fail you!
No more shall doubt assail you!
Hosanna to the Lord,
For he fulfills God’s Word!

The coming of Jesus at Christmas is only fulfilled by the coming of Jesus on Palm Sunday. The gates of Jerusalem that we longed to be lifted up in Advent (Psalm 24) are lifted up now as Jesus enters on a donkey.

Palm Sunday also points forwards. Afterall, the saints in Heaven worship the Lamb with palm branches in their hands (Revelation 7):

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

Palm Sunday is remembrance yes, but also rehearsal for that great and glorious hymn.

And as if to underline the point, the Hosannas of Palm Sunday are woven into our everyday communion liturgy. When we sing the Sanctus during communion, we are singing a mash-up of two Scriptures:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory. (Isaiah 6, the hymn of the angels in the Temple)
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest. (all the Gospels have the people singing this on Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem)

Every Sunday, dear people, is a little Palm Sunday. We cry out in praise to the One who has come and who is coming. In one hymn, we cast our memories back to the mighty acts of the Risen One and forward to the coming, unveiled redemption that is yet to come.

 

Image: Hochhalter, Cara B.. Palm Sunday: Even the Stones, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59018 [retrieved March 25, 2024]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

 

God's Commandment is Eternal Life (John 12, Lent 5B)

In John 12, Jesus suddenly becomes aware that the hour has come for his glorification (on the cross!).  Unfortunately for the Greeks that have come to see Jesus (John 12.20), Jesus never gets around to seeing them. But Jesus begins his final revelation, and perhaps these Greeks get to see Jesus more clearly than we might think. Jesus speaks of grains of wheat dying and rising, of walking in the Light while it is still present, of his own lifter up death.

But the rest of John 12 never makes an appearance in our lectionary. We miss this:

After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them. ³⁷Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. ³⁸This was to fulfil the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah:

‘Lord, who has believed our message,

   and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’

³⁹And so they could not believe, because Isaiah also said,

⁴⁰ ‘He has blinded their eyes

   and hardened their heart,

so that they might not look with their eyes,

   and understand with their heart and turn—

   and I would heal them.’

⁴¹Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him. ⁴²Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; ⁴³for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God.

44 Then Jesus cried aloud: ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. ⁴⁵And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. ⁴⁶I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. ⁴⁷I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. ⁴⁸The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, ⁴⁹for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. ⁵⁰And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.’

It's all beautiful, of course, but the part that jumps out to me is the last paragraph. Jesus echoes John 3.17 - God desires not to judge but to save the world! Yet, Jesus continues to speak about judgement, saying that his word will serve as judge. 

But what is this word? God's commandment, Jesus reveals, is rather simple - Eternal Life. Ok, perhaps not so simple. What does it mean that God's commandment is eternal life? Is this a teaching that believers must accept? Is this some secret wisdom?

Or, do we remember that Jesus has just heard a voice from heaven (12.28) saying that God has glorified Jesus and will glorify him again. The commandment of eternal life, it seems, has less to do with what people come to believe and more to do with death and resurrection. God's commandment of eternal life is about to be lived out (died out?) by Jesus. This eternal life is one of dying and rising. This eternal life is being connected forever to Jesus' mighty act upon the cross and his rising for us and the world. 

The cross is "the judgement of this world; [when] the ruler of this world will be driven out" (John 12.31). God's judgement is condemnation for the ruler of the world, but eternal life for us.

Keep your eyes, dear people, on this Judge.

If you're curious about that odd phrasing that Jesus "cried aloud" (12.44) check where else that occurs in John's Gospel. Something important is always afoot when Jesus "cries out."

Image: Hartman, Craig W.. Cathedral of Christ the Light, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54202 [retrieved March 20, 2024]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sicarr/3251258111/.

Singing to a Well? (Numbers 21, Lent 4B)

I have read Numbers a number of times (get it!) but I never noticed the little canticle in verses 17 and 18 before. It never makes it to the lectionary, of course, or I wouldn't be covering it here.

Just after the Old Testament reading on Sunday, Numbers tells us of a camping stop, but then we hear this: 

From there they continued to Beer; that is the well of which the Lord said to Moses, ‘Gather the people together, and I will give them water.’ Then Israel sang this song: 

‘Spring up, O well!—Sing to it!— 

the well that the leaders sank, 

that the nobles of the people dug, 

with the scepter, with the staff.’  

- Numbers 21.16-18

Beer is the Hebrew word for well (insert obligatory alcohol joke here), so the text literally means "From there they continued to [a/the] Well."

It is a wonderful image. The people are tired after another long day in the wilderness, but coming to the end of their journey (Joshua will be appointed to replace Moses in just a few chapters). They pull off the road for the end of the day and find water. No need to dig or scrape or carry. There it is. 

But as the people sing, we learn that this well was dug by the nobles and using their staffs! Now folks, I have never dug a well, but if I were to try I would use a shovel, not just a staff. Ideally, I would use a backhoe... And I would certainly expect a prince to find someone else to do the hard work. This is no ordinary well.

Perhaps, this is a glimmer of the Living Water, the well that Jesus is speaking of with the Samaritan Woman:

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ - John 4.14-15

And so we sing, 

‘Spring up, O well!—Sing to it!— 

the well that the leaders sank, 

that the nobles of the people dug, 

with the scepter, with the staff.’  

We might also consider this little canticle worth using at Baptisms, singing it over the waters that make us children of God. Or maybe when you are out hiking and discover a spring on the way, to take out this little piece and sing it over that unexpected water - Spring up, O well!

Sidebar on translation: The OT reading on Sunday incorrectly states that the serpents God sent among the people were poisonous. My herpetologist son immediately corrected this to "venomous." The text says that the serpents bit the people and many died. As everyone should know - it is bites you and you die, it was venomous; if you bite it and you die, it was poisonous. Translators should consult a 12 year old once in a while.

Image: Jonathan Wilkins (Wikimedia).