Palm Passion Sunday C 2007 Luke22:39-23:56

Why are we not surprised that this story, begun as a triumphal entry, ends this way at the foot of the Cross. Ends in a scandal, in a cruel punishment reserved for the dregs of, and greatest threats to, society. Why are we not surprised?

After all, his life began in a scandal. He was conceived out of wedlock to a young peasant woman who may have been only twelve years old. Her scandalized fiancé almost didn’t go through with the marriage. He wanted to send her away to have her child in disgrace and in private. But for some reason he chose not to do so.

His very birth took place under scandalous circumstances. Too poor to afford more than a donkey, his mother and her husband trudged by foot from Nazareth to Bethlehem about one hundred road miles, probably sleeping on the ground. Unable to bribe an innkeeper in Bethlehem, they took shelter in a manger, with a thatch roofed shelter over the food for livestock. The manger proper was his crib.

Born in one obscure village he grew up in another. He learned the humble trade of carpenter from Joseph, his mother’s husband. Carpenters ranked with shepherds and fishermen as the lowest classes of society. Even at that he became unemployed around the age of thirty when he became a vagabond, a migrant, a wandering preacher up and down the dusty roads and hills of Galilee. He no longer had a permanent roof over his head, sleeping in the open at night with a ragged band of followers made up largely of the outcast and same lower classes. And scandalous as well was the presence of women among this group who wandered and slept in the open as he did.

For three years he led this life of the itinerant preacher. He preached at every opportunity, whether on the road, or on mountainsides, or in the valley in between. He never wrote a book. He never held either an elected or appointive office. He didn't go to college or rabbinical school. He only visited one significant city, Jerusalem. He never traveled more than one hundred miles from the place from where he was born. He never built a church building, synagogue, or temple.

But he humbled himself and emptied himself. He forgot, he did not remember. He forgave. He let the past be in the past. He took up and took on the form of a servant who washed the dusty, dirty feet of his friends and disciples.

He was the one who calmed the raging sea, who spoke in parables, who turned water to wine. He ate with sinners, and he had time for everyone, the lonely, the poor, depressed, men and woman and children alike, the disinherited, the outcast, the fringes, the forgotten, the despised.

He comforted, and sorrowed with, two women friends on the death of their brother, Lazarus. He raised the dead. He drove the moneychangers from the temple. He healed the blind, cured the lame, cast out the demons. He rode another humble donkey one time, into Jerusalem.

At the age of 33, he was killed by the Romans, sent to his death by a man named Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands, while the high priest Caiaphas and King Herod sentenced him to death. He was brutally tortured, exhausted, and then crucified as a common criminal between two common criminals, abandoned by most of his disciples and friends, bled to death on the Cross.

He had the very common name of Jeshua in Aramaic and Hebrew, Joshua in English, ‘Ihsous in Koine Greek. We call him Jesus.

So why are we surprised at the way he ended? Why are we here?

We know the end of the story. We look across the dark overtones of Holy Week, beyond the shadow of the Cross of Good Friday. We know that he had no end.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, the word made flesh and dwelt among us, the glory of the Father's only son, of one being with the Father; God from God, light from light, true God from true God. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the all and everything. Our Lord and our Savior.

AMEN